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.

With the market’s strength last week, there aren’t any real attractive pullback opportunities for traders on the long side. If anybody is still looking to try out the short side, however, I see a few interesting setups in energy, emerging markets and the metals. Take a look at E, EEM, PKX and RTI. Of course, I would wait for a resumption of the downtrend to trigger an entry.

As always, these are observations and not recommendations. BMB holds no position in any of the stocks mentioned.

No one has ever accused Bill Fleckenstein of wearing rose-colored glasses. But his contacts inside the subprime lending business aren’t painting a very pretty picture of things either. This week, the subtitle to Fleck’s column says:

The collapse of the subprime credit market may come this year, with a major subprime lender going broke. The repercussions will haunt us for years.

BMB has said before that there’s just no way that we can experience excesses like those that were seen in the housing industry the past few years and not feel some pain on the downside. The real question to me then is, just how bad will the pain be, and how far-reaching?