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.

A little more info — and opinion — on the upcoming gold ETFs.

Hewlett-Packard stock has jumped almost 7% to $21.00 in after-hours trading following their earnings report.

The markets started lower this morning and stayed there, after a surprisingly high (to some) PPI number and somewhat disappointing sales numbers from Wal-Mart.

The markets only dipped slightly however, with the Dow dropping 62 points (-0.6%) to close at 10487, the Nasdaq falling 15 points (-0.7%) to 2078 and the S&P losing 8 points (-0.7%) to finish at 1175. The Russell 2000 dropped 6 points (-1.0) to close at 618.

As one might expect, market internals reflect the slight drop, with advances trailing declines by about 3 to 5, and up volume trailing down volume 1 to 3 on the NYSE and 4 to 5 on the Nasdaq. New highs still easily outnumbered new lows, by about 12 to 1.

The only winning groups were gold stocks (+1.5%) and oil services (+0.6%). The biggest losers were the airlines (-2.3%: now there’s a real rollercoaster for ya - up, down, up, down…), housing stocks (-1.6%), retailers (-1.5%) and transportation stocks (-1.5%).

Gold futures (December) closed above $440/ounce, as the combination of earnings and inflation concerns sent prices higher.

Congratulations. You will continue to pay exorbitant prices for printer ink cartridges, but now at least you can get “premium ink” for all of that money.

From the prices, you’d think the stupid things were filled with liquid gold.

You knew the higher energy costs had to show up sooner or later. Index futures are down this morning on the news.