Bear Mountain Bull

It’s time again for a little BMB R&R, especially with the market behaving as bizarrely as it’s been. Maybe if we stop watching it start to behave a little better…

Posting will be very light and variable over the course of this week, but we’ll put up an open thread each market day for our readers to comment on the day’s market activity or to post any interesting links they might run across.

Check the space below for whatever the latest might be during this ‘off’ time, and please visit the various sites in the ‘Links’ and ‘Regular Stops’ for up-to-date market news and analysis.

BMB will be back in full swing by next weekend.

Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com

The Basic Materials SPDR has finally broken above a 10-month range, recovering from nearly a month spent below the range in May.
Here are the holdings of the XLB.

Bernie’s latest take on the semiconductors.

Keep in mind: INTC, AMAT and TXN make up just over 50% of the SMH (19.5%, 16.9% and 14.3% respectively). If those 3 stocks aren’t performing, the SMH will struggle.

Are you still awake? If you didn’t fall asleep watching the market today, you noticed that a rally in the last hour of trading pushed all the major indices into positive territory for the day, with the Dow up 62 (0.6%), Nasdaq up 15 (0.8%) and the S&P 500 up 7 (0.7%). Volume was fair, and the good market internals masked what seemed to be a pretty dull day.

A few points of interest: the Nasdaq, which had been pushing up on its 200-day MA for the last couple of days managed a close slightly above that measure, closing at 1971 with the 200-day at 1964. Oil continued its upward surge, closing the daytime session at $52.02. So far in electronic trading, the November contract has given back a few cents, dipping just under the $52 mark.

Most US industries were up on the day, but only the Oil Services index ($OSX) managed a move up by as much as 2%. The only losers on the day were Health Care, Health Care Products, Drugs and Retailers.

So what sparked the late rally? Good question. The action this week has been pretty uneventful, but BMB expects things to get a little more interesting over the next few weeks as earnings season kicks into high gear.

The government’s supply data didn’t do much to temper the run-up in oil prices. From the AP:

The Energy Department reported that commercially available inventories of crude grew by 1.1 million barrels to 274 million barrels. That still leaves inventories 4 percent below year ago levels, a shortfall that has traders worried as global supplies remain tight and colder months approach.

Oil currently trading around $51.50/barrel.

A nice wrapup of stocks to keep an eye on…news, earnings, warnings, upgrades, downgrades, you name it.