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.

Martin Goldberg’s weekly market view on Financial Sense Online. A must-read if you’re into chart browsing.

This is sick. Sometimes you just want to sell all your stocks, drain the bank accounts and stuff all your money into your mattress ‘cuz you just know we’re headed to financial ruin. Or maybe buy a bunch of gold and lots of food with the cash because the dollar bills won’t be worth the paper they’re printed on (which might be pretty valuable paper though - you know, it’s special paper and it’s real durable and it’s got those fancy colored threads running through it and - oh, sorry).

When people are taking out home equity loans to go to a football game, we gotta be close.

You know how it is: “Sometimes the cards are maxed out and you gotta do what you gotta do.” And you really have to feel for the poor folk that just can’t put the deal together: “If I had any equity left in my house, I probably would, too.”

Dealer, cash me out.

The Nasdaq has been dragging, and is going to need a bit of a spark if it’s going to wake up and get moving. There has been a steady decline in Nasdaq volume since the beginning of the year.

Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com

Again a rather lackluster day in the markets. The major indices managed to crawl up from their worst levels to finish with slight losses, with the Nasdaq once again dragging along at the back of the pack.

The Dow finished down 4 points (-0.0%) at 10593, the S&P 500 fell 3 points (-0.3%) to 1190 and the Nasdaq dropped 17 points (-0.8%) to close at 2058. The Russell 2000 fell 3 points (-0.4%) to 629 and bonds fell slightly pushing the 10-year Treasury yield up to 4.17%.

Internals were, frankly, kinda ugly. Advances/declines came in at 4 to 5 on the NYSE and 2 to 3 on the Nasdaq, with up/down volume running 5 to 9 on the NYSE and 1 to 3 on the Nasdaq (ouch!). There were 359 new highs to 66 new lows.

There was very little enthusiasm on the up side, with only oil stocks (+0.7) and oil services (+0.4%) making much headway. On the dark side, networking stocks (-2.9%) led the way, followed by internets (-1.9%), gold & silver stocks (-1.4%) and semiconductors (-1.3%).

Crude oil dipped a bit to $46.45/barrel, the dollar rallied for a 0.5% gain against other major currencies, and gold prices dipped to near $414 before bouncing back up to $417/ounce.

The folks at StockCharts.com have put out a special mid-week edition of their ChartWatchers newsletter, which contains John Murphy’s latest commentary on the gold and energy stocks. His analysis of the Gold & Silver index (XAU) fits in well with BMB’s comments on the long-term price of gold.

Also note that he uses the respective point & figure charts - those of you not familiar with P&F charts might find that of particular interest.

Check it out.

Economic data out today:

• Productivity growth slowed sharply in the 4th quarter.
• Initial jobless claims dropped last week.