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.

BMWife here. I know, given the title, you’re positive this is not going to be too far OT (off-topic), but really, I assure you that despite how it sounds, this post is not about the stock market or finances.

It’s just a short hijacking of the site to let you know that Coyote Wild Magazine has just released my short story, Toil, Trouble and Rot. This story is a little different from my other two published short stories…okay, it’s a lot different. It’s sort of like an Agatha Christie story in a medieval fantasy…!

Note: There seems to be a small formatting problem when viewed under Internet Explorer 6 and 7. It only interferes with the top paragraph and should be fixed soon. Coyote Wild recently redesigned their website and something was lost in the translation. The front page and stories look just fine under Firefox.

From Doug Noland’s “Stage II Predicaments”:

It has not taken long for Stage II of this unfolding historic crisis to demonstrate some of the classic old financial and economic headaches. I’ve always believed the most problematic scenario for the highly leveraged U.S. Credit system and Bubble Economy would be an inflationary surge and resulting spike in market yields. Curiously, just as the possibility of such a dismal scenario gains momentum a bullish consensus develops that the worst of the crisis is behind us.

Year-to-Date, with the S&P down 6 percent, only the Energies and Materials are in the green:

But since the Dow/S&P top on May 19th, every sector SPDR is flat or under water:

The numbers as the indices try to stage a bounce:

Charts courtesy of StockCharts.com