Good morning contrarians! Pending home sales are out at 1000. Initial jobless claims at 0830 seeing how it’s Thursday. Also a slew of earnings: $M, $DLTR, $DG, $ULTA in the pre-market. $COST after the close.

Pending home sales would probably need to be really disappointing to move markets. The news that housing growth is slowing is no secret, so you figure a lot of that would have to be mostly priced in at this point.

Costco earnings are worth watching. This is an important bellwether for the U.S. consumer, who apparently can’t get enough of this store. It’s especially important after the disappointing earnings we got from $WMT and $TGT last week (though this week has been better for retailers with $WSM the latest to surprise to the upside yesterday). Costco is like crack cocaine for American consumers so if there are any indications at all that they are slowing their Costco shopping binges it would bode very poorly for the global economy indeed.

The three major U.S. indexes (S&P, Dow, Nasdaq) are quietly positive for the week. All have long losing streaks (eight weeks in a row for the Dow, seven for the S&P and Nasdaq). Is the worst behind us already?

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