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 market plunge in January hasn’t done much to spook investors, according to the VIX. After a couple of spikes upward, the indicator has plunged back down to levels matching those of late December.
	The CBOE equity put-call ratio had been climbing, indicating a bit of fear on the part of the options players. But the moving averages now seem to have stalled mid-climb, with the 10-day now turning back down, and the daily readings have been below .600 on 4 of the past 5 days. Let’s hope the market isn’t setting folks up, only to turn around and hit them from the blind side.

VIX chart courtesy of StockCharts.com

	In these days when big pharma companies seemed to be getting trashed day after day, Johnson & Johnson has been bucking the trend by moving steadily higher.
	Exxon Mobil jumped today after its earnings release yesterday. Though it’s not usually mentioned as a growth engine, consider that the stock is up more than 50% from November of ‘03, and didn’t flinch at all as the market tumbled in January.

Charts courtesy of StockCharts.com

The markets came through with another pretty good day today, even though for the second day in a row, volume was a little lighter than the bulls would like to see. But gains are gains, and they still count.

The Dow finished higher by 62 points (+0.6%) at 10552, the S&P 500 moved up by 8 points (+0.7%) to 1189 and the Nasdaq gained 6 points (+0.3%) to close at 2069. The Russell 2000 added 4 points to 628 and in the bond market, the 10-year Treasury yield moved slightly higher to 4.14%.

Internals were strong again, with advances/declines at 2 to 1 on the NYSE and 5 to 4 on the Nasdaq. Up/down volume ran 5 to 2 on the NYSE and 10 to 7 on the Nasdaq. New highs outnumbered new lows by 489 to 51.

Gains were seen pretty much across the board, with only internet stocks dipping a bit (-0.3%) on the day. Leading the move higher were housing stocks (+1.9%), oil stocks (+1.8%), paper stocks (+1.4%), semiconductors (+1.1%), disk drives (+1.0%), hospitals (+1.1%) and banks (+1.0%).

Crude oil prices fell by $1 to $47.12, the dollar fell slightly and gold prices slipped a bit to $421/ounce.

Google’s numbers are out - but the folks on CNBC are still trying to figure out whether they’re good or not. I have no doubt that they will be determined to be good, no matter what.

Gary Kaltbaum says there are a few things to like about this market.

Of course, if you listened to his radio show like you should, you’d already know that!

Ford’s January sales slipped 12% - Toyota, Nissan up, Honda and Porche down.

American Express is helping lift the Dow today after announcing its intent to spin off its Financial Advisors unit.