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 Nasdaq’s outside reversal today, on good volume, engulfed all of the previous 4 days of trading. Time to keep a close eye on what happens from here.

Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com

Head’s up folks. You might want to start paying attention to the market here.

2005 started off with a pretty significant reversal day, with the major indices all running up early, then selling off over the rest of the day. The Dow finished down 53 points (-0.5%) at 10729. The Nasdaq took the biggest hit, dropping 23 points (-1.1%) to 2152, and the S&P 500 fell 10 points (-0.8%) to 1202. The Russell 2000 also sold off heavily, falling 11 points (-1.7%) to finish at 640. The bond market finished with the 10-year yield at 4.22%.

The market internals were downright ugly, with both advances/declines and up volume/down volume running almost 1 to 3. There were 334 new highs and only 17 new lows, but those highs were likely made during the early advance.

The selloff was hard and heavy: only the airlines managed a slight gain of 0.3% today. Leading the losers were natural gas stocks (-4.3%), gold stocks (-3.7%), oil services (-3.7%), oil stocks (-3.0%), commodities (-2.7%) and semiconductors (-2.1%).

A fall in crude oil prices to $42.12/barrel didn’t help the market. The dollar regained 0.5% against other major currencies, and gold prices took a fall to below $430/ounce.

You know, I’ve had it up to here with all of the people that have been paraded on television for weeks now to tell us where they think the market’s going to go in ‘05, and where I should be putting my money.

Please, no more predictions. They are of virtually no use, no more than the predictions of who will win the NFL playoff games next weekend. Forget the darn predictions — just play the game.

The market will do whatever it does, and the investor needs to keep an eye on what it is doing — not what some bozo said it would do or should be doing — and react in whatever way they think is best for them. And even that reaction is not the same for all investors.

Pay no attention to the predictions. Let’s just get on with it.

Drop the puck!!

Gold prices are under pressure today, falling under $430/ounce for the first time since early November.

With indicators at bullish extremes, caution may be in order as the risk of a market correction remains high.

The markets did blast out of the blocks this morning, but have now reversed course and are down on the day. It seems that the ISM and construction spending data were a bit of a disappointment. On the positive side, oil prices have taken a dip this morning.

Walgreen’s announced earnings this morning that were better than street estimates.

Sooner or later, Walgreen’s will be out of street corners to build on, wouldn’t you think?