Stock Market Blog -Dec 1st

The market continued a little higher this week, but with light trading and very little action. Most traders are looking for some kind of pause or pullback at these lofty levels. The NASDAQ finally closed over the 4000 level for the first time since the dot com bubble era! It's still far from the highs seen at that time though (chart below).

New all time highs:    AET, AMZN, AXP, CVS, DAL, M, MMM, NKE, TIF, UPS, 
All time lows:  ... 

Pops:  HPQ ,      Drops:   NUAN

Next week:  Economic reports 

Market Commentary

The rally continues... same comments as last week, and the week before!   "Everyone has been expecting a correction, so maybe that's why we haven't seen one! Maybe next week -maybe not. For the trend traders, stick with the trend. For the contrarians, hang in there! Volatility is very low, so there are some potential Options opportunities in the VIX products, or in shorting the market indexes using Option spreads (SPY, SSO, IWM, etc). Or maybe cheap, out of the money Calendar Put spreads on the indexes.

The NASDAQ 100 is working its way up to the 2000 high. 

The S&P500 got back up there several years ago.

This week's charts:

S&P 500 -all time high again!
10yr Interest Rates
Labor Force Participation Rate (10yr chart)

Commodities/Futures (charts):
Crude Oil was down, closing near $92.72 -holding under $100
Natural Gas was up, closing near $3.95
Gold was up, closing at $1250
The 30 year Bond was up a bit, closing near $132.21
The US Dollar was mostly unchanged, closing near 80.65

NEWS:

Stocks up for 3rd month; S&P tallies longest weekly win streak since 2004
Nasdaq hits 4,000: Same number, different world
Playing with fire? Margin debt most since crisis
Why you should always buy on Black Friday

Yes, Virginia, Apple is giving discounts
Five economic trends to be thankful for
Moody upgrades Greece's debt rating