The S&P 500 closed at its highest level in 13 months on Wednesday. During the day, we got as high as 1105.37, but we haven’t been able to hold 1,100 going into a close yet. The S&P 500 was down slightly Tuesday, but the Dow was up. In fact, the Dow has been up every day this month.

I still cling to my Humpy Pattern Thesis. This chart below of the S&P 500 clearly shows a rising pattern of surges—humps if you will. I have no idea what it means for the future but I’m passing it on to you.

Ugh! Friday’s jobs report was ugly. Hideous.

The nation’s unemployment rate is now up to 10.2%, which is the highest in 26 years. Even though the economy may be growing, we’re not creating jobs. Here are some stats to consider. Over the past two years, the number of unemployed has jumped by 8.4 million to 15.7 million. The number of employed has dropped by 7.6 million and only 0.8 million have joined the workforce. Add the two together and you get the 8.4 million increase in unemployment.

Becton Dickinson (BDX), which I like a lot, saw its earnings rise to $1.25 a share for its fiscal fourth quarter, which matched estimates. The company made $1.11 for last year’s fourth quarter. Wall Street expects earnings next year of $5.09, which works out to a growth rate of 3%. This means the stock is currently going for about 13 times earnings.

As I’ve mentioned before, I haven’t been very pleased with Moog (MOG.A) this year. The stock is down about 30% and it’s the worst performer on my Buy List. For this past quarter, the company earned 35 cents a share, which was less than half what it made during last year’s third quarter. The company missed Wall Street’s call by a penny a share. For the second quarter, it missed the Street by 10 cents a share.

I like this stock. I really do:

Aflac Inc. (AFL), the world’s largest seller of supplemental health insurance, said third-quarter profit more than tripled as investment losses narrowed and a stronger yen magnified revenue from Japan.

Simply put, Fiserv (FISV) is a great company.

Every quarter, this company delivers. Fiserv just reported Q3 EPS of 92 cents which was in line with the Street’s forecast. For last year’s Q3, it made 81 cents, so that’s pretty good growth.

It was 22 years ago -- October 19, 1987 -- that the market busted and the Dow plunged 508 points, also on a Monday.

As it turned out, the crash was an excellent buying opportunity as the market surged for the next 12-1/2 years.

While Wall Street is celebrating the Dow being over 10,000, there's another milestone coming up: The Canadian dollar is about to reach parity with the U.S. dollar.

The government on Thursday reported on consumer prices for September:

Inflation pressures remained modest in September even though gasoline prices edged higher.

Earnings season is kicking into high gear and we had two earnings reports Thursday morning.

First up is Baxter International (BAX). For the third quarter, the company earned 98 cents a share, which is one penny ahead of estimates. The problem is that sales came in at $3.15 billion, which is just below estimates of $3.19 billion. The company said to expect Q4 earnings between $1.02 and $1.04, though the consensus is $1.04. The stock was down about 3.5% Thursday, which didn't make a lot of sense to me.

Joe Weisenthal notes David Rosenberg’s comments that the market is overvalued. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see how you can argue against this market on a valuation basis. Could there be a double-dip? Sure, that’s a risk and I can’t say how large, but the idea that the market is not only high, but dangerously high, makes no sense to me.

Rosenberg writes:

One very simple way of looking at the stock market’s valuation is to compare it with how well long-term bonds have been doing. Over the long haul, stocks have outperformed bonds by a bit, but that fact has been thrown into disarray this decade.

Since the market peaked in March 2000, bonds have pummeled stocks. In fact, bonds have beaten stocks so badly that they’ve erased the entire lead accumulated over the past 40 years.

I often like to look at how the Morgan Stanley Cyclical Index is performing relative to the S&P 500.

The past year has been a dramatic ride. Cyclicals led the market down, the led them back up. Here's the CYC divided by the S&P 500.

I want to address the issue of HR 1207 and the Fed audit. If I were in Congress, I would support the bill. I say this even though I find the much of the pseudo-populist impulse behind the bill repellent.

I’ve read Mr. Alvarez’s testimony and I think he makes several good points. The problem is that too much of the argument relies on scenarios that are too distant from coming about. The crux of his argument is that all these bad things will happen once a full audit is allowed. Yes, they could happen but it’s not clear that these are immediate dangers.