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.

Or a change for the Yen.

Bill Fleckenstein weighs in on the possible changes in store for Japan, and what they could mean to the US economy.

Items of note on the latest industry moves:

• The ‘best’ list is dominated by energy and commodity related stocks, with the broker/dealers thrown in. The precious metals stocks have now joined the party with a 10% move over the past two weeks.
• The ‘worst’ list is now all red. The broad market rally has most certainly lost momentum. Tech stocks appear to be pulling back, with the networkers leading the fall.
• Some of the leading groups that had cracked - housing, REITs, retail, HMOs, etc. - haven’t followed through significantly to the downside just yet. A little too early to declare any of those groups broken, although they’re staggering. As far as the HMO’s are concerned, they cracked before the others and have come back nearly 5% in the past two weeks. They were unable to drag the hospitals up with them.
• Financials are split — although broker/dealers are doing well, the banks are not.
• Airlines?? An absolute mess. Stay away.