http://finance.yahoo.com/intlindices

http://money.cnn.com/markets/morning_call/










http://www.kitco.com

Energy futures

Currencies/Au/Ag

An attempt to break north but there's a fair bit of overhead resistance so I don't like the odds of it succeeding. All Ords +0.6% with Materials taking the lead, +1.6% followed closely by Energy, +1.3%. Yesterday's leader, Healthcare, is the only red, -1.3%.

Miners are doing the leap: BHP +2.1% and RIO +2.3%. Golds are up but on light volume: Newmont +1.5% and Newcrest +1%.

In the oils, Woodside +1.8%, Santos +0.3% and refiner Caltex, -0.7%.

Australia's May Retail Sales Unexpectedly Drop 0.1% From April

July 3 (Bloomberg) -- Australia's retail sales unexpectedly declined in May, as rising fuel prices curbed spending on clothing and food.

Sales fell 0.1 percent from April, the Bureau of Statistics said in Sydney today. The median estimate of 26 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a 0.7 percent gain. The April result was revised to a 0.3 percent decline from a 0.1 percent gain.

Well, we just sort of flailed around for the rest of the day. All Ords closed +0.6% with Materials hanging on to the lead, +1.7% and Energy still in second place, +1%. Healthcare remained the red leader, -1.7% and was joined by Consumer Discretionary and Utilities, both -0.2%.

BHP and RIO both had a big day, +2.4% and +2.8% respectively. In the golds, Newmont had a reasonable run, +1.3% but Newcrest lost the plot, -0.4%.

In the oils, Woodside closed +1.5% and Santos -0.4%.

All go in Asia: Sth Korea +1.9%, China +1.7% and Honkers +1.4%.

Over to UK/Europe:







http://finance.yahoo.com/intlindices?e=europe

Stoolie Musical Interlude...............

Underarm Fart Music

FWIW-

Technical buy signal yesterday on the MAC Oscillators.

NasCrack McClellan Oscillator

Crude is down a few ticks below $71 and another hedgie is halting redemptions. This time it's at United Capital. I read somewhere else that the markets close early today. Anyone have a time? Maybe 1:00 PM?

If we get a big rally, I'll probably go to mostly cash.

yes, it closes at 1pm.


i had thought a couple weeks back that the fear most money managers are having is taking off the summer and coming back to a market over 14K. Then they will have to really chase the market.

oil should get slammed soom so the SPR can do some buying.

i have liked ADM .... people will keep on eating !
corn got a smack down as well. that will help.

i figured people would be cracking that i phone open.

Heard US market closing early today?

Everyone is so.....bullish, its almost eerie.

Straight from the horses ass:

The NYSE Trading Floor will close early on Tuesday, July 3rd, and Friday, November 23rd (the day after Thanksgiving). The Trading Floor will close at 1:00 p.m. Crossing Session I order entry will begin at 1:15 p.m. with order executions at 1:30 p.m., and Crossing Sessions II, III and IV orders will be accepted beginning at 1:00 p.m. for continuous executions until 1:30 p.m. on these dates.

No.

And I ain't messin with no bio's. My life is what it is. The truth always comes out anyway....

in the end.

oh....

you weren't talking about those kinds of bios.

BIDU tagged 191.82 in Prehour..
The volume on this run up seem suspect.

Actually, I have no problem taking the machine apart, etc. I built my first two desktops from components. But I kinda have some other things I got to do today.

This is what I get for trying to keep the total cost under 500 bucks!

I've spent $40 bucks in gas already driving back and forth to the store. It's in Grand Mere and we're in Shawinigan-Sud.

And what a depressed and depressing neighborhood that Grand Mere is. They do have an interesting and quite beautiful suspension bridge across the St. Maurice River though. The road is about 20 feet above the river at the center, supported by this towering suspension span.

Looks like the Ben Franklin Bridge with it's legs cut off.

son of a gun. found a pic of it.

shock and awe, huh?

I don't know but this chart looks a bit odd if you are a bear.

http://forums.technicalwatch.com/tool/view..._1618&id=340458

I don't think that the problem is the $500. It's the easy availability of parts. If I need used and cheap parts that I may not have in my parts bin, I can just walk to a PC store. I have Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City and Radio Shack within a mile from where I work. And I have backup systems. I have two Pentium 3 laptops that are ancient but they still work and I refurbed one of them last year with a new disk drive. The oldest isn't used that often but I can put it to use in the office or at home or for a trip if I need to. If I lose it or it gets stolen or broken, I don't really care.

