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.

The AMEX Financial Sector SPDR is coming down hard lately, and on heavy volume.

Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com

The markets held up remarkably well today in the face of a number of less-than-spectacular earnings announcements and a return to $55/barrel oil. Go figure.

The Nasdaq managed a gain of 0.5%, while the Dow Industrials and S&P 500 remained virtually unchanged. The Dow Transports moved back into new high territory with a gain of more than 1%. Both advances/declines and up volume/down volume were evenly split.

One area where the markets are starting to show some weakness is in the new high/new low numbers, where we are beginning again to see days where new lows outnumber new highs (as they did today), something that was not seen during the September rally.

Some of the leading industries that had been knocked back over the past week or so made a bit of a comeback today, with gains seen in oil services (+3.3%), gold (+2.9%), natural gas (+2.5%) and commodities (+2.0%). A 1% gain in the semiconductors helped boost the Nasdaq.

The dip in oil prices appears to have been short-lived. Today is the last day for speculators to trade the November crude contract — speculators being those futures traders who don’t intend to actually deliver or take delivery of crude oil.

Schaeffer takes a look at the dollar’s rather precarious situation. This is not all that surprising given the continuing decline in Treasury yields — and would be bullish for gold prices.

Update: Here’s a link to the chart of the US Dollar Index.

The weekly inventory numbers are out.

Slew of earnings in, not all of them good.

Dollar sliding, gold is at 6-month highs. Currently trading near $424/ounce, with the 52-week high at $427.50.

In treasuries, the 10-year yield is pushing downward again, now at 4.00%.

Yet another chink in the housing armor - mortgage lender Countrywide Financial surprised the street today with a sharp drop in profits. Stock is trading down $4.39, or 11.7%.