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.

Various opinions on the dollar’s current and future status in the Blogger’s Take at The Big Picture tonight. Good stuff.

	As the S&P and mid/small-cap indices make new highs, the Dow and Nasdaq have stubbornly lagged behind.
	The homebuilders have been the hottest group over the past few days. Go figure. Maybe interest rates really are headed back to the basement, and the housing bubble will re-inflate. You just never know. Especially with our bubble-blowing Fed at work.

Charts courtesy of StockCharts.com

Another pretty uninteresting day, with the major indices giving back a few points, and volume again on the weak side.

Bonds gave up some ground, and yields got a small bump higher for a change:
6-month: 5.05%   2-yr: 4.57%   5-yr: 4.45%    10-yr: 4.48%    30-yr: 4.60%.

Market internals tilted to the negative side, and volume was about the same as yesterday’s on the NYSE but fell back on the Nasdaq. Advances/declines were 4 to 5 on the NYSE and 7 to 8 on the Nasdaq, with up/down volume 4 to 5 on both exchanges. New highs/lows were 345/12 on the NYSE and 158/32 on the Nasdaq.

Group movement was very quiet for another day. The homebuilders (+1.7%) and the HMOs (+1.0%) moved higher, while the gold and silver stocks (-1.7%) lost more ground along with software (-1.3%).

In the energy space, prices were mixed with crude oil falling to $62.19/barrel and gasoline dropping a couple of cents to $1.62/gallon, but natural gas moved a little higher, to $7.73/mmBTU. The dollar index continued its slight rebound, to 82.77. Gold fell to $631/ounce, and silver dropped back to $13.58/ounce.

BMB Note: More dull action, unless you’re willing to chase the housing stocks. The Dow and Nasdaq still refuse to confirm new highs in the other indices. Hard to get excited about another leg up until we see that confirmation. Not to mention that many of the sector/group indices are still moving sideways as momentum has slowed considerably.

A couple of days of bounce in the dollar has helped bring a pullback in the precious metals. Maybe gold and silver - and possibly the associated stocks - will provide some good buying opportunities in the near future. Keep your eyes open there.

Quiet. Too quiet. Just not a lot of movement again today, and volume seems a little lackluster. Oh sure, the homebuilders are moving again, for whatever reason, and some of the steel stocks are up a bit, but those are offset by weakness in software and the gold stocks.

Another rather unexciting open to the trading day, with the major indices just below the flat line, A/D lines just in the red as well, and the groups split pretty much down the middle. The homebuilders continue to surge higher, followed by steel stocks and paper stocks today, while software and REITs are moving lower.

Bond prices are down slightly, pushing yields higher. Energy prices are near flat, the dollar is slightly higher, gold and silver a little lower.

Some unexpected drawdowns in crude oil and gasoline inventories this week. Note that gasoline inventories have now dropped out of their average range (emphasis added on that phrase). That doesn’t sound like good news for consumers where gas prices are concerned, with refineries already cranking at 90.5% of capacity:

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) declined by 1.1 million barrels compared to the previous week. At 339.7 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories remain well above the upper end of the average range for this time of year. Total motor gasoline inventories dropped by 1.1 million barrels last week, and are below the lower end of the average range. Distillate fuel inventories inched lower by 0.4 million barrels, and are near the middle of the average range for this time of year.

The demand picture hasn’t changed much, as demand continues to rise for most products. A big move up in demand for distillates over last year - could that be due to this recent spell of colder weather?

Total products supplied over the last four-week period has averaged nearly 21.0 million barrels per day, or 1.7 percent more than averaged over the same period last year. Over the last four weeks, motor gasoline demand has averaged nearly 9.3 million barrels per day, or 1.6 percent above the same period last year. Distillate fuel demand has averaged over 4.3 million barrels per day over the last four weeks, or 6.6 percent above the same period last year. Jet fuel demand is down 0.6 percent over the last four weeks compared to the same four-week period last year.

Can’t blame these guys for taking profits - markets at 5-6 year highs, with the economy teetering on the edge of recession…

Stock sales by America’s corporate chieftains exceeded purchases last month by the widest margin since 1987, suggesting they don’t share the confidence of investors who sent the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to a six-year high.

Executives including Microsoft Corp.’s Bill Gates, Google Inc.’s Eric Schmidt and Kohl’s Corp.’s William Kellogg in aggregate sold $63.18 of shares for every $1 they bought in November, an analysis by Bloomberg of data from the Washington Service showed. That’s the highest since at least January 1987.

“They’re pretty savvy market guys,” said Wayne Wilbanks, who oversees about $1.2 billion as chief investment officer at Wilbanks, Smith & Thomas Asset Management LLC in Norfolk, Virginia. “They see things are slowing down, and they’re like, `Man, I’m taking some money off the table.”’

How do the rich get richer? By selling to the ‘poorer’ at times like these.