Not much can capture the joy of a 6% rally like the Aquarius song from closing credits from the 40 Year Old Virgin. Thank goodness the bear is over, the financial crisis is over and we can buy them with both hands (that was sarcastic). As has been mentioned many times the biggest up days occur in be...

A reader left a link to a long article from the Boston Globe about what a modern depression would look like. My first observation was that it reads a lot like Michael Panzner's book that I was probably the last person to read two years ago. Amusingly it seemed less bleak than when I read most of the...

A reader asked what I think about the mark to market debate, bringing back the uptick rule and the government putting the screws to the ratings agencies. From where I sit these issues are more solve the world's problems issues as opposed to trying to protect or grow assets (depending on where the cy...

The other day Jeff Mackey was on Power Lunch making some comments about how scared everyone is. I do not doubt the anguish caused in 401ks and the like but I'm not sure how scared "everyone" really is. We flew to Hawaii yesterday, and the plane was packed. In order for us to get here we have to driv...

For months I have been saying that the stock market was in a stumble along the bottom, we would not meaningfully breach the November low and somewhere in there as part of this backdrop would see a massive bear market rally with a run back down to 800 or so afterward. I still believe in this thesis b...

The questions have really piled in the last couple of days so I'll try to address some of them in this post and then share a little bit of wisdom/philosophy imparted to me by someone I have tremendous respect for. First up is a theme in the comments from Friday's post about the people in government ...

First a funny; at about 4:50 am Arizona time on Wednesday (I woke up early with the first cold I've had in about five years) there was a guest on Squawk Box who was trying to give a pep talk to the US economy and he concluded by saying "and Plan B is Vancouver, British Columbia because New Zealand (...

In technical analysis some chart patterns are easier to recognize than others. The stock market got hit very hard yesterday but odd to me is that there did not seem to be a lot fear accompanying the decline despite the S&P 500 spending most of the day below 800. The volume was not huge, 2.5 bill...

Investing is in large part a psychological exercise. People often make poor decisions, succumb to emotion or otherwise make the task more difficult that it needs to be. I tend to believe that people can reduce the difficulty they create for themselves before then even think about investing by making...

Fun visit, long day getting back. So I'm about 1/3 of the way through Fooled By Randomness. As we landed in Phoenix last night my wife asked if I was enjoying the book and then she corrected herself and asked if I was learning anything. Taleb's books are not exactly fun reads but I learn some things...