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.

I’m begining to wonder if there will be anyone in the stands come Saturday for the Ohio State / Texas football game here in Austin. Check out the number of tickets for sale on the local Craigslist, most of them selling for $400-$600 each.

Yikes. For a game you can see at home for free. I guess the consumer isn’t dead yet - at least an awful lot of ticket holders don’t think so. But you’ll notice that these ticket holders are willing to give up going to the game - if they can rake in big cash for their tickets.

Investors in the UK will be able to trade even the “soft” commodities, thanks to a new set of “ETCs” - Exchange Traded Commodities - being brought to the London Stock Exchange.

While US investors are currently limited to trading things like gold, silver, oil and a few commodity indexes, the new products being launched in the UK will include commodities like corn, cotton, lean hogs, live cattle, soybeans, sugar and wheat.

Items of note on the latest industry moves:

• Another ’strong’ week for the market - but on little to no volume. Only 5 groups in the red this week.
• If the action in the stock and commodity markets is to be believed, the economy is going to be booming, but we’re going to be using much less energy and commodities. I’m still trying to figure out how we’re going to pull that off…
• Utilities, health care, REITs, telecoms, consumer staples still strong. The tech stocks have made nice moves, but could probably use a little rest.
• On the good side, biotechs and defense stocks are trying to move up out of their lower ranges.
• On the bad side, oil stocks have turned down and oil services are still going nowhere.
• Despite bounces this week, retail and transportation are going to need a lot more help.
• Brokers recovered slightly, but banks are still looking questionable in the financials.
• For a more detailed breakdown of group movement over various time periods, try Prophet.net’s Industry Rankings page.

This from BMB reader Steve on the EPA’s auto mileage estimates: “I thought all of you fans of government numbers would appreciate this whopping surprise.”

Consumer Reports found last year that more 90 percent of vehicles it tested between 2000 and 2006 delivered significantly lower fuel mileage than the government estimates. In some cases the EPA numbers were off by as much as 50 percent, even on vehicles touted as high-mileage cars.

Well, at least in this case, they’re talking about improving the method of measurement to make the numbers more accurate. When it comes to things like the CPI, they keep changing the method to make them less accurate!