It's strange that the IG isn't showing up in the device manager. This usually shows up by default unless someone has switched it to a discrete card.

I bought a computer from Dell for $385 about five years ago. After playing with it, I added a discrete video card and a discrete sound card. I absolutely hated the performance of the machine but it was okay for my wife in between when she messed the system up and called the office for help. As far as my wife goes, I will only buy Macs so that I don't get peppered with questions and support calls at work.

If you have some time, drop by an Apple store and take a look at a MacBook or a MacBook Pro. Not to buy one but just to check it out to see what's out there. We talk a lot about products in the abstract but sometimes it's good to play around with something to get an idea as to why something is so popular. I think that you'll be amazed at the Apple Store experience too. No pressure. Very nice and relaxed.

I hope you get your video card issues resolved. This sort of thing shouldn't be that hard but sometimes it is frustrating.

Indexes look weak but a lot of individual stuff looks okay.

Interestingly enough, Berkshire Hathaway broke $110,000 this morning. I considering buying near the close yesterday but decided against it after looking at the chart. It has been in a long consolidation between roughly $108,000 and $110,000 and it could fall right back into that range. When Berkshire breaks out of those long consolidations, there are usually fireworks.

I read about CDO exposure and insurance companies and am wondering if Berkshire is one of those without CDO exposure given Buffett's disdain for derivatives. My other insurance companies, AET and MFC and the company LTR have been in a trading range for a few weeks.

My streamer was stuck. Rally on!

10:05 AM do or die time. Could be a local top here.

BTW, Apple pushing higher nicely today. They have a problem with Vivendi negotiations for iTunes that could be a problem for both companies. The music labels have lost pricing power of their product and are playing second-fiddle to Apple. I love it.

Can IBM clear $106 resistance and hold it? It would be fun to see Jick's target met ($150).

There are no Apple Stores within 100 miles here. The closest is in Laval, a Montreal suburb. My 3 year old celeron based toshiba laptop works fine. When it breaks I'll buy another cheapie closeout machine.

The local computer shops don't carry much inventory at all. Ordigros had to order the new card. I'll take the box up there Thursday and they'll replace the card while I wait.

I've had to buy a new computer (or do a major overhaul of an existing one) once every 3 or 4 years. Hopefully, this will be the last time I will need to upgrade, other than replacing parts that go bad. I actually probably could have limped along with my old system with just a memory upgrade, but I was in the mood for something a little zippier. No doubt about it, this system is blindingly fast. Programs open virtually instantly. Charts in Metastock open instantly also. 40 charts with all my crazy indicators open in a few seconds. Screens hundreds of stocks with complicated al gore rhythms in seconds. System boots up completely in around 30 seconds, maybe less, I didn't clock it.

I thought the processor was a dual core, but it's not. It's just a AMD 64 3200+. Plenty fast enough.

The big test will come when I record and edit a podcast.

I marvel at you tech guys, but I have zero interest in this stuff, other than in terms of what will allow me to get my work done in the shortest period of time at the lowest cost. I don't have an ipod or a cell phone (except when I am traveling), I ahve a very low end laptop, and a pc with virtually no bells and whistles, and I can barely figure out how to work a TV remote any more.

I find these minor disruptions to be expected whenever I get something new... annoying, but not earth shattering.

The tech companies would go broke if most customers were like me.

Apple, CREE are smoking on my streamer. The financials seem to be clawing their way back too. GS, MER and BAC have constructive intraday charts.

As far as the miners go, I'm watching CEF as my main tell and it's been going nowhere fast. There's been a little action in GG and NEM and AEM but it seems that there are still a lot of sellers in those stocks. I think that a lot of traders (now investors) that piled into GG, AEM and NEM because they're considered safer than stuff like IAG, TRE, etc and there's now a lot of overhead resistance.

StockCharts.com intraday data is still down... How does one trade in the dark? Damn...Still holding shorts from yesterday and am assuming bully can hold the shortened day......but am looking forward to the 5th..

