Rydex market timers are getting bearish.  (The Technical Take) The stock market is as oversold as it was back in March 2009.  (Bespoke) What is mutual fund cash telling us about the market?  (Marketwatch) Is America’s “broken equity culture” ultimately going to lead to lower returns down the road?  (Barron’s) Distressed debt and arbitrage strategies had positive returns in [...]

“(A)ny timer of the U.S. stock market who did not beat the market during 2000-2009 has some explaining to do.”  (CXO Advisory Group) “It may be hard to believe, but 35% of the S&P 500’s gains since the start of 2009 have now been erased over a span of less than 14 trading days.”  (Bespoke) Is the secular bull [...]

Joshua Brown, “China and Brazil are quite possibly the most symbiotic investment story going right now.”  (The Reformed Broker) More oversold readings.  (Bespoke) Investment sentiment at week-end.  (Trader’s Narrative, The Technical Take) Doug Kass thinks it might be time to start getting greedy again.  (TheStreet) Nobody’s perfect. Paulson’s gold-focused hedge fund reportedly lost 14% in January.  (BusinessWeek also Clusterstock) David [...]

The percentage of stocks trading above their respective moving averages are getting close to solidly oversold levels.  (Trader Mike, Bespoke also Quantifiable Edges) Bearish sentiment is on the rise.  (The Pragmatic Capitalist) Pullback or new bear market?  (VIX and More) Adam Warner, “Well, you don’t need a chart to tell you volatility is percolating.”  (Daily Options Report, ibid) Post [...]

Investor sentiment took a hit during the market correction.  (Bespoke) What the timber market is telling us about the housing economy.  (Minyanville) Mutual fund investors are still positioned quite conservatively.  (The Pragmatic Capitalist) Altman says bond default rates could fall but 2011 could be trouble if the economy doesn’t turn.  (DealBook) Can you base an investment strategy on the [...]

Why are government bond yields so low?  (Mandel on Innovation and Growth also Trader’s Narrative) Would a stock split move Apple (AAPL) stock higher?  (A Dash of Insight) Commodities had had a rough start to the year.  (StockCharts Blog) Another oversold metric.  (VIX and More) A very long run view of the stock market.  (Crossing Wall Street) What you exclude [...]

Richard Ferri, “What is the problem with micro-cap index funds and ETFs? The problem is that there are no true micro-cap index funds or ETFs. They don’t exist.”  (Forbes) Fidelity’s lower commissions and commission-free trades in 25 iShares ETFs advances the online broker price war.  (Marketwatch, ETF Trends, Morningstar) What is the “third generation ETF platform“?  (FT [...]

Where’s the bubble:  bonds or equities?  (Big Picture) The junk phase of the rally is over.  What next?  (The Reformed Broker) 2010 will be a year of “nuance” in asset class returns.  (Capital Spectator also Investment Postcards, EconomPic Data) How much stock should we put into the small cap effect?  (MarketSci Blog also New Rules of Investing) The bulls [...]

The market pullback is getting a bit nasty.  (VIX and More) The so-called January indicator in perspective.  (dshort) The state of investor sentiment at week-end.  (Trader’s Narrative) Your equity portfolio allocations are all off.   (WSJ) In praise of home bias.  (Aleph Blog) Why are so many companies hoarding cash instead of paying out dividends?  (Barron’s) Some much needed perspective on what [...]

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. - Benjamin Franklin Have you ever taken a structured break from your trading, not unlike that of an academic sabbatical? For some one who spends their time tracking and trading the markets it seems like there is never enough time to do the reading and research necessary to advance [...]

Equity fund managers are asset rich and cash poor.  (Sentiment’s Edge) A historical review of equity allocations.  (Big Picture) What happens when the S&P 500 goes from a 50 day high to a 50 day low in 8 days.  (Quantifiable Edges) The S&P 500 Material Sector (XLB) is decidedly oversold.  (Bespoke) You can’t chart the VIX like you would [...]

Two notable breaks of the 200 day moving average:  the US Dollar Index and China’s Shanghai Composite Index.  (Bespoke also Trader’s Narrative) The BRICs are falling by the wayside.  (Barron’s also Behind the Headlines) Where this pullback ranks during this market upswing.  (VIX and More) Jeremy Grantham’s “Lessons Learned in the Decade.”  (Big Picture) On the relationship between earnings [...]

S&P 500 sector performance over the past three decades.  (Big Picture, EconomPic Data) The time for small cap outperformance is coming to an end. (Marketwatch) The last week put a big dent in the number of bulls out there.  (Sentiment’s Edge) The first three days of the month have a disproportionate effect on stock market returns.  (Crossing Wall [...]

Was it really a “lost decade” for investors?  Rob Arnott begs to differ.  (IndexUniverse) With the carry trade on the backburner have fundamental reasserted themselves?  (The Reformed Broker) Why next month might be better for the market.  (James Altucher) By this measure the US stock market is short-term oversold.  (Trader’s Narrative) What is the “Andrews Pitchfork” and what does [...]

Anything fixed income is winning the YTD performance race.  (EconomPic Data) The bull market in Treasuries is dead and buried. (Gregor Macdonald) What to do if you were caught unawares by the recent market pullback.  (CSS Analytics) Investors seem to have already factored in better than expected earnings.  (Bespoke) Underlying weakness in the iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index (FXI).  [...]

