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 would seem that some folks at OfficeMax made the mistake of reaching for Staples’ big red “EASY” button when putting together some billing claims.

The market seemed to rest a bit on this Valentine’s Day, never wandering far from the starting blocks on very light trading volume. The Dow finished down 5 points (-0.1%) at 10791, the S&P 500 gained less than a point to finish at 1206 and the Nasdaq showed a little life, gaining 6 points (+0.3%) to 2083. The Russell 2000 was unchanged at 635 and bonds edged higher pushing the 10-year Treasury yield down to 4.07%.

Market internals were biased to the positive, with advances/declines coming in at 6 to 5 on the NYSE but 15 to 16 on the Nasdaq. Up/down volume was positive on both exchanges: 6 to 5 on the NYSE and 3 to 2 on the Nasdaq. There were 418 new highs to only 42 new lows.

Not much real movement in the industry groups today, with the best being computer hardware (+1.1%, thanks to a 4.2% gain from Apple) and utilities (+0.9%). Oil services (-1.3%) pulled back to lead the losers, followed by biotechs (-0.8%).

Crude oil snuck a little higher again to $47.40/barrel, the dollar index suffered again today, falling 0.7% and gold prices moved higher to above $425/ounce.

There will be more earnings and economic data reports starting tomorrow, so maybe the market will find something to react to rather than sitting on its hands as it did today.

Looks like the bidding for MCI is over, and Verizon is the winner.

Now that Capellas has sold off MCI, he’ll be available to go back to HP and sell off the computer business — yeah, that’s right, the very same computer business he sold to them a few years ago.

Schaeffers’ take on the market heading into the new week.