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.

In this week’s column, Bill Fleckenstein points out that high-end retailers are looking at a rather soft Christmas season:

In addition, the story quoted CEO Milton Pedraza of the Luxury Institute, which focuses on people with lots of money to spend. Said Pedraza: “It is not the buoyant, over-the-top spending that we saw last year.” He blamed the real-estate slowdown and the lackluster performance of stocks.

Check out the end of the article for Fleck’s thought on increasing costs — everywhere.

Update: According the this article, the soft sales might not be limited to the high-end.

Items of note on the latest industry moves:

• Airlines continue to look strong, especially this week. Frankly, I don’t get it.
• Natural gas stocks starting to compete with oil services for the top spot in the energy complex.
• Major drugs showing their first signs of life in quite a while.
• HMOs and hospitals weak on the health care side of things.