Morning Warm ups - Gaps are getting boring..

It looks today like another gap up.

Around the world while we were sleeping:

Asia put in another strong performance.  Good manufacturing numbers out of Japan helped to boost the Nikkei and the Yen.

Europe is mostly green across the board with a subdued rally this am, but green is green and our futures sit currently at +2.75 on the ESH10s.  That makes 4 days in a row of a potential gap opening.  The dollar is suffering weakness which also helps the bulls case.

US Economic News:

It is Christmas eve but our government is hard at work., passing healthcare reform and delivered as a Christmas present to all Americans and their guest.  That is not the only part of government at work we have numbers coming out this morning too, hopefully the bean counters get to go home after they push the buttons for the 8:30 releases.

The durable goods number could erase the gap this morning on the open.. The reaction to a terrible New Home sales yesterday and a less then stellar sentiment number was an immediate sell-off followed by buying strength through most of the day to close on highs in the NQ and RUT.  I would expect that weak numbers today will be treated the same.  This market wants to rally.

For the jobless claims, it would be great if Santa could deliver that decade down from last week and show continued downward progress.  What we don't want to do is jump back above that 500K number. Yuck.  So plenty of news prior to the market to either set the gap opening or erode it down to flat.

Outlook..

I ran my numbers last night and yesterday was very bullish.  The underlying breadth sentiment was in all three indices.  The topping signal for us is the Zweigs which have gone overbought  on all indices and will look for a reprieve, but they can stay overbought for a few days and this market with low volume and high breadth sentiment could explode.  It is like a Mento dangling over a bottle of coke. Watch the new highs and the A/D lines today.. if they start to weaken and accelerate to the downside than the show is over and head for the exits.