The post below is republished courtesy of Trader Mark, writer of the Fund My Mutual Fund blog (hat tip: Damien Hoffman of Wall St Cheat Sheet).

Societe Generale’s Albert Edwards is generally considered an uber bear, although there were times in the past year he has tactically increased exposure to equities to take advantage of oversold conditions. Now is not one of those times. In fact, Edwards chimes in with many similar thoughts we’ve posted on the fundamentals … but sticks his neck out calling for new lows in 2010.

While the belief from this blog writer is this will all end badly, knowing when and how will be the ultimate question. Without the massive intervention by central banks and governments we’d have a different landscape; and without knowing to what lengths these people will continue to go to, it’s much more difficult to predict the intermediate

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Natural gas is finally moving substantially higher today as we a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/natural-gas-extends-gains-after-inventories-data"got the inventory data out/a:br /br /blockquoteNatural-gas futures extended gains Thursday after the Energy Information Administration reported U.S. natural gas inventories rose 90 billion cubic feet last week, smaller than some analysts had expected. Some analysts surveyed by energy information provider Platts had projected a buildup as big as 106 billion cubic feet. After the data, August natural gas futures rose 17.9 cents, or 5.5%, to $3.462 per million British thermal units. It was up less than 3% before the data. At 2,886 billion cubic feet, stocks were 589 billion cubic feet higher than last year at this time and 454 billion cubic feet above the five-year average.br //blockquotebr /Hopefully the trend will continue. We're finally heading into a time of year in which demand ticks higher. How much, remains to be seen.br /br /Lot's of big ...

I've been trying to track stimulus related projects and what impact they are going to have on the economy. In doing some digging at a href="http://www.recovery.gov/"recovery.gov/a, and other various sites, the stimulus money allocated so far has been in 3 areas:br /br /1) Increased Medicaid Fundingbr /br /2) Highway Infrastructure Investmentbr /br /3) State Fiscal Stabilization Fundbr /br /Today we got a little more commentary by the a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5572M020090608"President on the employment situation/a:br /br /ulliPresident a href="http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/barackobama" title="Full coverage of President Barack Obama"Barack Obama/a said on Monday he expected to create or save 600,000 jobs over the next 100 days by expediting 10 major projects funded by a huge stimulus package that Congress passed in February./lili"We have a long way to go on our road to recovery, but we are going the right way," Obama said. His statement came three days after a Labor Department report showed the U.S. ...

Just wanted to pass along a list of what I like to read daily for my market news and commentary. I'll try to update the blog roll a bit more frequently, but here's my current list:br /br /News Sites:br /br /a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/?b=0"Bloomberg/a (The best there is, in my opinion)br /br /a href="http://www.reuters.com/"Reuters/a (Wide variety; good international news)br /br /a href="http://online.wsj.com/home-page"Wall Street Journal/a (Specifically blogs, which are free to read)br /br /a href="http://online.barrons.com/home-page"Barrons/a (Subscription required, but some blogs free)br /br /Economic Commentary:br /br /a href="http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/"Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis/abr /br /a href="http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/"Zero Hedge/a (Tons of info; updated very frequently)br /br /a href="http://www.mises.org"Mises.Org/a (Economic theory, Austrian Economics, etc)br /br /a href="http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/"Naked Capitalism/a (Good Stuff)br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Market Commentary:/spanbr /br /a href="http://www.fundmymutualfund.com/"Fund My Mutual Fund/a (Good combo economic/market news/occasional humor)br /br /a href="http://valueplays.blogspot.com/"Value Plays/a (Great place to find investing ideas)br /br /br /There are others I follow, but this is my ...

