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.

What is it with politicians these days? Have they all completely lost what little minds they had?

We have come to the conclusion that the crisis Michigan faces is not a shortage of revenue, but an excess of idiocy. Facing a budget deficit that has passed the $1 billion mark, House Democrats Thursday offered a spending plan that would buy a MP3 player or iPod for every school child in Michigan…

Their plan goes beyond cluelessness. Democrats are either entirely indifferent to the idea that extreme hard times demand extreme belt tightening, or they are bone stupid. We lean toward the latter.

We say that because the House plan also keeps alive, again without specifics, the promise of tax hikes…

We wonder how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else’s kid an iPod.

If someone, somewhere, doesn’t start cutting out the ridiculous spending by governments at all levels everywhere, there is simply no hope for this nation.

Via Captain’s Quarters.

Looking at the 6-month charts again (20-day moving average in blue, 50-day in red), we see the uptrends in the Materials and Utilities pretty much intact.

Energy stocks had already dipped from December highs when the late February selloff hit, but the XLE is now challenging those highs again.

Tech, Health Care and the Staples have taken slightly different routes, but like the major indices, have edged back above their mid-March highs and are set for retests of the February levels:

The Financials, Industrials and Discretionary stocks are still working on regaining their mid-March peaks:

The numbers after a thin holiday trading week:

Charts courtesy of StockCharts.com