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.

It’s earnings season, and there’s usually a flurry of reports and trading reaction after the market closes. Here are the highlights of tonight’s activity.

The selloff in eBay today sent the stock below its 200-day moving average for the first time in more than 2 years. When market leaders are getting hammered like this, it pays to be cautious: BMB’s comments from a couple of weeks ago still hold.

Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com

The markets started off on the wrong foot after yesterday’s earnings shakeups, and never did regain their balance. All the major indices finished down for yet another day, again closing at or near their session lows on strong volume. On the positive side, after last night’s after market, I guess it could have been worse. But you might not feel that way if you owned eBay (EBAY) - the internet auction company dropped 19% of its value today. Ouch!!

The Dow fell 68 points (-0.6%) to 10471, the Nasdaq gave up 28 points (-1.3%) to finish at 2046 and the S&P 500 lost 9 points (-0.8%) to close at 1175. The Russell 2000 also fell by 6 points (-0.9%) to 612, and the 10-year Treasury yield slid to 4.16%.

Market internals were, well, not very good. Advances/declines were 5 to 11 on tne NYSE and 3 to 7 on the Nasdaq. Up/down volume ran 3 to 11 on the NYSE and 5 to 14 on the Nasdaq. The high/low differential continues to shrink - today there were only 112 new highs to 77 new lows.

No groups escaped the selling today. Hardest hit were retailers (-3.4%), internets (-2.9% - can you say eBay??), airlines (-2.9%), housing (-2.1%), telecoms (-1.6%) and networkers (-1.2%).

Crude oil fell below $47 to $46.91/barrel, the dollar gained slightly and gold hovered near $422/ounce.

Oil prices have dipped back down to near $47/barrel on the report of increased inventories.