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 struggled with earnings reports, oil prices and Pfizer problems today, and the result was a slight loss of ground on each of the major indices on strong trading volume. The Dow fell 56 points (-0.5%) to 10650, the Nasdaq dropped 11 points (-0.5%) to 2135 and the S&P 500 lost 9 points (-0.8%) to 1194. The Russell 2000 finished unchanged, but bonds took another hit, pushing the 10-year yield up to 4.21%.

Market internals were negative, with advance/declines split on the NYSE but 14 to 17 on the Nasdaq and up volume/down volume running 7 to 12 on the NYSE and 2 to 3 on the Nasdaq. The number of new highs contracted to about 300, with about 30 new lows.

Not many winners today, with REITs being one of the only groups to make a move higher, gaining 1.0%. The down side was led by computer hardware stocks (dragged down by a 22% loss in PalmOne (PLMO)) which fell 3.3% and drug stocks (on the Pfizer news), which lost 3.0%. Airlines also lost ground, dropping 1.4%.

Crude oil was also a winner today, taking on another 2% to climb back above $46/barrel. The US Dollar fell slightly (0.4%), and gold prices moved back above $441/ounce.

Electronics retailer Circuit City posted a larger 3Q loss than it did last year.

Maybe it’s just me, but it doesn’t seem like it would be good for a retail company to be losing money.

And we continue to get mixed messages on retail sales for the holidays. We hear from the pundits that the holiday season is going to be just fine, but we’ve all heard the warning bells from Wal-Mart (but should we pay attention to what the largest retailer in the world says? BMB thinks maybe so…) and Circuit City isn’t all that encouraging:

“but the retailer’s top executive said sales closer to the holiday season were slower than expected.”

Pfizer announced just before the market open today that a Celebrex study has raised some cardiovascular concerns.

Needless to say, Pfizer is trading down on the news and is dragging on the Dow.