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.

Ok, Vonage really messed up this IPO thing. But this is getting a little ridiculous:

The suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, claims Vonage tried to compensate for a lack of interest among sophisticated institutional investors who usually dominate IPOs by selling shares to consumers, according to a statement issued by the law firm Motley Rice LLC…

Vonage, “had no such reasonable basis in this case and improperly crammed investors into the Vonage IPO regardless of their suitability.”

Let’s get real here. Vonage didn’t twist any arms, and they didn’t force their customers to buy the IPO shares. Face it - these folks bought the shares thinking they’d make some easy money, because they were caught up in the Vonage marketing hype. And let’s take that thought one step further: Do you think we’d be seeing this lawsuit - or any of the problems, for that matter - if the stock had gone up instead of down?

This week, Bill Fleckenstein attempts to analyze “the unanalyzable” — biotech — and tells you where he’s putting his money, and why.

Just a few charts I noticed that look like potential shorts if the bounces stall and the downtrends resume: HET, ISLE, PALM, RCII, SCSS, USM.

Not recommendations, just observations. BMB holds no position in any of these stocks.

The latest issue of the ChartWatchers newsletter from StockCharts.com is available for your reading pleasure. The topics this week include the dollar at a critical juncture, the May swoon, a look at the current “bottom” in stocks, and the Dow consolidation.

Items of note on the latest industry moves:

• Only three groups in the green over the last 4 weeks.
• Many tech groups still showing up on the ‘worst’ list.
• Amazingly, the HMOs have recovered most of their losses from their deep selloff ($HMO chart).
• Many groups still in bounce mode, and still trading under their 50-day MA.
• Banks still are holding up pretty well ($BKX chart).
• Utilities look like they may have bottomed out ($UTY chart).
• Energy stocks trying to find some equilibrium.
• For a more detailed breakdown of group movement over various time periods, try Prophet.net’s Industry Rankings page.