Quote from CNBS woman this morning when she announced analyst raised RIMM price target from 220 to 350. " And he (the analyst whose name escapes me)is one of the most respected analysts in the sector" It was like she was adding credibility to the price target. Henry Blodgett (was it?) came to mind from 2000. Didn't he have 400 or something pegged on AMZN?

This market is nutz. The funny thing is we are trying to rationalize it and make some sense out of the direction. I'm not sure it can be done.

Watch the drive BIDU to 300 now also. The Street.com is pumping it now. Sad thing is I knew this would happen when it was 130 and something (common sense) stopped me from buying the calls.

I just can't buy CALLs on BIDU or RIMM. Just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Maybe I should have, but I just couldn't.

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Who are the assclowns who read headline numbers but claim to be "analysts"?

That's funny **** reminds me of the movie Office Space one of my all time favorites. I think the dude who had the same name as Michael Bolton used that term. Great blog Karl. Funny yet informative.

Both of the analysts that I follow say that if the market trades sideways for a time, it is getting ready to blow out to the upside. Sideways movement is similar to a correction.

One guy says that the "smart money" is not going short, but that it is slowly unwinding its long positions. He does not talk about a pending liquidity crises, but I wonder of the smart players are getting un-leveraged. They need retail investors to step in to bail them out.

Volume was an unremarkable 2.3BN shares.

re: homebuilders.

This could be a short covering rally. If the holders of the HB shares are capitulating, then they are selling their shares. The shorts may have to liquidate because their shares have to be returned to their rightful owner.

I'm hanging in there with my Sept XHB $34 puts.

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Both of the analysts that I follow say that if the market trades sideways for a time, it is getting ready to blow out to the upside. Sideways movement is similar to a correction.

This is clearly not always true.

You have to be careful with the "consolidation" stuff.

You can also make the argument on the Dow and S&P that we have established a declining (albiet mildly) channel downward. Take a look. While this is not yet convincing, we are now, from the first of June, making lower highs and it appears we may be doing lower lows too. This is not yet confirmed, but that sort of pattern is not conducive to an upside breakout.

On the Dow we keep failing on the advance before we get to overhead resistance. We failed back in the middle of June before we got to 13692, and we've failed again before getting to 13650, which was roughly the closing level from the middle of the month. That's two attempts - and two failures.

The S&P is the same deal - we hit 1540 (failure on the 1552 old all-time intraday), failed AGAIN at about 1536 around the middle of June, and now have failed again below 1535. In each case we have not managed to close above the old high.

In addition, if you want to play Dow Theory, the Transports hit their high on June 1st. They haven't been there since. Dow theory says that for a rally to be valid the Transports must make new highs coincident with the Industrials. Yet we haven't even taken an honest run at the 5348 level and now it appears we have VERY strong overhead resistence right near where it closed today, established back in April.

I'm agnostic on the market in general - I don't play the religion game.

But what I see here are divergent internals, no confirmation from trannies, and the Nasdaq being led by stocks with unsupportable P/Es - back those out and the market looks like ****.

That does not engender confidence.

On the converse, there are Elliott guys who think we're looking at a symmetrical triangle and that will break up for one more gasp before we roll over and die.

To that I say "well, maybe." But the smart ones are hedging their bets with "well that move can truncate you know" or similar.

Then we have cycle theory, which says we're WAY overdue for a major downside move of ~20% or so.

Add on the Hindenburg, a helping of hedge fund explosion, the LCDX in the ****box, both the CMBX and ABX looking like something that came out of the ass of a dog, and what appears to be a secular sea change in bonds and I'm having a LOT of trouble constructing the bullish argument.