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.

This week BMB takes a slightly different look at the sector SPDRs, and ranks them by their performance over the year of 2004. Keep in mind, the performance numbers listed here are not adjusted for dividend payouts.

• Clearly, while energy stocks have been beaten up a bit of late, they were the place to be in 2004.
• A look at the 8-week numbers shows health care stocks to have been the best performers during that period. One problem - the yearly performance numbers show you that those stocks are only now getting back to where they started 2004!
• 2005 is a whole new year. During the recent rally, most sectors have been performing well and there is not a clear leader at this point. Time will tell which sectors will make their way to the front in the new year.