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.

Looking at the sector SPDRs after a rather tumultuous week in the markets, we find that some sectors held up surprisingly well. Others were not nearly as fortunate.

• Many sectors — Basic Materials (XLB), Financials (XLF), Industrials (XLI), Technology (XLK), Utilities (XLU), Consumer Discretionary (XLY) — have pulled back to points at or near their mid-November levels.
• Energy (XLE) stocks, the best sector in ‘04, have made no real gains since October.
• Health Care (XLV) and Consumer Staples (XLY) are still holding up rather well.

The market selloff of the past week was broad and ugly. It is still too early to tell which sectors will be the leaders and/or laggards of the coming year, since all sectors are now caught up trying to digest gains from the past couple of months in combination with their losses from the past week.