The Morning Hammer: Time for a Break?

Global equities are down for the first time in 5 days as profit-taking sets in.

We've had a nice central bank-driven surge over the past 2 days and markets are taking a break.

Crude oil is red but off morning lows after Bloomberg reported that Saudi Arabia may have offered to cut production if Iran agreed to freeze output.

This seemingly increases the probability of some type of coordinated output freeze/cut at next week's OPEC meeting in Algiers.

However, keep in mind that the OPEC news flow has been all over the place. I wouldn't be surprised to see headlines this afternoon saying there's no chance of a deal.

I'm long oil, so this chatter is good for my portfolio, but the back and forth is getting exhausting.

Today's economic calendar is pretty light, with thee Markit US Manufacturing PMI at 9:45 a.m. and the Baker Hughes Rig Count at 1:00 p.m.

We'll also have Fed heads speaking today. Harker, Mester, and Lockhart will appear together on a panel at the Philly Fed conference at 12:00 p.m., while Kaplan will speak in Houston at 12:30 p.m.

Overnight, the euro-area IHS Markit PMI fell in September due to weakness in Germany.

Facebook (FB) is taking a hit this morning after it announced it over-inflated video views. Facebook insists that the issue did not impact billing to advertisers, but it certainly raises questions about platform engagement.

Yahoo (YHOO) is also off on continued fallout from its security breach.

Sentiment is still pretty mixed, so it's hard to get a gauge of just how overheated (or is it underheated?) the market is.

Thus far, the bears have been failing at every turn, so let's see if they can change that today.

I'd still key on biotech (IBB). It's hard to break the market when biotech's strong, so that's a primary area of interest right now.

IBB broke above $300 yesterday for the first time since January on a solid string of good news including mergers (both real and imagined) and positive drug data.

Good luck out there.

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