A day after the triple-digit rally, Wall Street paused for a breather as investors decided to book profits on a light trading day.  The markets opened lower and then swung between gains and losses amid prevailing caution after a series of disappointing results.  The Dow, nevertheless, managed to tack on 20 points for its fifth straight session gain.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index shed 0.01%, to 1,093.01 and the technology-laden Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 2.98 points, or 0.14%, to close at 2,151.08.  On the New York Stock Exchange, three stocks declined in price for every two that rose.  Volume was light as only 990 million shares exchanged hands.

Record low interest rates and a sliding dollar have helped stocks in recent months as investors have taken their focus away from some of the persistent worries of the economy.  Also, with the Federal Reserve continuing its highly accommodative monetary

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Supertex Inc. (SUPX) recently reported revenues of $15.9 million in its fiscal second quarter, down 32% year over year but up 17% sequentially.  The sequential increase in revenues was driven by growth in LED driver products for lighting and backlighting, medical electronics products, and electroluminescent (EL) driver products. Orders for LED and EL driver products surged after Labor Day. The company had to rush these orders through its wafer fab and expedite them through backend assembly and test in order to meet customer demand schedules. Demand for medical ultrasound products is also beginning to rebound, as sales grew 17% sequentially.

Management added that its major customer has increased its LED TV sales estimates for 2009 and 2010 while other customers are also ramping up. Sales of LED driver products for general lighting applications have also increased. In anticipation of new cell phone launches, shipments of EL inverter products ramped

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It’s official: You can reduce your investment risk simply by chucking darts at a list of stocks, then buying them.

That’s if you believe a Nobel economist, of course. His crude “experiment” was the start of “modern portfolio theory” decades ago. The downside, however, was that with a reduction of risk came a dampening of profits. So scratch that idea.

How about this? A startling study in the late 1970s showed that owning a portfolio of large U.S. companies with international divisions drops your risk 10% below a domestic stock portfolio. Much better. But that wasn’t the eye-popper…

The study also found that owning stocks in international companies cuts your risk in half…

Take that, “efficiency” theorists! Yet the stuffy professors still tried to refute these results. It was a losing battle, though, as more studies emerged, laden with more evidence that international stocks reduce risk.

But the

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The Labor Day edition of the IndexUniverse.com podcast looks at some of the interesting—and ridiculous—ETFs we can look forward to in the coming months.

Gold hit the big “quadruple digits” while we were all relaxing on Labor Day. To be sure, it was just the December contract, which has since pulled back to US$997. But we haven’t seen US$1,000 since February, back when we had an insolvent financial system and a meddling government printing trillions like toilet paper.

Nowadays, we’ve got an insolvent financial system and a meddling government…but we’ve also got a questionable stock market rally too (one driven by the unprecedented volume on bailout stocks, might I add). Throw in growing Chinese demand and jewelry-buying season in India, and you just might be looking at a foothold in the US$1,000/ounce range.

“My forecast for gold in 2010 is $1,250 to $1,350 an ounce,” says our Investment Director Eric Roseman, “I think we’re long overdue for a major break-out north of $1,000 that will easily crack the March 2008 all-time

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Clowns to the left of us… Jokers to the right… The Simpleton’s Analysis: Consumers cut back. The economy sank. Now, government must take action. It must help people out and take up the slack.

The downturn took $12 trillion off Americans’ net worth. The feds have pledged about $12 trillion to fix the problem.

But wait, where does government get any money?

Hey, they borrow it, just like consumers did. And besides, it’s ultimately the same money – taxpayers’ money. So what’s the big diff?

The big diff is the subject of today’s Daily Reckoning.

The first big diff is that the feds don’t spend your money the way you would. Private citizens spend money they don’t have on things they want but don’t need. The feds spend money that doesn’t belong to them on things that the rightful owners don’t even want.

Wait a minute. US markets were closed yesterday for

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Just catching up on the Weekend Recap after taking a weekend off for Labor day. Hope everyone had an enjoyable and restful weekend. Just to get the week kick started, here’s a rundown of some interesting posts that I came across in the past week.

Market Commentary

Bill Gross, bond-king at PIMCO, released his most recent commentary, “On the ‘course’ to a new normal.” Bespoke Investment Group publishes its analysis of US stock returns vs. foreign market indexes in local currency. It’s not pretty. The Economic Policy Institute believes unemployment is soaring to historical heights. Angry Bear takes a look at polling results which show that most Americans are in favor of progressive taxes.

Investment Ideas

Market Folly reports that Peter Thiel and Paul Tudor Jones’ respective hedge funds are betting against a sustained recovery in US equities. Contrarian Profits believes REITs remain a dangerous ...

A better-than-expected jobs report helped U.S. stocks rally ahead of the long weekend but the unemployment scenario continued to remain grim, signaling the much-expected economic recovery is not going to be smooth.  Worries that the rally has gone ahead of any economic recovery continued to keep a check on sentiments and stocks declined during the first three sessions of last week.  All major indexes started off on a dull note but posted strong gains in the afternoon.          

Following advances in the overseas markets, US stocks are expected to gain at the opening.  The DJIA futures added 79 points for a gain to 9496; the S&P500 increased 9.9 points heading toward a 1023.80 open.  Markets were closed yesterday for the Labor Day holiday.

On Friday, the 30-stock Dow Jones industrial average rose 96.66 points, or 1.03%, to 9,441.27.  The S&P 500 index rose 13.16 points, or 1.31%, to 1,016.40.  The

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Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST), the fifth largest general retailer in the U.S., has reported a better-than-expected performance in same-store sales in August with a marginal dip of 2% compared to an average analyst prediction of 5.7%. Same-store sales measure sales at stores which have been open for at least a year, and are a widely used metric to gauge retailer performance as they measure growth at existing stores rather than at the newly opened ones. August same-store sales of Costco decreased 4% across the U.S. locations, while increasing 3% in the international division. According to the company, the August results were negatively affected to some extent by the shift of the Labor Day holiday to one week later in the calendar. Costco further revealed that discretionary items such as food and sundries reported comparatively improved sales vis-à-vis non-food discretionary items in the month. The recent ...

It's a relatively quiet week on the earnings front with only 50 companies scheduled to report, including a smattering of retailers and food companies. Only 2 S&P 500 members are on tap to report including Campbell Soup Co. (CPB) and National Semiconductor (NSM).

The economic calendar is also quiet to start the first "real" trading week in September, as Wall Street comes back from August vacations. It's a shortened trading week due to the Labor Day holiday on Monday.

Monday: Markets closed for Labor Day Tuesday: ICSC-Goldman Store Sales, Redbook Wednesday: Beige Book Thursday: International trade, weekly jobless claims, weekly natural gas inventories, weekly crude inventories Friday: Import and export prices, University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey for September, Treasury budget Volume is likely to return to more "normal" levels to start the week. Despite recent weakness in the markets, the bulls remain in charge. Wall Street will also be watching trading

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