Dow Chemical (DOW) issued a press statement this morning concerning the Kuwaiti deal that fell through last week. Dow vows to pull the stops on trying to get every $$ out of this situation.

CEO: KUWAIT DAMAGES ARE NOT LIMITED TO $2B, TO SEEK ‘MULTIPLE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS’
- Plans to sue Kuwait and seek arbitration
- To announce new plastics venture partner this year
- Plans to raise no less than $7.5B from venture, divestitures
- Sees no signs of demand bottoming as of now

The CEO makes no mention of the deal with Rohm & Haas (ROH).

There are two big events today in the market. At 10:00am (US EST) we will get the December ISM (non manufacturing) data and then at 2:00pm we get the FOMC minutes from the meeting that put the Fed Funds rate down to zero. This should be VERY interesting. I think the FOMC minutes will be more important than anything else that is scheduled today.

The 10 year ($TNX) is up again this morning. It is possible that the bond market is accelerating now and finding an entry in TBT may be tough. If TLT trades under $112.25 then we can expect to see further declines quickly I expect. This is a tricky play here. TLT has already fallen out of the trend, but it is sitting close to a somewhat weak support level. It is hard to take a new position in TBT here unless we see the TLT drop below the support level identified on this chart, or trades back up to resistance (gap shown in red box).

TLT Daily Chart