This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• Vito Racanelli (Barron’s): The easy money has been made, November 2, 2009. The choppy action last week suggests the going gets much tougher from here. In a year in which the market has jumped far off its lows, the bull has so far talked the talk of earnings growth. It’s time to walk the walk.

• Edward Harrison (Credit Writedowns): Bullish data, recoveries, crashes and the psychology of forecasting redux, November 2, 2009. Is a double dip or crash a baseline scenario? No, not necessarily - but it is increasingly likely. So, as bullish as I believe the data are, I am more worried about a bad outcome, not less.

• Andy Kessler (The Wall Street Journal):

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This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• Vito Racanelli (Barron’s): The easy money has been made, November 2, 2009. The choppy action last week suggests the going gets much tougher from here. In a year in which the market has jumped far off its lows, the bull has so far talked the talk of earnings growth. It’s time to walk the walk.

• Edward Harrison (Credit Writedowns): Bullish data, recoveries, crashes and the psychology of forecasting redux, November 2, 2009. Is a double dip or crash a baseline scenario? No, not necessarily - but it is increasingly likely. So, as bullish as I believe the data are, I am more worried about a bad outcome, not less.

• Andy Kessler (The Wall Street Journal):

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Gimme fuel, gimme fire, gimme that which I desire,

Can’t fight the need for speed,

I’m loose, I’m clean, I’m burning lean and mean, and mean.

Ignite the open trail,

Excite, exhale, comin on, hot from hell, yeah hot from hell.

-Metallica “Fuel for Fire”

Where has all of the money gone? We know that the world should be running out of green ink any day now due to the Treasury printing money 24/7, but with all of this money coming into the economy we would have expected runaway inflation.  Up to now we have seen, for the first time in decades, steady deflation.  In fact as you can see in the chart below, since 3/1/09 YoY CPI has been negative. (click on chart to enlarge)

CPI 12-Month % Change

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The chart below comes courtesy of Andy Kessler and shows the strong relationship between the movement in the Dow Jones Industrial Index and the monetary base. The monetary base data is defined as the “sum of currency in circulation, reserve balances with Federal Reserve Banks, and service-related adjustments to compensate for float”.

The extraordinarily loose monetary conditions will not last indefinitely and the main head wind for stock markets to look for will be a tightening monetary policy, eventually followed by an inverted yield curve.

Source: Andy Kessler, September 25, 2009.

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This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• David Rosenberg (Financial Times): Equities carry too much risk, September 23, 2009. The banker J.P. Morgan was fond of saying: “I never buy at lows, I never sell at the highs, I play the middle 60 per cent.” Well, from our lens, we are well past that middle 60 per cent point of this bear market rally.

• Roman Frydman and Michael Goldberg (Financial Times): An economics of magical thinking, September 23, 2009. Confidence seems to be returning to markets almost everywhere, but the debates about what caused the worst crisis since the Great Depression show no sign of letting up. Instead, the spotlight has shifted from bankers, financial engineers and regulators to economists and their theories. This is not a

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This post provides links to a number of thought-provoking articles I have read over the past few days that you may also find of interest.

• Andy Kessler (The Wall Street Journal): The Bernanke market, July 16, 2009, We won’t get real growth until Congress and Treasury get policy right.

• Irwin Stelzer (Times Online): American account: Barack Obama’s cures may just kill any recovery, July 12, 2009.

• Paul McCulley (Pimco - Global Central Bank Focus): What if?, So what should Washington do, if and when - and I stress “if and when”; I’m not making a forecast here! - private sector aggregate (nominal) demand growth looks like it’s going to languish in Japan style for the indefinite future? The answer: Take one cup of Krugman’s advice for Japan and two cups of Bernanke’s advice for Japan - responsibly

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This post provides links to some thought-provoking articles I have read over the past few days that you may also find of interest.

• Mohamed El-Erian (PIMCO – Secular Outlook): A new normal, May 2009.

• Martin Feldstein (The Wall Street Journal): Tax increases could kill the recovery, May 14, 2009. The cap-and-trade levy would hit low-income earners especially hard.

• The Economist: Crouching tigers, May 13, 2009. Asian economies are likely to be the first to pull out of the global recession.

• Jeremy Siegel (Yahoo Finance): Should you bother with government bonds?, May 12, 2009.

• Andy Kessler (Wall Street Journal): Was it a sucker’s rally?, May 12, 2009. You can have a jobless recovery but you can’t have a profitless one.

• Martin Wolf (Financial Times):

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I talked about whats moving the market in yesterday's post. I just wanted to pass along an opinion piece in the Journal today that basically says the same thing with a bit more detail. Its by Andy Kessler, and you a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122714126820842751.html"can find it here/a. br /br /From a technical standpoint, we appeared to break through the resistance levels near 8000 on the Dow with this morning's sell off. But we've since moved higher, and I wouldn't be surprised to again see more of the same action. Re-test market lows, and then bounce. Its been fairly predictable if you're looking for short-term patterns to trade off of.