The Internet is a massive content creation machine. We are witnessing an explosion in the amount of content getting created every day. Most of it is garbage. But some of it is not. Machines can help us find what is good. But with the help of machines, our friends and trusted sources can and will [...]

Next week should be a busy one for the markets.  Get ready now.  (A Dash of Insight) More oversold readings.  (Bespoke, Chart.ly) The state of investor sentiment at week-end.  (Trader’s Narrative, The Technical Take) IBD just got more cautious on the market.  (The Pragmatic Capitalist) Is the uptick rule coming back albeit in limited form?  (naked capitalism) 2009 was a [...]

Emerging markets are “no longer cheap.”  (Capital Spectator) In the short-term the market seems a bit stretched on the downside.  (Quantifiable Edges also Bespoke) What the huge move down in junk bond spreads tells us about risk-taking these days.  (Credit Writedowns) The ducks are quacking.  Closed-end funds are issuing shares.  (WSJ) A slew of sentiment indicators from Jason Goepfert.  [...]

In another edition of infrequent “charts that need no further explanation” one can see below a chart from The Economist documenting the growth in the number of and assets under management by the global exchange traded fund industry. Source:  Economist.com The article notes tha the ETF industry was one of the few segments of the financial industry [...]

Apparently Dr. Copper’s PhD is legit.  (Crossing Wall Street) How Vanguard won the past decade.  (Morningstar) Junky, i.e. low price-to-book value, banks catch a bid.  (The Money Game) John C. Ogg, “The [Berkshire Hathaway] A-shares at this point may represent nothing more than a vanity position”  (24/7 Wall St. also Bespoke) Hedge fund inflows are back to pre-crisis levels.  [...]

Still no linkfest today.  Thank you all for your patience. In the meantime check out some other linkfests we read on a regular basis. The Reformed Broker naked capitalism Economist’s View Credit Writedowns FT Alphaville Felix Salmon We will try to get back to our regular posting schedule as soon as possible. Abnormal Returns is a proud member of the StockTwits Network.

Due to exigent circumstances there will be no linkfest today. In the meantime check out some other linkfests we read on a daily basis. The Reformed Broker naked capitalism Economist’s View The Kirk Report FT Alphaville We will try to get back to our regular posting schedule as soon as possible.

How to invest in the MAVINS.  (The Money Game) What constitutes a frontier market these days?  (The Reformed Broker) The panelists in the annual Barron’s Roundtable is uniformly bullish.  (The Money Game) Will ETF assets eventually overtake mutual fund assets?  (IndexUniverse) Is there a case to be made for selected California muni debt?  (Aiki14) Just how bad is the Greek [...]

How simply coining the term ‘BRICs’ has “redrawn powerbrokers’ cognitive map.”  (FT via Clusterstock) Two looks at the scope of the current market rally.  (The Pragmatic Capitalist, Discipline Approach to Investing) What is a reasonable expectation for net-net-net (of inflation, expenses and taxes) returns?  (WSJ) Steven Sears, “In a crisis, the first reflex is often panic. Better to [...]

Charles Kirk, “In my experience, usually the things we fear the most are the things that impact the market the least. I’ve seen this happen time and time again.”  (Kirk Report) The “pub power” indicator has turned negative for the stock market.  (EconomPic Data) Quantitative hedge funds seem to outpeform their qualitative cousins.  (CXO Advisory Group) Is the [...]

The Dow hit its bull market high ten years ago today.  (Crossing Wall Street) Since the collapse of Lehman Bros. preferred stocks have outperformed high yield bonds and the S&P 500.  (Bespoke also Don Fishback) An indicator pointing to still higher stock prices.  (Trader’s Narrative) Jeff Miller, “There is a widespread feeling that the “easy money” was made [...]

What a sub-250 bp Baa-Treasury spread means for the stock market.  (Crossing Wall Street) Watching the reversal in the VIX.  (FT Alphaville, Daily Options Report) Sometimes big trades have no information value.  (Options for Rookies) David Varadi, “It therefore stands to reason that the only real inefficiencies in the stock market are driven by the persistency of human [...]

John Carney, “Warren Buffet has consistently beaten the market with an annualized rate of return of around 22%. You cannot do this, especially not by mimicking what you think you know about Buffett’s strategy.”  (The Money Game) A longer-term look at what Rydex market timers are doing.  (The Technical Take) Should we care about a sub-18 VIX?  [...]

And you thought the rally in equities was impressive.  Check out corporate bonds.  (Bespoke) Have individual investors permanently changed their demand for equities?  (The Globe and Mail) Some 85% of S&P 500 stocks are trading above their 50-day moving average.  (The Pragmatic Capitalist) Henry Blodget, “Today’s valuations also suggest that stocks may have gotten way ahead of themselves, [...]

Dividends fell off a cliff in 2009.  Can we expect a bounce in 2010?  (Floyd Norris) Dividend policies shouldn’t matter.  But they do.  (The Psy-Fi Blog) By this measure the market stands right at fair value.  (Trader’s Narrative) Is the VIX now worthless as an indicator?  (24/7 Wall St.) Equity investor sentiment at week-end.  (Trader’s Narrative, The Technical Take) Historically [...]