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.

Fleckenstein finds that the Fed governors know all about bubbles. But they don’t talk about them in public, and sometimes they even ignore them in private.

And what makes it burst?

Jim Jubak takes a look at market bubbles - how they’re created, and why they pop. He then goes on to speculate that the next real bubble to bubble to burst isn’t likely to be the housing or the currency market, but the highly leveraged hedge fund/derivatives market.

As you’re watching for the Nasdaq to break out of its trading range, you might want to keep an eye on the S&P 500 as well. The index is testing the uptrend line established from the August lows through the January and February lows, along with its 50-day moving average.

Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com

Items of note on the latest industry moves:

• Only 2 groups in the green this week - not good. High oil prices and a big dive in the bond market took their toll on stocks.
• Profit taking in the energy/commodities area this week, housing and other interest rate sensitive issues also took a hit.
• Gold & Silver stocks have been delivering consistent results since bouncing off the bottom in early February.
• Semiconductors had a lousy day on Friday, but were only down 1.3% on the week. Semis are one of the stronger groups in a weak Nasdaq: if they start to fold here, the Nasdaq is likely in big trouble.
• Networkers and internets slowed their descent slightly.