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 10-year yield is starting to take on the look of something that has found a bottom and wants to move higher. If I were in the process of buying or refinancing a home, I might think about locking in a rate, as it looks like days of the sub-4% 10-year might be gone for now.

Chart courtesy of StockCharts.com

Zzzzzzzzzz.

Pretty much a snoozer today, with very little movement and a dip in volume. The Dow Industrials gained 44 points (+0.4%) to 10557, the S&P 500 picked up 1 point (_0.1%) to 1223 and the Nasdaq gained just less than a point to 2144. The Russell 2000 fell 3 points (-0.5%) to 668, the Dow Transports gained 0.4% and the Utilities added 0.1% The bond market had probably the most interesting moves of the day, with bonds slipping once again, pushing the 10-year yield up to 4.16%. Interest rates have been on the rise lately, and very few have seemed to notice yet…

Market internals were mixed, with advance/decline figures on the negative side at around 4 to 5 on both exchanges, but up/down volume on the plus side at 10 to 9 on the NYSE and 12 to 7 on the Nasdaq. New highs/lows came in at 250/22 on the NYSE and 129/26 on the Nasdaq.

Not a lot of movement across the industries today, with airlines (+2.4) and computer hardware (+1.1%) moving higher. Hospitals lost ground today, falling 3.0%. Oil services fell 1.2%, HMOs continued their pullback, dropping another 1.0%.

Crude oil prices slid 61 cents to $60.01/barrel. The dollar bounced back after a couple of rough days, with the dollar index gaining 1.0% to 89.29, and gold fell back to $424/ounce.

Some earnings bound to be watched after the bell: AMD and AAPL to name a couple.

The May US trade deficit showed a slight improvement over April’s figure, but there’s still a long way to go… The trade deficit with China did climb to its highest level in six months.