Morning MoneyBeat Asia : U.S.Stocks Begin Week Warily

        By Paul Vigna
        Market Snap: At the New York close: S&P 500 down 0.03% at 2109.66. DJIA down 0.1% at 18116.84. Nasdaq Comp up 0.1% at 4960.97. Treasury yields declined; 10-year at 2.057%. Nymex crude oil down 2.7% at $49.45. Gold down 0.3% at $1,200.30/ounce.
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        How We Got Here: U.S. stocks start the week off weakly, as equities traders follow crude oil lower, and cautiously await the next headline in the Greek bailout story and the two-day Congressional testimony coming this week from Fed chair Janet Yellen.
        The main question surrounding the Fed is going to be whether or not the economy is strong enough to absorb higher interest rates. One measure of that measure came in the Chicago Fed's monthly National Activity Index released Monday The index blends 85 different economic series to measure the economy's momentum. The three-month moving average (which smooths out volatile monthly readings) slipped to 0.33 in January, from 0.34 in December. Those positive numbers mean the economy is moving - but they are low enough numbers that it means the economy isn't moving with much momentum. That's a concern for the Fed.
        Meanwhile, over in techland, the Nasdaq Composite traded down most of the day, but with indexes paring the losses in the afternoon, the Nasdaq managed to crawl into the green and inch a bit closer to its all-time record hit in the dot-com days.
        Coming Up:
        What You Missed Overnight
        Greece Delays Awaited Reforms Until Tuesday Greece's government pushed back until early Tuesday a list of awaited reforms that its eurozone partners had demanded in exchange for continuing to fund the country for another few months.
        U.S. Stocks Decline, Mirroring Oil's Drop U.S. stocks ended slightly lower Monday, pulling back from records as a decline in oil prices weighed on energy stocks.
        Palestinian Authority Liable for Attacks A federal jury has found the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization liable for supporting six terrorist attacks in Israel over a decade ago and ordered the groups to pay $218.5 million to the victims' families.
        Yahoo Exec Confronts NSA Director Over 'Backdoors' In one of the most public confrontations of a top U.S. intelligence official by Silicon Valley in recent years, a senior Yahoo official peppered the National Security Agency director, Adm. Mike Rogers, at a conference on Monday over digital spying.
        From The Wall Street Journal Asia
        Honda Replaces CEO Among Quality Worry Honda Motor, seeking to move on from mass recalls involving quality glitches and faulty air bags, said Monday its chief executive would step down to make way for a low-profile engineer with extensive international experience.
        Copper Tells Two Stories on Global Economy It is often claimed that copper prices are a reliable barometer of the global economy's health. Those who monitor the metal closely are sharply divided over its condition.
        Indian Outsourcers Struggle to Evolve as Growth Slows As its growth slows, India's technology services outsourcing industry is struggling to become less dependent on peddling the services of inexpensive programmers and trying to enter new businesses like off-the-shelf software and helping customers with big data and cloud computing.
        HSBC's Problems Mount as It Lowers Targets, Profit Falls Investors punished HSBC Holdings after the bank posted underwhelming earnings and scaled back financial targets.
        From MoneyBeat
        Apple Is Now More Than Double the Size of Exxon - And Everyone Else Combined with Exxon Mobil's pullback over the past six months, Apple has pulled off the rare occurrence of being worth at least double any other publicly traded U.S. company.
        A Greek 'Deal' Does Not Solve the Eurozone's Woes A deal was struk -- with caveats -- between Greece and its eurozone creditors on Friday. Whether or not it was a good one for Greece is the subject of some debate. What it doesn't do, however, is resolve the eurozone's fundamental problems.
        Oil Slump, Rates in Focus as Canada's Big Banks Report Canadian banks will begin reporting their fiscal first-quarter results on Tuesday, a pivotal batch of earnings that will reveal how the "Big Five" lenders are faring with swooning oil prices and ultra-low interest rates.
        Wall Street's Spring Break Reading List Wondering what the Gordon Gekko set will be reading this year? Dave Lutz, Head of ETF trading and strategy at JonesTrading, surveyed 800 portfolio managers, traders and analysts about what they'll be reading as they ditch their desks for some fun and sun.
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        (END) Dow Jones Newswires

        February 23, 2015 18:14 ET (23:14 GMT)

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