-Bernanke: Fed to keep rates low after economy strengthens
-Bernanke defends Fed actions
-S.Roach says wrong medicine is being applied to America's economy
-Williams (Fed) says far too many people out of work
-Evans (Fed) has not seen inflation concerns
-Real risk global economy re-enters recession early next year

Dow Jones: 0.96%
Nasdaq Comp.: 0.12%
S&P 500: 0.58%

Wall Street is holding higher on the first trading day of the new quarter, following the release of a better than expected ISM manufacturing report, which climbed back above the psychologically important 50 point mark. Worth highlighting in that regard, the ability of this economic report, in particular, to move markets, although it is this next Friday's monthly employment report which retains the most influence.

Oracle is higher after inaugurating its annual Open World conference over the weekend.

Hewlett-Packard -the PC maker- is also gaining, ahead of a meeting with analysts on Wednesday

Analysts at Oppenheimer have lowered their price target on Facebook to $27 from $41, but while at the same time keeping their outperform rating on the stock.

Goldman Sachs is advancing after Barron's reported that the stock will rise as much as 25% within a year as capital markets improve.

3M has agreed to buy Ceradyne for $860m.

Monster Worldwide, the Internet recruiting service that is exploring a sale, is up on reports that it is in talks with a private equity bidder.

Acting as a backdrop, perhaps, Morgan Stanley's ex-Chief Economist, Stephen Roach, today wrote in an article that: "The wrong medicine is being applied to America's economy. Having misdiagnosed the ailment, policy-makers have prescribed untested experimental medicine with potentially grave side effects."

ISM manufacturing back above 50

The ISM manufacturing sector purchasing managers' index for the month of September has come in at 51.5 (Consensus: 49.7), following on from 49.6 for the month before.

Construction spending contracted by 0.6% at a month-on-month pace (Consensus: 0.5%). The previous month's reading has been revised up to show a fall of 0.4% (from a preliminary reading of -0. 9%).

S&P 500 uptrend still intact
This is the way that technical analysts at Charles Stanley see things for the S&P 500: "(...) The weekly line chart for the index demonstrates that its long-term uptrend remains very much intact, but that its 14-week RSI has run into resistance in the form of the highs that were reached in March (and in April of 2011); such price action strongly suggests that prices are going to struggle to make much more headway in the near-term and that further weakness has become possible." However, they add that, "Given that the S&P is still less than 2% from the top it is clear that traders are going to require a strong signal that the rally is failing and, at the very least, they are probably going to need to see a retreat through the index's 50-day moving average (at 1411 or so)."

Slight gains in other asset classes
10 year US Treasuries are now rising by 4/32 dollars with yields at 1.62%.

The November contract for West Texas sweet light crude is up 22 cents at $92.41 a barrel.



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