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In a bear market, rallies generally get sold. Today, we rallied hard at the open and then sold off until noon. The market chopped its way higher for a short time and then chopped lower into the close. By the end of the trading day, the market was relatively flat or sporting modest gains.

Of note today, gold extended its gains by 2.1% at $1891.90 per ounce, but did elevate above the $1900 level today.

Oil prices also rose ...

08/22/11

After Thursday's 420-point bloodbath, stocks could not hold onto an early Friday rebound as the morning rally ran out of steam pretty quickly, and the Dow closed down another 173-points.



For the TSP, the C-fund lost 1.50% on Friday, the S-fund dropped 1.73%, the I-fund fell 1.79%, and the F-fund (bonds) slipped 0.06%. For more on the weekly and monthly ...

Last week I posted some statistics that showed that when the Top 50 increased their stock holdings by more than 17% for a given week, the market often produced a weekly gain. In fact, the Top 50 had been correct six of the last seven times using this metric.

Make that six of the last eight times, as the S fund was punished with a weekly loss of 6.5% this past week.

I suspect the fact that this is now a bear market helped ...

Classic test

After a positive start on Monday, stocks rolled over in the latter part of the week and the S&P 500 finds itself nearing a test of the prior lows.

The TSP stock funds saw sharp losses for the week. The C-fund closed down 4.63%, the S-fund lost 6.50%,and the I-fund fell 4.50%. Bonds (F-fund) gained 0.36%, and the G-fund was up 0.04%.



For the month of August the C-fund ...

I've been traveling all day today and have had very little opportunity to watch the markets, although I see we reversed early gains and ended up significantly lower on the day.

Let's go to the charts:



Not surprisingly, NAMO and NYMO both moved lower today, although without the initial rally they'd have been even lower. Still, this is consistent with what I anticipated after yesterday's action.

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