DOWN ON THE OPEN; BUT THEN WHAT?

At least from this standpoint this morning but who knows what will creep up in the next hour and a half. Dow Diamonds (DIA) are trading at 12980 right now down about 60 points. Two things that may come into play this morning are the CPI. If its a good number it may give the fed room to set up for an easing down the road (October?). The other issue this morning are the energy markets which are higher this morning on tropical storm Dean and a depression in the the Gulf of Mexico. The latter will not have time to do much but Dean could be formidable down the road and guidance takes it west into the Carribbean as a major hurricane so that could be a Gulf of Mexico threat down the road. That might at least put a bid under anything related to energy but with the high level of tension in the overall market; if a big selloff developes it may just mean this group will be down the least. So much uncertainty does not make for a good day but who knows. We're down nearly 700 points since last Wednesday so maybe they may try a stage a bounce of some kind today. Also we don't know if there are other hedge funds out there ready to unwind their carry trades although i would suspect that now that we've repriced the risk back into MLPS the downside might not be as extreme as what we saw that Monday morning August 6th when the index dropped 26 points or nearly 10% before rebounding.

Some good news last night if you are an E V Partners (EVEP) unit holder as they came out with earnings and pre-announced a 6 cent distribution increase for next quarter to 56 cents! So this one has a going foward yield now of 6.7% or 2 points above the 10 year and well above the yield low of nearly 5% or almost no 10 year spread about 6 or 7 weeks ago. A lot more compelling in here at 33-34 than at 43-44!.

No other breaking news so far this morning and no upgrades or downgrades on the board yet. Yesterday there were a whole slew of upgrades in the group but when the market is cratering they don't have a whole lot of impact.