Morning Bid with David Gaffen

Don’t expect the selling in the energy sector to end anytime soon. With tax loss selling dominating the rest of the month, the energy stocks, which have been the worst performer this year in the Standard & Poor’s 500, are slated to perhaps lose even more ground. That’s particularly true as the price of oil continues to decline. (We are right now eagerly awaiting the moment when the Russian rouble crosses the price of oil, an occurrence that would’ve seemed unfathomable even just two months ago.)

The next few weeks will bring a few analyst meetings out of some of the bigger industrial companies, including Dover Corp. The company is expected to hold a confab Monday to discuss where things stand this year, particularly as it has a 36 percent exposure to the energy industry through businesses that produce equipment for the gas and oil extraction industries – pumps and other such equipment.

The meaningful part of the year is drawing to a close (near as I can see it, there’s tomorrow’s jobs report, the Fed meeting in two weeks, and, yep, that’s about it), and as we head into the silly season for happenings in our markets, here’s a laundry list of oddball things to consider:

New Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will come to his first annual shareholder meeting having boosted the company’s market value by about $90 billion in less than a year’s time (that the stock market is running wild, and Microsoft with it, well, that’s not the only thing that’s important, one supposes) as Nadella has pushed ahead with various efforts to make Microsoft something closer to the powerhouse that it had been some years back.

One day ahead of Friday’s key U.S. jobs report, markets will turn their attention to the European Central Bank, which is currently engaging in what strategist Rich Bernstein of Richard Bernstein Advisors calls a quest to become “the worst central bank in all of history.”

There’s a real question right now about whether the sharp decline in oil prices will continue to have a ‘rising tide’ effect on the rest of the economy, thanks to the help it gives to consumer spending, or whether that marginal benefit is offset by a drop in oil production and mining jobs.

The IPO train keeps on running, and on Thursday, it’s being fueled with hamburgers.

It’s nice to look back every month or so and see just how far the market has come, and, well, it’s come a long way. And it’s worth noting yet again that investors are starting to talk about corrections.

The housing-market recovery, the improvement in the unemployment rate and the relatively strong consumer sentiment figures seen out of the United States in recent months bodes well for Home Depot and other big-ticket retailers (like Lowe’s, for instance) as they report this quarter’s earnings.

Just when the market thought it was out, it gets pulled back in. The bond market continues to threaten to break into higher levels, but something always seems to undermine that story.