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

• Robert Reich (Robert Reich’s Blog): The great disconnect between stocks and jobs, November 18, 2009. How can the stock market hit new highs at the same time unemployment is hitting new highs? Simple. The market is up because corporate earnings are up. Corporate earnings are up because companies are cutting costs. And the biggest single cost they’re cutting is their payrolls. So they let people go and, presto, their balance sheets look better and their stock prices rise. Where is this heading? No place good. Without a major shift in policy - both at the Fed and in the White House - the economics point to a big stock-market correction and a double dip. The politics point to substantial losses for Democrats

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

• Robert Reich (Robert Reich’s Blog): The great disconnect between stocks and jobs, November 18, 2009. How can the stock market hit new highs at the same time unemployment is hitting new highs? Simple. The market is up because corporate earnings are up. Corporate earnings are up because companies are cutting costs. And the biggest single cost they’re cutting is their payrolls. So they let people go and, presto, their balance sheets look better and their stock prices rise. Where is this heading? No place good. Without a major shift in policy - both at the Fed and in the White House - the economics point to a big stock-market correction and a double dip. The politics point to substantial losses for Democrats

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

• Jennifer Hughes (Financial Times): Visibility improved but storms may lie ahead, November 13, 2008. The fog is beginning to lift. All year executives, analysts and investors have talked of a “lack of visibility” on the outlook for the economy, earnings and financial markets. By “visibility” they are in essence complaining about the uncertainty that clouds all forecasts all the time, but which we had increasingly managed to ignore during such a steady run of good times. Investors are becoming more confident that the fog is lifting, but that does not necessarily mean there is sunshine waiting just behind it.

• Doug Kass (TheStreet.com): Market ignorance is bliss, November 12, 2009. I do believe with some certainty that the market’s vulnerability

I concluded a post on stock markets over the weekend saying: “After equities’ seven-month climb, stock markets certainly look vulnerable for a decline. Two downside reversal days - on Wednesday and Friday - would seem to indicate that stocks could commence a pullback to work off the overbought condition, allowing fundamentals to reassert themselves.”

Global stock markets, as well as other risky assets, closed sharply lower over the past few days as concerns mounted over the sustainability of the global economic recovery and the outlook for central bank policy.

The performance of the major asset classes is summarized by the charts below, with the top one showing the period from the March 9 stock market lows until October 19 peak and the second one the subsequent period. The numbers indicate an all-change pattern in the performances as risk aversion re-entered financial markets and government bonds and the US

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

• Randall Forsyth (Barron’s): Reflation trade shifting into reverse? October 27, 2009. Risk assets ranging from stocks to commodities to currencies seem to be faltering after being floated on a sea of liquidity.

• Doug Kass (TheStreet.com):   My “fast money” recap, October 28, 2009. I saw some emerging technical signs of market weakness that could override seasonal strength, including three failed rallies in the past week, a contracting number of new highs on the New York Stock Exchange, a breakdown in the Dow Jones Transportation Average and, generally, stocks have begun to sell off on good and bad news. … asked how vulnerable the market was over the short to intermediate term if I used the quantitative models that

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

• Joseph Stiglitz (The National Interest): Death cometh for the greenback, October 27, 2009. Whichever path we take, like it or not, we will be moving away from current arrangements, the dollar-reserve system. There are only two questions: will the movement away be orderly or disorderly, and will America play a part in shaping the new system that will emerge?

• Doug Kass (TheStreet.com): Earnings likely to trend lower, October 27, 2009. Underpromising and overdelivering is the oldest game in the investor relations handbook, as earnings expectations are often cagily crafted by corporate managements. In turn, many Wall Street analysts, emulating Ralph Wanger’s zebras, follow that company guidance in adopting a herd mentality that morphs into a Wall

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

• Gillian Tett (Financial Times): Rally fuelled by cheap money brings a sense of foreboding, October 22, 2009. It is crystal clear that the longer that money remains ultra cheap, the more traders will have an incentive to gamble (particularly if they privately suspect that today’s boom will be short-lived and want to score big over the next year). Somehow all this feels horribly familiar; I just hope that my sense of foreboding turns out to be wrong.

• Doug Kass (TheStreet.com): The earnings season racket, October 21, 2009. If end demand doesn’t pick up (and pick up quickly), the 2010 earnings outlook for many industries (such as semiconductors and other beneficiaries of restocking) will be in jeopardy, as

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

• Doug Kass (TheStreet.com): A force in motion, October 20, 2009. Arguably, the market has begun to decouple from fundamentals; instead, liquidity has overcome almost any other influence as every little setback has been countered with an avalanche of buying. It has fed upon itself, and it has contained corrections as many money managers play catch-up and chase strength.

• Dan Holland (RealClearMarkets): An interview with Jason Trennert, Ocober 20, 2009. Jason Trennert is the chief investment strategist at Strategas Research Partners, a Manhattan-based advisor to institutional investors, which he co-founded three years ago. Institutional Investor magazine has consistently ranked Trennert one of the top strategists on Wall Street.

• Martin Wolf (Financial Times): How to manage

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

• Matt Taibbi (Taibblog): An inside look at how Goldman Sachs lobbies the Senate, September 29, 2009.

Samuel Brittan (Financial Times): A cool look at the current deficit hysteria, October 1, 2009. In the early Victorian period the debt ratio was nearly 200 per cent and almost reached that level again in the early 1920s.

• Edmund Conway (Telegraph):  An inconvenient truth: financial crises are inevitable, October 1, 2009. The IMF’s new early warning system to avoid crises such as the credit crunch is doomed to disappoint.

• Edward Harrison (Credit Writedowns): The recession is over but the depression has just begun, October 1, 2009. This post discusses why we are in a depression, not

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

• Doug Kass (TheStreet.com): Madman at the gates, September 29, 2009. Despite the strong share price momentum and optimistic economic/profit consensus, I continue to hold on to the variant view that the markets have likely peaked for the year based on the existence of nontraditional headwinds, an end to decades of aggressive credit expansion and financial inventiveness, a still-vulnerable housing recovery (in the form of outsized phantom inventory challenges) and a still-fragile consumer — among other factors.

• Joshua Zumbrun (Forbes): Reasons to remain wary about housing, September 29, 2009. After signs of life this summer, here are eight factors to watch that could extend the bust.

• Tim Duy (Tim Duy’s Fed Watch): Rushing to the