It’s not technically a new decade yet. But if the trade of the last decade was to sell stocks and buy gold, then maybe the best trade for the next ten years is to sell bonds and buy energy. Gas, coal, oil, conventional, unconventional, renewable, alternative. You have a whole portfolio of choices.

By the way, last year at the Agora Wealth Symposium in Vancouver, one of our colleagues took the stage to point out that your editor was complete moron. In this particular case, it was for being bullish on gold.

He said that gold hadn’t done much adjusted for inflation since 1980. What’s more, he said, its worth less, adjusted for inflation that it was twenty years ago. How, he speculated, could anyone take the advice to buy gold seriously when it had performed so abysmally?

Well here are the facts. The gold price bottomed in October of 2000 at $263.80.

Selling stuff you bought with borrowed money is a process that’s mostly been confined to the financial markets in 2008. But now we see the behavior migrating into the economy. At the household level, a collective sense of thrift is beginning to set in. People are selling what they don’t need to raise cash.

But let’s start with the financial news first. Macquarie Group (ASX:MQG) told investors yesterday that its profit fell by 43%, thanks to write downs in assets. It was the first time since going public twelve years ago the “Millionaire Factory” has reported an earnings decline. Still, the $604 million profit number was higher than what analysts were expecting ($594 million) and the stock finished up over 16.5% on the day.

In the revenue results and write downs you can see how the decline and fall of the investment banking model has hit Australian shores. MQG reported a

You know it’s a real financial crisis when capitalists are being told what to do by a bunch of socialists and communists. But these are the times we live in. Ironic and moronic.

Investors will be utterly confused today about what to fear most. First, you had the nightmare open in New York on Friday. The futures markets were limit down and closed briefly. By the time order was restored to electronic markets, the Dow opened down 6%.

The Dow rallied-if you can call it that-to close down “just” 3.6% on the day. A that point, you could safely say the market was ‘pricing in’ the fear of a global recession, and just what that would mean for corporate earnings. Not even an oil price of US$65-meaning lower prices at the pump-could cheer investors.

And then, this weekend, European and Asian leaders met and, “pledged to undertake effective and comprehensive reform of