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 markets continued to push higher again today, aided by a late-day surge, with solid gains in all of the major indices. The Dow gained 69 points (+0.7%) to close at 10539 (highest close since April 6th). The Nasdaq forged ahead by 24 points (+1.2%) to 2085 (highest close since Feb. 11th), and the S&P 500 gained 11 points (+0.9%) to finish at 1184 - its highest close since August, 2001. The Russell 2000 wasn’t left out, climbing 6 points (+0.9%) to close at 622, and continues to set all-time high levels.

Market internals again were strong, with advances leading declines by 7 to 2 on the NYSE and 9 to 5 on the Nasdaq. Up volume outpaced down volume by 3 to 1 on the NYSE and 2 to 1 on the Nasdaq. New highs outnumbered new lows by 14 to 1.

Nearly all groups were participating again today, with the biggest gains coming in disk drives (+2.9%), oil services (+2.5%), gold (+2.4%), REITs (+2.3%) and semiconductors (+2.3%). On the down side, transportation stocks fell by 0.8% and biotechs lost 0.4%.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, chart) is trading today at $20.20. On September 8th, the stock closed at $10.86.

Has the world changed so dramatically in the last two months that AMD is now worth almost twice what it was supposedly worth then?

I didn’t think so. But then, the market is not logical.

Update: AMD closed the day at $21.02, a gain of more than 93% since that Sept. 8th close.

Looks like a gold ETF could begin trading as early as next week.

Investors might have to wait for a pullback in gold prices before jumping into the new fund. Gold prices jumped again today, reaching $438/ounce, on further US Dollar weakness.

As BMB has noted, the market continues to be quite extended at this point. The rally is great, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a good time to put new money to work.

As Kevin Haggerty (TradingMarkets.com) says:

The SPX and IWM are the most extended and are out to their +3.0 standard deviation bands, followed closely by the QQQ, then the Dow which hit its +2.0 band yesterday (intermediate bands). The extended price continuation enters the mid-November minor time dates through Tuesday. It is not the time to be aggressive on the long side, regardless of any hype.

If you’re patient enough to let the market settle down and consolidate, it will provide better, less risky entry points.

Dell meets. (Dell is one of those companies that always meets - I’m not sure I’ll ever trust their numbers. I think they’d have a car wash or two the last weekend of the quarter to meet expectations if they had to.)

Pixar beats.