One thing that seems exceedingly clear early in the holiday season is that a lack of traders has resulted in a nice environment for those long the stock market. The S&P 500 index closed higher for its fourth straight session on Monday, at one point touching a new 52-week high, before a retreat that saw a close to 1247, up 0.3% for the seesion. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was broadly in good standing, with about two-thirds of the index’s components rising, but rough sessions by Boeing (NYSE: BA ) and American Express (NYSE: AXP ) held the overall index to a small decline of 14 points to 11,473. AXP fell victim to some analyst commentary regarding the possibility of future pressure from the Fed, which last week proposed a cut on debit-card transaction fees. For many, a look at related fees by credit-card issuers may soon be on the way. However, while individual stocks took their respective hits from company-specific news, it is exactly the recent lack of news that has kept the helium in the market’s current balloon — a positive development for both investors and portfolio managers looking to squeeze out another percentage point or two of 2010 performance. Due to such low volume — expected for the remainder of the year — the momentum created by the market during the past three-and-a-half months has become nearly impossible to slow down. The S&P 500 has climbed about 20% since early September. It’s not a huge surprise then that stocks and sectors performing well in that timeframe did well for themselves again on Monday. Energy and oil services stocks rose (the Oil Services HOLDRs ( OIH ) exchange-traded fund was up 0.6%), and commodities continued to surge, with gold and silver exchange-traded funds reaping the windfall. The SPDR Gold Shares ( GLD ) ETF bounced back from last week’s selloff to close up 0.7% to $135.11. Who knew, however, that it is a more pliable material that is gaining attention from commodities traders? Cotton futures hit all-time highs and the closest thing to a cotton-only ETF, the iPath-Dow Jones-UBS Cotton Subindex ( BAL ) ETN jumped nearly 8% to $82.20 on Monday, more than doubling since the start of 2010. Homebuilders also showed strength — Lennar (NYSE: LEN ) finished more than 5% higher — but investors may get a less speculative view of the housing market on Thursday with the release of November new home sales on Thursday. Bonds started the session stronger, but Fed open market purchase operations pushed yields back up above 3.35.%
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