Friday, Sept. 10, 2011 4:58 PM – Weekly Wrap-up

It was another volatile week for stocks. The week ended with the major indexes down 2% for the shortened week. Near-term upside and downside potential are about 8% either way. The intermediate trend is down. Banks fared the worst. Gold mining stocks were up on the week.

Gold lost nearly 6% Tuesday through Wednesday and gained back a little better than half the loss by the end of trading today. Gold is really overbought and should correct more short-term. It usually moves opposite stocks lately unless there is heavy selling in stocks when gold will join the selloff, usually to a lesser extent.

Oil was up 2% this week. Go figure, since the economic news was not cheery and oil tends to go up and down with economic fortunes. Food commodities lost about 1% on the week.

High quality bonds had a good week, up better than half a percent. High yield bonds were flat but covered a lot of real estate in-between.

Overseas stocks were pretty mixed, even within continents.

Our stock allocations are somewhat below normal and cash is above normal.