Monday Morning Musings

The market is getting a little bounce in early trading, with the Nasdaq leading the way. Oil is trading lower, falling below $59. The 10-year yield is up a bit to 4.61%.

In the latest salvo of the options backdating scandal, the CEO of KB Homes (Bruce Karatz) is being forced to step down and return millions of dollars. I think the penalties should be much, much bigger for these executives.

As far as the economic calendar this week - On Tuesday we get October data on retail sales and PPI, along with September business inventories. The November New York Fed Empire State manufacturing survey will be released on Wednesday. Thursday may be the most important day of the week as we get CPI and industrial production, both for October. We also get the Philadelphia Fed survey for November on Thursday. Housing starts and building permits for October will be released on Friday.

In other news and notes:

• WYNN declares $6 special cash dividend
• UBS downgrades SNDK due to NAND oversupply fears
• Goldman adds HUM to Conviction List, removes AET
• KNOT beats by a penny; stock up
• RDY profiled in IBD
• Asian markets down slightly overnight
• ILMN to acquire SLXA for $14
• Samsung says DRAM demand for Q107 "very strong"
• WFMI mentioned positively in Barron's

I heard many market commentators calling for the market to pull back following last Thursday's decline. But the last few times the market looked poised for decline, it came right back and rallied. I would be more worried if all of these market mavens were saying not to worry about the declines. But this is not the case, and the 'wall of worry' still looks to be in place - good for the market.

long GS, WFMI, SNDK