Today the Asian market closed relatively mixed. China up +0.69%, Hongkong up +0.12%, Taiwan down -0.13%, Singapore down -0.35%, South Korea up +0.64%, Japan down -0.38%, Australia up +0.87% and India down. Negative news continued to come from from Japan. Japan GDP's worst-than-expected datas caused Deutsche Bank to downgrade the industry to "market weigth" from "overweigth", citing weakness and lack of confidence will likely to continue in the next quarters. The central banks of South Korea and Australia also released a rather cloudy outlook for economic recovery. Economist Lu Zhengwei at Industrial Bank in Shanghai, however, has positive things to say in regard to China, citing the World Bank and others predict China on its way to overtake the US as the top economy in ten years. In the US front... Before the market opened, there are good news from the corporates' front. Wal-Mart WMT beats estimates by a penny, 97 cents versus 96 cents; management also raised full year EPS guidance to $3.95-$4.05 from $3.90 to $4.00. Another spotlight is Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan; the company rejected an unsolicited takeover offer from U.K. mining giant BHP Billiton Ltd. for for $130-a-share cash. Besides positive earnings and M&A activities, macro economic datas also lifted investors' sentiment. The Commerce Department said housing starts rose 1.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 546,000 units. Analysts were expecting housing starts to rise to 560,000 units. The July datas, however, was relatively good compared to last month; June's housing starts were revised to show a fall of - 8.7%. The US Producer Prices Index PPI rose for the first time in four months; the July PPI was up +0.2% versus down -0.5% in June; July Core PPI was also up + 0.3% versus + 0.1% in June. Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton Emerging Markets Group, on Tuesday said the Double-Dip-Recession concern will be bullish for stocks. The central banks will continue easing, âand that's good for the global market because it means there's more money available," he explained. Continue to that bullish note, a top Federal Reserve official said economy is not as bad as investors fear. "The FOMC's decision has had a larger impact on financial markets than I would have anticipated," Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota stated. He further advised, "the Federal Reserve's decision last week to buy more U.S. government debt should not be viewed as a sign the economic outlook is worse than investors' thought". The S&P 500 was trading comfortably above the 50d-MA and hit the psychological mark of 1100.14 mid-day before retreat to 1092.54 or up +1.22% by the closing bell. There is a "very slight" chance that the market will try to retest that heavy resistance, the June high at 1131 range. We estimate the target of 1110-1120 is more appropriate in the next few days. Wall Street traders still seemed to think of going short at the heavy resistance rather than going long because the truth is, there is a definite lack of conviction. No one can really trust the rally with no strong volumes nor institutional participations. Please remember the market can always drift lower or higher during the low-volumes- trading seasons. One should be cautious of betting too heavily at the present time, especially for the over night positions. Best regards to all, and good luck in your trading. ___________________________________________________