As for July’s market performance; chalk up three bad years in a row. Subsequent August performance was good each year. Will that pattern repeat? Well, stay tuned.

Today was a typical Monday in early August and volume was rather light. But the heaviest volume we had was mostly on the downside. We have some folks still trying to straighten Yahoo/Finance out. They’ve acknowledged their math problem and have been given the remedy. When they incorporate it is another matter.

Good news? Oil prices continued to build on their downtrend as tropical storm Edourad was dismissed as a problem. I think that pretty much sums up the good news.

Bad news? Citigroup reported losses on credit card loans; Challenger reported a 141% increase …

In Fast Money’s June 6 Web Extra segment, “The Week Ahead,” what topics did the traders offer predictions for?

 

In Friday’s Web Extra the traders reveal how they’re playing oil, Apple and inflation data in the week ahead.

In the models I follow Apple gets high marks for price momentum, but low marks for return potential and earnings quality. I have generally written positively about Apple stock in the past.

Here is a nutty thought.Some folks want to impose a windfall profits tax on the oil companies because of how much money they are making. The profits are obscene these people say.I have never heard anyone define obscene but wouldn't obscene have to be indexed to inflation?Some other folks feel that the gub'ment's inflation data is cooked in such a way as to minimize the true rate of inflation because of various COLA requirements for entitlement programs.Wouldn't windfall profits inflation indexing be an incentive for cooking the inflation numbers upward? The COLA indexing an incentive to cook the numbers downward? Which one would win?If more taxes could solve problems, not have unintended consequences and be good economics then people would be all for it but the reality is higher taxes do not solve problems, do have unintended consequences and is ...

Today markets fretted about Lehman Bros. and pondered the messages from Bernanke and impending congressional hearings regarding commodity market “speculation”. The dollar rallied from Bernanke’s comments and commodity markets were pressured by it and potential congressional action.

Volume picked up substantially from the malaise of the past few weeks and breadth was negative particularly on NASDAQ volume. [Yahoo/Finance has an obvious glitch in adding columns.]

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