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.

…but fear may not be that far behind. John Mauldin discusses the markets and the warning lights that seem to be flashing.

Items of note on the latest industry moves:

• A volatile week, with the indices doing a lot of bouncing around intra-day. Hard to get a handle on where things are headed.
• Semiconductors remain the strongest area in techland.
• The energy and commodity stocks have taken a beating. Correction? Or first signs of a top in those areas? We’ve seen these corrections before (remember last October, or last spring?). But an economic slowdown would likely keep a lid on commodity prices.
• Natural gas stocks have suffered the longest in the energy arena, as natural gas prices have come down about 50% in the past two months.
• Housing stocks, per the $HGX index, finally showing up on the ‘worst’ list, but we know homebuilders have been in a steep decline for quite some time. Surprisingly, REITs are holding up.
• The strongest looking charts belong to the semis, brokers, defense stocks and maybe the transports.
• For an even more detailed breakdown of group movement over various time periods, try Prophet.net’s Industry Rankings page.