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 never made a lot of headway in any direction today, with the major indices all closing near the unchanged mark. The Dow managed to eke out a 7 point gain (+0.1%) to 10592. The Nasdaq, although trading over 2.4 billion shares, gained only 4 points (+0.2%) for all that effort, closing at 2148. The S&P 500 gained less than a point, and the Russell 2000 fell less than a point.

There was some real action in the bond markets today after the November jobs report fell short of expectations, and the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell almost 13 basis points to 4.27%.

Market internals tilted to the positive on the NYSE, but mixed on the Nasdaq with advances trailing declines by 7 to 8, but up volume leading down volume by 2 to 1. Again, many more new highs than new lows.

The winners were led by a bounce in oil services (+1.8%). Gaining on the interest rate news were REITs (+1.7%) and housing stocks (+1.5%). Also picking up gains were the semiconductors (+1.5%), disk drives (+1.4%) and computer technology stocks (+1.2%). Losers on the day included the paper stocks (-1.4%) and airlines (-1.2%).

Crude oil prices slipped again today, falling to $42.54/barrel, while gold rebounded to back above $455/ounce.

So much for the dollar “rebound” that supposedly took place yesterday. It really wasn’t much of a rebound, and was quickly wiped out when the jobs report came out this morning. That news sent bonds back up (interest rates down), and the dollar back down.

Currently, the dollar is trading at $1.3452 against the Euro - first day above $1.34 - and at $1.9420 against the Pound (FYI: you can get free real-time currency quotes here.)

Oh, and that gold dip yesterday? The dollar fall has sent gold right back up to $455 today.

November’s job numbers didn’t live up to expectations, and there were downward revisions in September and October numbers as well.

Futures have backed off this morning, but don’t worry - the Intel news still has the Nasdaq futures up 10 points. < sarcasm > To heck with the economy. I mean, should we even be reporting numbers when we’ve got a rally going? < /sarcasm >