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 latest issue of the Chart Watchers newsletter from StockCharts.com is available for your viewing pleasure.

In this issue:

• John Murphy comments on the Nasdaq leading the latest market rally
• Richard Rhodes says that the recent decline in oil stocks is just a correction
• Carl Swenlin looks at the ‘climactic’ action in the Nasdaq this week
• Arthur Hill sees that the Nasdaq is overbought - but that’s not necessarily bearish

Investor’s Business Daily is none too pleased with a Florida Representative’s idea for ’saving’ Social Security. Perhaps it’s because it’s that same old, tired idea: tax the ‘rich’ even more.

BMB wonders what will happen to this country when the ‘rich’ have finally had enough. They’ll say “to heck with this, I’ll take my money somewhere else”, and leave the country for more ‘wealth friendly’ surroundings. The entire US will then find itself in financial straits similar to the ordeal the state of California is going through right now. And it won’t be pretty.

	All of the sectors were in the green this week, with Consumer Discretionary stocks leading the way. However, we’re continuing to see short-term sector “rotation”, as the most beaten down sectors recover a bit, and the best performing sectors fall back, with few sectors able to make significant moves higher — if you look closely at the table, you will see that the top 5 sectors for the week are the worst 5 sectors on the year. Here we see that the XLY, still down nearly 7% YTD, hasn’t even broken its downtrend line yet, and has quite a bit of resistance to plow through between 33 and 34.
	Same story with Industrials. Good numbers on the week, but the chart is all over the place.
	Financials had another good week, but still haven’t moved through that resistance between 29.50 and 30.50.
	Tech stocks have been making some noise of late, and appear to have broken their downtrend with a nice rally off the April lows. Though they do appear a little overbought at this point, they have punched into the resistance area between 19.50 and 20.50. Maybe they can gather some strength here for a push above the spring highs.

Here are this week’s numbers:

Charts courtesy of StockCharts.com