[attachmentid=85249]

I think that it's worth looking at new tech for fun and to see what people are buying and how it may relate to invesment opportunities. I've been pretty cheap in what I've bought for many years but am looking at nicer stuff these days. I think that it's similar with cars.

Speed can come in many forms. My 3-year-old laptop has the same chip that your new computer has and I find it really slow. But that laptop is loaded up with a lot of engineering and mathematics software, three operating systems and my work tools.

Yesterday, my officemate spent a ton of time on the phone and it annoyed me to no end while I was trying to work. His team is in another office but he got in office in my building as it is much closer to his home. The downside is that he has to use the phone a lot. He drives down there when it gets to all-day or whiteboard stuff. So I pulled out my iPod and turned up the music. In general, I don't use the iPod while in the office as I prefer quiet when working but music to drown out talking is better than talking.

AMD is starting to give me a headache today.

GS going straight UP...

Only up 7c

LeeWhee addressed that a while back. He pointed out that if you go back into the 90s, AAII bears were also a high % near the top in 2000. All a matter of perspective.

Bulls are foaming at the mouth right now, but I'm not impressed with twisted representations of purported fact and proclamations of "look how well I've done being long". That tells me nothing about what is likely to happen next. I don't drive by looking in the rear view mirror.

Bears are mostly silent. I think that's a pretty interesting juxtaposition. Whom should I fade, the ones screaming the loudest, or the silent ones. I'll let you be the judge. Meanwhile, I'll continue to track the price indicators.

Price indicators are all you need and they are far more straightforward in terms of interpretation than sentiment. Shorter term indicators are pointing one way, and longer term indicators are depicting what they are depicting. There's no argument. It is what it is. We're in a trading range, and when the breakout comes, we'll know what direction the market is headed in. Maybe those shouting the loudest will be proven right, and maybe not.

Doesn't get much simpler than that.

Takes out 223...high at 223.74...

Try Quotetracker. Everybody I know who has it raves about it.

While the black boxes are positioning for blow-out earnings, The Boyz are at Home Depot buying nails to hammer this coffin shut. The mortuary beautician (some career counselor actually encouraged one of my kids to look into this career a while back) is doing a superb camo job as the carcass rots.

Burial not until next week, IMHO.

As far as sentiment surveys are concerned, the AAII is an outlier. If you look at the AAII bull ratio chart, it has skewed more and more bearish over the past four years as the market has climbed. You could call this the "wall of worry" in that these investors get progressively more cautious as the market goes higher. Ultimately, as in 2000, their caution is proven correct.

So I wouldn't read anything into the AAII chart whatsoever. It's doing what it usually does this deep into a bull market. Currently, based on the past few years, it's pretty much neutral and it is a very poor market timing indicator anyway.

Many of the other sentiment surveys (II, lowrisk, consensus, market vane) are either on the bullish side of neutral or are out-and-out bullish. So they are in direct opposition to AAII.

In short, sentiment is telling us zippo right now about the next move.

I have a lot of shares. My coworker keeps telling me to let it go. He's probably right but I'm stubborn you know.

Got a mixed bag of indicators... not feeling cocky right now..

[attachmentid=85256]

I'd be out on the course with all the other holiday hackers today, if Dallas wasn't 3 feet underwater. I guess I'll have my secretary hold my calls while I hold my secretary

My money is on 2 hours of pathetic inactivity, to close about unchanged.

equity p/c ratio .48

bullphoria

In retrospect, AAPL would have been a good Xmas buy at 3.19 a decade ago

It would have taken a real sense of conviction even as late as '00 to buy the stock. Every analyst and financial columnist had written off the company.

I covered my GS shorts yesturday

legged outta my short call spreads

held the long side

run it up baby

20 day mov avg of equity p/c ratio just starting to turn up...

Corrective phase of lower lows and lower highs still going for now, at least.

Also, in retrospect, with JNPR at 25ish, there are quite a few bagholders who wish they would have sold at 244...

Who'da thunk it?

Guess ya just hafta be a shtock pickster ....

Don't forget to post pictures.

My only "plug" ever here ...

My daughter's roomate is on the production staff of this movie ... it will be AWESOME ...

Across The Universe