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.

Sometimes, the moves in the market are not always “normal”. Bill Fleckenstein thinks that there are some “shenanigans” behind those moves:

The point of this little discussion is twofold:

• Sometimes market action can be deceiving — as in the pop at the end of October.
• There is a common thread among the hundreds and hundreds of month/quarter/year-end ramps that I have seen in the last 10 years — some firm (or, usually, a couple of firms) has a huge position.

And of course, Bill gets in a big “I told you so” on Dell…

Items of note on the latest industry moves:

• A strong week, with only 3 groups in the red.
• Transportation stocks had a great week. Their 4 and 8 week numbers look good, but a lot of that is due to the big move this week.
• Also a big bounce in the semiconductors. The chips look good for the week, but are still down 2.0% over 4 weeks and 6.3% over 8 weeks.
• Retailers are in favor again, after being pummeled for quite a few weeks. This market is a fickle one.
• Precious metals and utilities have been the stocks-to-hate of late.