Good morning traders!

In the US Friday, the Dow rose 20 points at 11,382, the Nasdaq added 12 points at 2,591
and the S&P500 gained 3 points at 1,225.

In Asia today, the Nikkei was last down 8 points at 10,170, while the Hang Seng ended the
morning ahead 141 points at 23,461.

Crude oil traded at $89.35 a barrel on Nymex.

Gold settled at $1,413 an ounce.

Happy Monday!

G.

NIKKEI 225	AUSTRALIA ASX200	HANG SENG	SHANGHAI COMPOSITE
KOSPI	SENSEX	VIX	GBPUSD
GBPEUR	NYMEX CRUDE	GOLD

A happy holiday from a wet Spain.

BATS Nomura: buy, tp raised to 2750 from 2510
BAY Credit Suisse: reiterated outperform, tp 388
BBY JPMorgan: overweight, tp raised to 365 from 338
BKG JPMorgan: reiterated neutral, tp 850
HMV UBS: reiterated buy, tp cut to 55 from 65
JMAT Goldman: upgraded to buy from neutral, tp raised to 2540 from 1840
NFDS Credit Suisse: neutral, tp 55
NTG UBS: upgraded to neutral from sell, tp 215
NVA RBS: upgraded to buy from hold
PPC RBS: initiated buy, tp 100
PRV Altium: reiterated buy, tp raised to 103 from 90
PRW JPMorgan: reiterated overweight, tp cut to 140 from 200
PUB Credit Suisse: outperform, tp cut to 116 from 146
SGE Canaccord: buy, tp raised to 310 from 280
TSCO UBS: downgraded to neutral from buy, tp cut to 440 from 495
VED UBS: reiterated neutral, tp cut to 2300 from 2500
WOS RBS: reiterated hold, tp raised to 1635 from 1490

Midday Market Overview

Afternoon guys.
Managed to get into the office today but the snow here in Edinburgh hasn't stopped since 9am.
Now stuck as the buses have all been stopped.
Wishing I had never come to work at all today.
That plus the fact that I bought a few DES last week and they put out a cr*p RNS this morning added to my discomfort.
TT (:-((

Sorry to hear about the snow and DES TT :-( Couldn't believe that RNS this morning after the one last week. Did a small long on RKH this morning after that but it's not going anywhere so it looks like I'm carrying now. Can't help but wondering if when all is said and done the whole Falklands oil thing is going to be a bit of a bust. For what it's worth Westhouse are still relatively positive:

DES Westhouse: reiterated accumulate, tp cut to 96 from 142

As far as the weather is concerned, fortunately/unfortunately I work from home so it's never going to stop me from working. And we hardly ever get snow where I am in South Korea... is this a bad time to say I miss it? :-) I read a while back that climate change would lead to the UK having harsher winters - I wonder if this is indictative of things to come? I seem to recall people saying last year was bad as well.

At this rate, I'm expecting most of the UK retailers to issue profits warning blaming the weather before long.

And happy holidays TT/Mitzy and lurkers!

End-of-day Market Overview