Every week when I get span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" style="color:#000099;"stronga href="http://online.barrons.com/home/main"Barron's/a/strong/span, I take a look at the insider transactions. I use it mostly for a barometer of market sentiment. Do these guys think their own shares are worth buying or unloading? I'm aware that there are many reasons they can sell their own stock, and it doesn't necessarily mean the stock is overvalued. But I look for trends. Large groups of insiders selling, or specifically different companies within the same sector seeing insider activity.br /br /Well, one of the groups I've focused on in the past couple of weeks, casual chain restaurants, has seen some activity. Here are a few posts:br /br /a href="http://www.fundmymutualfund.com/2009/04/americas-hottest-sector-casual-dining.html"America's Hottest Sector: Casual Chain Restaurants/a. (via Fund My Mutual Fund)br /a href="http://briskycapital.blogspot.com/2009/04/insider-selling-quite-strong.html"Insider Selling Quite Strong/a.br /a href="http://briskycapital.blogspot.com/2009/04/not-so-fast-pf-changs.html"Not So Fast, PF Chang's? /abr /br /With my opinion that their latest batch of strong earnings will be tough ...

Last week I did some work on the casual restaurant chains, and their recent strong performance. This was a href="http://www.fundmymutualfund.com/2009/04/americas-hottest-sector-casual-dining.html"posted over at Fund My Mutual Fund/a. For the full analysis of PF Chang's and others, head over there. The thesis here is that restaurants are boosting quarterly earnings by cutting costs and taking advantage of lower commodity prices and decreased analyst expectations.br /br /I just wanted to follow up a bit here as I read a a href="http://online.barrons.com/article/SB124084710167959631.html"Barron's Article this morning about PF Chang's/a. They are basically taking the same viewpoint as mine, that shares are getting a little too high, and that it will be tough to sustain earnings in the current fashion.br /br /ulliPF Chang's has been among the leading beneficiaries of overeager investors. The chain of restaurants jumped 24% last week after it reported surprisingly strong first-quarter results, stemming from an impressive series ...

A very interesting past few days – congrats for those in the tech/China/commodities trade; you killed it the past few sessions. Looking around at the winners today outside those sectors it’s the ‘worst of breed” reverting to mean YET again (snapping back to the rubber band after being hammered).

I wonder how many times we can rally on the EXACT same news. 10 days ago we jumped from S&P 830 to 875 on soon to be announced bad bank news. The past two sessions we rally from 825 to 870 on… you guessed it…. soon to be announced bad bank news. Now the countdown for our salvation is Monday at noon.

I am debating who levitates higher over water… Tim Geithner or Obama? This is actually a grand psychological experiment… desperate people tend to cling to hope in their …

Private schools are a discretionary item that is going to have to be ditched my many trying to avoid the much maligned public school system, where seniority is more important than teaching talent. That can only be good for our kids looking out 15-20 years….

What you see here will be repeated in our universities – as we’ve noted many times. I am working on a piece on that end as many articles have come up of late showing the struggles finally hitting that area of life. Eventually, they too have to face reality and cannot charge parents 8-11% annual tuition increases in a 3% wage increase country.

Trinity Episcopal School survived Hurricane Ike last fall. But then another storm hit — the economy. The Galveston, Texas, school, where tuition is between $5,000 and $8,000 a year, …

I wrote earlier today I was shaking my head watching this commodity rally take place based on good bank/bad bank. Financials? Ok I get it… commodities? Huh!

Not even a week after DryShips (DRYS) tells people “we’re in trouble” [Jan 22: DryShips (DRYS) - Reality Strikes Back] the traders with their memories with a half life of a fruit fly already were driving the stock back up. Fundamentals don’t matter. Until they do.

DryShips Inc (DRYS) said two of its banks notified the Greek dry bulk carrier that it is in breach of certain financial covenants and it is currently in discussions with its lenders for waivers and amendments to loan covenants.
Shares of the company fell 15 percent to $10.39 in trading after the bell.
“Two of our leading banks, …

I made some adjustments late in the day today, as I hope to soon be completely rid of Ultrashorts from my inventory – those are great for bang bang in and out trading but I need long term hedges for my strategy… for that, they have been useless.

If you are newer to the blog, I was using a tracking system in the past (Marketocracy.com) which only allowed me long positions. Hence the only way to “short” was to buy Ultrashort positions (which can be placed in long only accounts). The problem with them is with their structure (long story) they rebalance each day and (summary form) don’t replicate long term performance. In fact they are punitive to all who hold them over time.

For example, long before it was fashionable I …