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.

No news = snooze. I think if there hadn’t been a closing bell to wake it up, the market might have fallen asleep today. Can you say dull?

The major indices finished slightly higher on very light trading, with the Dow gaining just 6 points (+0.1%) to 10467, the S&P 500 adding a point-and-a-half (+0.1%) to 1198 and the Nasdaq rising 4 points (+0.2%) to 2076. The Russell 2000 gained 3 points (+0.4%) to 623, the Dow Transports added 0.2% and the Dow Utilities fell 0.2%. Bonds rallied a bit on the day, with the 10-year yield falling slightly to 3.96%.

Internals were mostly positive, with advances leading declines on both exchanges, 19/13 on the NYSE and 8/7 on the Nasdaq. Up/down volume was slightly positive on the NYSE but slightly negative on the Nasdaq. New highs/lows were 150/21 on the NYSE and 99/37 on the Nasdaq.

Not many major moves today, with airlines (+2.0%) leading the winners, followed by defense stocks (+1.7%), housing (+1.0%), and hospitals (+0.9%). Steel stocks fell 1.2% and gold & silver stocks dropped 1.2%.

Crude oil fell back to $54.49/barrel after trading well above $55 earlier in the day. The dollar suffered a setback with the dollar index falling 0.5%, and gold moved above $425/ounce.

Apple will be moving the Mac platform to the Intel x86 architecture from the PowerPC.

As BMB noted over the weekend, the enthusiastic upward move in the market seems to have slowed of late. Schaeffer’s weekly look at sentiment and fund flows shows the same hesitiation. Is it just a pause or an impending top?