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.

It will be interesting to see what effect this strike news has on the precious metals markets.

Is this a fact or fiction?? Saudi oil production is already at or near its peak, and the world is in for a huge wake-up call when its oil demand can no longer be met.

Matthew Simmons, author of “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy”, is one who believes that Saudi peak oil is indeed a fact. He was a guest on the Financial Sense Newshour this week, and if you’ve got an hour or so, you might want to give that segment a listen. Go to this page and pick the media format of your choice for the August 6th broadcast, “2nd Hour Guest Expert”.

The site says a transcript will be available, and I’ll post the link to that when it’s up for those who would prefer to read the interview.

Items of note on the latest industry moves:

• Last week BMB wondered why REITs were the best group of the week. This week, they more than cleared up that bit of confusion. REITs and housing stocks got hammered as interest rates spiked at the end of the week. Is this finally the beginning of the end for the real estate stocks? Boy, too early to make that call. They’ve been given up for dead way too many times already.
• Same for the retailers. They also had a rough week, but we’ll need to see some follow-through to the downside before calling a top there.
• Banks are also taking a hit on interest rate concerns.
• Airlines: you just never know from one day to the next which way they will go. I will stay far, far away from those stocks.
• Gold & Silver stocks got a nice bump as the dollar has begun to slide and precious metals prices have risen.
• HMOs and hospitals staged a nice little recovery, but are still in bad shape over the past month.