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 QQQQ’s tried to close the gap above the 38 level a few days ago, and managed one close at the top of the gap, only to be smacked down hard today.

Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com

Advance Auto Parts turbocharged the auto parts retailers with its earnings report today, and AAP stock jumped nearly 16%.

Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com

Stocks started out soft and just got softer as the day wore on today, leaving losses strewn pretty much across the board. The Dow Industrials fell 81 points (-0.7%) to 10754, the S&P 500 dropped 10 points (-0.8%) to 1201 and the Nasdaq dumped 26 points (-1.3%) to finish at 2061. The Russell 2000 fell 8 points (-1.2%) to 631, and bonds fell along with stocks pushing the 10-year Treasury yield up to 4.19%.

Internals were pretty ugly, although volume was bit on the light side - about the only encouraging sign on the day - but heavier than yesterday. Advances trailed declines by 1 to 2 on both exchanges, and up/down volume was 1 to 2 on the NYSE and a pitiful 1 to 4 on the Nasdaq. There were 394 new highs and 47 new lows.

The only group to post any real gains were the gold & silver stocks, which moved ahead by 1.6%. A lot of red remained, with the losers being led by disk drives (-2.0%), computer hardware (-1.8%), internets (-1.8%), networking (-1.7%), insurance (-1.4%), natural gas (-1.4%) and semiconductors (-1.3%).

Crude oil prices fell to $47.54/barrel, the US dollar index dipped 0.2% and gold prices held near $427/ounce.

The market was hanging in there this morning, until the report stating that leading economic indicators fell in January came out.

I don’t think that was seen as good news.

• Initial jobless claims dipped last week. Seems like good news.
• Import prices rose 0.9% in Jan. This doesn’t seem like good news, but it shouldn’t really be a surprise. The spin is that if you exclude petroleum, import prices only rose 0.2%. I challenge you to exclude petroleum products from your living expenses. Lemme know how it goes.