Whistling past the graveyard?

Below is a butchered excerpt from an Update to the july 10th subscriber list. I wrote it in notepad, thus the horrible format. I'll fix it Friday, it's almost 4am now. Enjoy, if you can....




As for the market, I can't get too deep into this other than to say that I have posted

numerous times that my scenario of the end game is centered roughly on a blow-off top

type of event. For that to happen, we need an irrational rally and that appears to be

what we have going on here. Don't get me wrong, there were some decent events today that

drove this thing, but they weren't all that special. It reminds me of chris rock's

sketch about the fellow bragging "I take care of my children!" and Chris rock's response

"You're supposed to you dumb mother-Flacker!" Here are the headlines: Dow 1st gain of

200+ points since July 19th 0f '06 (summer rally-remember my posts about typical summer

rallies). Also for the Dow-best 1 day performance since March of '03. The S&P closed at

an all-time new high and the Nasdaq closed at the best level for 6.5 years. Today was

another day all about, you guessed it (just thumb back through my post

headlines)-Mergers and Aquisitions. Retail sales also pitched in as they gave evidence

that consumers are still willing to spend despite rising fuel costs and a turd-ish real

estate market (it wasn't all that long ago since every other house-wife in America

became a do-it-yourself weekend warrior/real estate agent/ properties speculator).

Aluminium was the shining star today as Rio Tinto sent Alcoa packing with a $38.1

billion dollar deal, which represnted a 33% premium as compared with Alcoas hostile

takeover bid of $76.00 a share. More or less, every issue within the materials or more

appropriately, metals sector feels they are entitled to a 12+% premium, maybe they are,

maybe not. Any way, Alcoa is now spending the money on a share repurchase program. Of

the S&P sectors, materials was the standout (for a second day in a row) at 2.7% today.

Don't underestimate the effects of the USD$'s slide and it's relationship with gold and

materials. Fiancials, which have been the proverbial "thron in the side of the market"

according to Briefing.com, finally came around with a performance of 2.2% today. Of the

147 S&P groups, 138 posted gains.

Time for a new paragraph, as previously mentioned, retails sales came in stronger than

expected, lending a hand to the bulls. WMT came in with a stronger than expected 2.4%

jump in sales for June-whistling past the graveyard? June just so happens to be a major

promotional month and there weren't a lot of upward revisions in the group, it looks

like july will be a better gauge for consumer sentiment in retail. Speaking of whistling

past the graveyard, bonds jumped, the stock market didn't pay much attention to the

rising yeilds (read interest rates). We might say it is a part of the "irrational

exuberance" or just a realization that there is a shift underway out of bonds and into

equities. MOT's Q2 warning didn't seem to bother the market either, in fact MOT actually

closed up as the desire to own equities trumped caution. Sector leadership (roughly in

order) looked like this:gold/silver, trucking, semis(not the trucks), steel, softwre

holders, networking, retail, banking, broker/dealer, drug, oil, chemical, disk drive,

home construction (what the...?), and internet. Volume was just above average (read as

part of the declining breadth I higlighted in recent videos). As for tomorrow, we have

GE reporting before the bell, Retail sales is out at 8:30am, Import/Export prices at the

same time as well and then Business Inventories and preliminary read on Michigan

Sentiment at 10:00 ET.

Good Luck-sorry about the mess that this post is.