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.

Another interesting issue of the Chart Watchers newsletter from StockCharts.com.

This week,

• John Murphy points out the new high in the health care SPDR (XLV).
• Both Richard Rhodes and Carl Swenlin voice a little concern over the current state of the market - Rhodes sees the S&P 500 outperforming the Nasdaq and says a top could be near, and Swenlin is seeing evidence of distribution.
• Arthur Hill notes the apparent bottom in the Basic Materials (XLB).

Items of note on the latest industry moves:

• Energy, precious metals and housing have been the places to be lately.
• Only 3 groups in the red this week. Only 2 groups in the red over the past 4 weeks. Only ONE group in the red over the past 8 weeks - and that was the best performing group of this week. Only two groups have gained less than 2.5% over the past 8 weeks. That rate of performance probably can’t be sustained for much longer. But that’s just my opinion.
• Tech stocks lagged the rest of the market this week, but they haven’t really broken yet.