From: Ike Groff Subject: Early Tour 8.14.12 Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2012 10:02:38 +0000 Good Morning ... Europe up 20-65 bps (DAX +0.81%) ... Nikkei +0.50%, SHCOMP +0.30%, HSI +1.05%, KOSPI +1.27%, ASX +0.21% EUR 1.2372 (+0.32%) JPY 78.54 (-0.28%) Italy 10yr 5.92% Spanish 10yr 6.86% US 10yr 1.67% Copper +0.42% Futures: Dow +22, Nasdaq +4, III +3 DXY 82.27 (-0.20%) Gold $1616.80 (+0.26%) Crude $93.14 (+0.44%) Greece auctions €4.06 billion of 3-month bills at average yield of 4.43% to cover refinancing needs, bid-to-cover 1.36x (€3.2 billion Greek state bond held by ECB expires on Monday). Headline on the tape from the German Constitutional Court saying no change to the Sep 12 date on ESM decision. Merrill's August fund manager survey is out this morning (a couple of highlights: cash levels down slightly but still elevated at 4.7%, summer rally has caused only modest re-allocation from cash & bonds to equities, investors aggressively scaled back underweight of Eurozone equities - note this is consistent with recent flows & some of the articles in the press recently). Volumes slightly better today in Europe than yesterday but that's not saying much (of the 107 million shares traded in the DAX yesterday, 48 million were dealt in CBK GY and in general it was the lowest non-holiday trading day in the DAX, FTSE & US for almost a decade - and apparently HFT accounted for - 70% of the total in NY yesterday). SPA's +3 handles = 1405.50 last. ***EL, HD, TJX, DKS, SKS reporting pre-open*** ***PPI & Retail Sales @ 8:30am, Business Inventories @ 10am*** Groupon shares tumble after hours after reporting Q2 revenues that miss estimates (trading -19.8%) Sky Deutschland Q2 beat across the board, strong run rate growth, reits 2012 EBITDA (trading +1.0%) Kabel Deutschland Q1 inline, EBITDA slight better, flat dividend, outlook maintained (trading unch) RWE Q2 EBITDA better due to Statoil compensation payment, outlook confirmed (trading -0.90%) K&S Q2 inl