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.

I know this may surprise you, but BMB came up a bit shy of making Forbes’ Billionaires List.

Darn. Maybe next year.

Bernie Schaeffer offers up his “celebration” of the 5th anniversary of the Nasdaq high.

UBS must have had some KMRT stock they’ve been looking to unload. Here they are with an upgrade on KMart, with a price target of $160.

So here we have KMart, a formerly bankrupt retailer that came back to the market, bought another lousy retailer (Sears), and you want me to pay $120 for the stock, thinking it’s going to $160?? Gimme a break. You buy it - I’m not touching it. I’m still waiting for that top to finish forming so I can short it… Them and their Martha Stewart sheets.

As this article from Marketwatch points out, it is somewhat ironic that on the 5th anniversary of the Nasdaq high, the Internet HOLDRs ETF is poised for a bearish crossover of the 50-day and 200-day moving averages. The 50-day MA has been above the 200-day since December of 2002.

Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com

Another frustrating day for the market, as crude oil prices dipped below $54 and bonds perked up driving yields back down, but stocks just couldn’t get in gear and get moving leaving the major indices mixed on the day. The Dow finished with a gain of 46 points (+0.4%) to 10852, the S&P gained 2 points (+0.2%) to 1209, but the Nasdaq fell 2 points (-0.1%) to 2060. The Russell 2000 lost 4 points (-0.7%) to 627, the Dow Transports dropped 0.5%, the Dow Utilities gained 0.7% and bonds bounced back after yesterday’s drubbing, pushing the yield on the 10-year Treasury back down to 4.48%.

Market internals were negative once again, and volume dropped slightly from yesterday’s figures. Advances/declines ran about 2 to 3 on both exchanges, and up/down volume came in at 3 to 4 on the NYSE and 2 to 3 on the Nasdaq. New highs continue to decline, with new highs/lows running 61/26 on the NYSE, but actually reversing today on the Nasdaq to 44/66. More new lows than new highs is not exactly a good thing, folks.

There were a few groups managing to move higher today, led by semiconductors (+1.4%), REITs (+1.1%) and utilities (+1.0%). Losers were led by airlines (-2.8%), natural gas (-2.5%), steel (-2.0%), oil services (-1.7%), transports (-1.3%), oil (-1.2%), disk drives (-1.1%), commodities (-1.1%), chemicals (-1.0%) and gold & silver stocks (-1.0%).

Crude oil prices dropped to $53.55/barrel, the dollar treaded water today with little to no change, and gold prices hung around the $442/ounce mark.

Intel is slated to release their mid-quarter update after the bell, and US trade numbers are due out tomorrow morning.

No catalysts to push the market higher today. Market breadth is pretty negative again, with the indices still holding up rather well, but the action underneath the surface isn’t pretty. Many of the energy and commodity type stocks that had run up have been getting hit over the past couple of days. Bond prices bounced this morning but didn’t hold up, as the 10-year yield is holding above 4.5%.

As of this posting, the data on Yahoo is showing more new lows than new highs on the Nasdaq. The number of new highs has been falling, and new lows have been picking up - not a very encouraging sign.