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.

Yeah, I know. The rally is going to last forever. But let’s pretend that it doesn’t — here’s a look at what might be waiting on the other side.

The retail sales numbers aren’t indicating a strong holiday season, at least not yet.

A summary of the technicals of bonds/interest rates, the retailers and few other items.

Intel raises their fourth-quarter sales forecast.

Ok, that’s all well and good. But then why did they lower their sales forecast just a few weeks ago:

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company now estimates its sales to be between $9.3 billion and $9.5 billion for the three months ending Dec. 31. In October, Intel predicted sales would be between $8.6 billion and $9.2 billion.

Sounds a little fishy to me, but I’m the skeptical type. That won’t stop the markets from being all gaga over Intel tomorrow morning.

The markets didn’t give up much of yesterday’s gains today, but didn’t move any further ahead either, despite another $2 drop in the price of crude oil. The Dow lost 5 points (-0.1%) to 10585, the Nasdaq picked up 5 points (+0.3%) to 2143 and the S&P 500 lost 1 point (-0.1%) to 1190. The Russell 2000 dropped 1 point to 642. Further selling in the bond market pushed the 10-year yield to nearly 4.4%, lending some reality to fears of higher interest rates. Trading volume was heavy today, with the Nasdaq coming in at almost 2.4 billion shares. Market internals were mixed, leaning negative on the NYSE and a little positive on the Nasdaq. New highs continue to swamp new lows.

Airlines made big gains again today (+3.6%), followed by disk drives (+2.4%) and biotechs (+2.0%). Commodity related issues took it on the chin again today, led by gold stocks (-3.3%), natural gas stocks (-2.7%), oils (-2.6%), commodities (-2.4%) and oil services (-2.2%) .

Gold prices took a tumble today, falling back down below the $450 level as the dollar slide slowed for the day.

Now there’s something we haven’t heard in a while. Gold prices have reversed course today after the dollar regained its footing a bit.

Today’s one of those days when many commodity stocks seem to be getting hit, including other metals and coal. Oil has continued its pullback, and oil related stocks are selling off again today.