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.

Don’t forget to move your clocks forward one hour tonight/tomorrow morning, three weeks earlier than we’re used to doing.

All I’ve got to say is, if this is the best our politicians can come up with for an “energy policy”, I’m very unimpressed.

Take a few minutes and check out the latest short story from the BMWife, “Haunting Clues”, currently the feature story at TheTownDrunk.org.

The Utilities have held up quite well while the rest of the market struggled mightily - though a move up in interest rates might hurt their cause - and the Materials are still holding above the 50-day moving average (red line).

Energy stocks are above the 50-day as well, but the XLE doesn’t look as strong as the XLU and XLB.

That leaves the rest — in various states of ugly, and maybe not-quite-so-ugly.

The numbers after a “bounce week”:

Charts courtesy of StockCharts.com

Countrywide Financial is apparently ending the practice of “no-money down” mortgage loan lending. So yet another element of the loose credit market is tightened up - but maybe a little too late.