Time to go Old School. In the old days when a Bull Market began, it started out with a rally in the chemical stocks. Are the Chemical stocks rallying?

Dow Jones 10465.94 (UP) week ending July 30th

I knew if I tried hard enough I could work an old picture of my elementary school class into a blog. Way back when I started following stocks back in the 60's, (I charted Gulf Oil out of the stock listings in the Camden Courier Post newspaper), I used to listen to the business announcers on the old Philco TV and they would say that you could not have a bull market until the chemical stocks rallied.

So I decided to gather up all the symbols of these stocks and see what is going on in the US Markets beginning from Jan. 1st, 2010 year to date to July 31st. Here they are by symbol:

BASFY +22% DOW +26.94% LZ +63.74% DD +32% HENOY +36.39% SIAL +11.2% KWR +95.13% ADES +67.53% CYT +98.33% ALB +45.45% FUL +1% PX +14.8% SDTH (-18.5%) OMN +41.56% CCC +3.6% BAK +83.87% SQM +5.24% FTK (-36.76) OMG (-18.55) SYMX +13.68

ODC +37.61 CBT +67.23 BIOF +167.24% APFC (-41.73) KRO +210.80% FSI +11.11% PPO +92.33% SXT +18.12% VRNM (-65.59%) WLK (-1.83%) WDFC +17.44% GRA +53.35% ALTI (-62.12%) IOSP (-7.87%) GPRE +15.89% NEV +38.65% MEOH +38.89%FOE +117.76%.


(Left: Frank-the-Tank in OldSchool, not thinking about stocks at all!)

Of course many of the Integrated Oil companies have chemical divisions and it is hard to extricate those numbers out on their own. It does seem in general though that the major Chemicals have rallied here so Old School rules say it could be the beginning of a Bull Market. The companies that are down are mostly more speculative and are working with new technologies like Enzymes and Nano Chemistry things with a promising future, but that are not producing big financial returns yet.

So better living through Chemistry, (I think Dupont has the trademark on that phrase?) and add a winning mixture to your portfolio.

Freewilly