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.

Hmm. Tough one to call today. Overall tone was relatively positive for most of the day, but news of bombings in Jordan had the market a little jittery in the last hour, and the major indices finished with very slight gains. The Dow Industrials were up just 6 points (+0.1%) to 10546. The S&P 500 managed a 2 point gain (+0.2%) to 1221 and the Nasdaq mustered 4 points (+0.2%) to 2176. The Russell 2000 did a little better than the biggees, gaining 4 points (+0.6%) to 660. The Dow Transports added to their string of new highs, gaining 1.1% while the Utilities index picked up 0.5%. Bonds were lower, sending the 5-year yield back up to 4.55% and the 10-year to 4.64%.

Despite the weak close, market internals kept their positive stance, with volume increasing on the NYSE but holding steady on the Nasdaq. Advance/declines ran about 5 to 4 on each exchange, with up/down volume nearly 3 to 2 on the NYSE and about 5 to 4 on the Nasdaq. New highs/lows were 101/135 on the NYSE - a little weaker than we’d been seeing - but 106/64 on the Nasdaq.

A few groups managed to post some gains, with gold & silver stocks bouncing back by 3.1%, followed by airlines (+1.9%), semiconductors (+1.4%), transportation (+1.3%), brokers (+1.2%), REITs (+1.0%) and biotechs (+1.0%). Losses were limited, with oil stocks down 0.8% and natural resources falling 0.7%.

Crude oil prices made their way back above $60 today, but finished back down at $58.93/barrel, down about 78 cents. The dollar index moved higher by 0.1% to 91.51, and gold moved back up to $467/ounce.

BMB Note: Just not a lot to get excited about. I’m not terribly impressed with the market at the moment. After the initial runup off the October lows, it hasn’t done much. I guess there are exceptions, like the transports, for example. But that group is already a little extended, so it needs to come back to provide a good entry. And if this market holds true to form, by the time the pullback comes the move could be over.

PS. One group that got smacked today were the coal stocks, much worse than the rest of the energy group. What’s up with that?

PPS. I find it very discouraging that there are groups of people in the world - quite large groups, I might add - that have nothing better to do than to set off bombs and kill other innocent people. A sad state of affairs.

I didn’t realize that there were Cramer groupies a hundred years ago, but I guess I’m not surprised. Another gem from “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator”, by Edwin Lefevre:

I never hesitate to tell a man that I am bullish or bearish. But I do not tell people to buy or sell any particular stock. In a bear market all stocks go down and in a bull market they go up. I don’t mean of course that in a bear market caused by a war, ammunition shares do not go up. I speak in a general sense. But the average man doesn’t wish to be told that it is a bull or a bear market. What he desires is to be told specifically which particular stock to buy or sell. He wants to get something for nothing. He does not wish to work. He doesn’t even wish to have to think. It is too much bother to have to count the money that he picks up from the ground.

I’ve never quite understood why someone would just blindly buy any stocks that someone else tells them to buy — especially a screaming bald man on television that throws things — but I know they’re out there. Plenty of them. And I’m sure there are a lot more of them than there are people willing to do their own homework. If you’re a regular BMB reader, I’m sure you know by now that you aren’t going to find stock tips here. Like Gary Kaltbaum tells his listeners on his radio show: if he were to give individual stock “buy” recommendations out on the show, how does he know that you’ll be listening two months down the road, when he tells you you should sell that stock?

It’s your money, and I’ll bet you care more about that money than anyone else does. Don’t you think you should be the one deciding where it’s invested?

Just a lot of nothin’ goin’ on again today. The majors are hanging right around the UNCH line, and not a lot of movement in any of the groups. The morning oil inventory numbers took oil prices down a bit more, so the energy stocks followed suit for a bit, but even some of that action is being undone already.

Leaders on the day are gold & silver stocks, airlines and steel stocks. Losers are disk drives and hospitals.

Bonds have given back their gains of yesterday, so yields have bumped back up. The dollar and gold are both up.

Just not a lot of exciting stuff going on. Sorry.