A reader of this blog has kindly emailed us the video below, which is discussed at length in a recent New York Times piece.  Happy New Year, everyone!

I am not big on New Year resolutions; they tend to be forgotten after the first few weeks of the year.

Instead, I've found it much more useful to look back on the last year - fully exploiting the 20/20 hindsight vision - and see what worked and what didn't. This "lessons learned" exercise provides a very useful operating framework for the New Year. This is as relevant for investing habits as it is for personal/private ones.

The best way to share these investing lessons is by telling you about the creation of our Zacks Top 10 for 2009 portfolio. Our team worked on this in December 2008 and early January 2009. Can you think of a scarier time in which to pick a portfolio of stocks to outperform in the year ahead?

Gladly we did many things right with this portfolio, given its market-topping +34.1%

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And some lessons from the 1930's for the 2000's

John Taylor returns to the topic of how much impact the stimulus package has had on output. The heart of the argument is summarized by his extension of a graph presented in the NYT (and reproduced in this post).

Figure from Taylor (2009)

As I noted earlier in my post about counterfactuals, this is the right way to assess the impact of the stimulus -- that is to compare the outcome against a counterfactual, and here Professor Taylor has done so, bringing into the mix the Frank Smets and Raf Wouters model as well as Barro's. (In other words, comparing forecasts w/stimulus to outcomes incorporating unforecasted shocks that have been realized is like comparing apples and oranges, as in [0].)

An Analogy

Why is this the right way to assess the stimulus? Here's

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Dr Stock Pick HOT News & Alerts!

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FREE Daily Stock Alerts From DrStockPick.com

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Thursday Dec. 31, 2009

DrStockPick.com Stock Report!

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CRWENews Stock Highlights for 2010

The experts predict the coming year will be a rocky one for investors.

With the subprime meltdown, sky-high oil, and a looming economic downturn, they might be right.

None the less, in my eyes the truth is; investors face major challenges every year. Yet a select few manage to overcome these obstacles, beat the market, and build lasting wealth.

As an advocate of the here and now, I suggest that a better idea is to take this opportunity to refocus—your attention, your effort and your intention. I’m

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Baltimore — (TFN): I stuck to my word and bought gold. If you follow the markets long enough, you earn a full grasp of the psychology behind it all. After a while, you notice the tiny quivers and false starts that signify a move in either direction.

I used this insight and logic to warn investors about an imminent downturn in gold prices earlier this month. I got a lot of “feedback” from disappointed gold bugs. But it didn’t take long for them to eat their words as the price of an ounce of gold fell by nearly 10% in the last month.

But as I said earlier in the week, the slide is over. Of course, unlike the nation’s leaders, I’m willing to follow my words with action.

Here is what I sent to TFN Strategic Trader members first thing this morning:

“It is time to make

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China is literally speeding into 2010.
A brand-new high-speed rail system now connects the important cities of Guangzhou in the southeast with Wuhan in the interior. Trains running the 655 miles of new rails will average more than 200 miles an hour, cutting what had been a trip of more than seven hours down to about three hours.
Wuhan, on the Yangzte River, is the largest city in Chinarsquo;s interior (about 9 million people) and is also the regionrsquo;s political, economic and financial center. Guangzhou, once known as Canton, has about the same population. It is a major port and manufacturing center near Hong Kong.
Maximum speeds on the new rail connection can top 240 miles an hour, making these trains the fastest in the world.
Linking Guangzhou and Wuhan is just the beginning of an ambitious high-speed rail network planned for China ndash; more than 40 new lines and 1,000 trains are envisioned …

China is literally speeding into 2010.
A brand-new high-speed rail system now connects the important cities of Guangzhou in the southeast with Wuhan in the interior. Trains running the 655 miles of new rails will average more than 200 miles an hour, cutting what had been a trip of more than seven hours down to about three hours.
Wuhan, on the Yangzte River, is the largest city in Chinarsquo;s interior (about 9 million people) and is also the regionrsquo;s political, economic and financial center. Guangzhou, once known as Canton, has about the same population. It is a major port and manufacturing center near Hong Kong.
Maximum speeds on the new rail connection can top 240 miles an hour, making these trains the fastest in the world.
Linking Guangzhou and Wuhan is just the beginning of an ambitious high-speed rail network planned for China ndash; more than 40 new lines and 1,000 trains are envisioned …

China is literally speeding into 2010.
A brand-new high-speed rail system now connects the important cities of Guangzhou in the southeast with Wuhan in the interior. Trains running the 655 miles of new rails will average more than 200 miles an hour, cutting what had been a trip of more than seven hours down to about three hours.
Wuhan, on the Yangzte River, is the largest city in Chinarsquo;s interior (about 9 million people) and is also the regionrsquo;s political, economic and financial center. Guangzhou, once known as Canton, has about the same population. It is a major port and manufacturing center near Hong Kong.
Maximum speeds on the new rail connection can top 240 miles an hour, making these trains the fastest in the world.
Linking Guangzhou and Wuhan is just the beginning of an ambitious high-speed rail network planned for China ndash; more than 40 new lines and 1,000 trains are envisioned …

China is literally speeding into 2010.
A brand-new high-speed rail system now connects the important cities of Guangzhou in the southeast with Wuhan in the interior. Trains running the 655 miles of new rails will average more than 200 miles an hour, cutting what had been a trip of more than seven hours down to about three hours.
Wuhan, on the Yangzte River, is the largest city in Chinarsquo;s interior (about 9 million people) and is also the regionrsquo;s political, economic and financial center. Guangzhou, once known as Canton, has about the same population. It is a major port and manufacturing center near Hong Kong.
Maximum speeds on the new rail connection can top 240 miles an hour, making these trains the fastest in the world.
Linking Guangzhou and Wuhan is just the beginning of an ambitious high-speed rail network planned for China ndash; more than 40 new lines and 1,000 trains are envisioned …

China is literally speeding into 2010.
A brand-new high-speed rail system now connects the important cities of Guangzhou in the southeast with Wuhan in the interior. Trains running the 655 miles of new rails will average more than 200 miles an hour, cutting what had been a trip of more than seven hours down to about three hours.
Wuhan, on the Yangzte River, is the largest city in Chinarsquo;s interior (about 9 million people) and is also the regionrsquo;s political, economic and financial center. Guangzhou, once known as Canton, has about the same population. It is a major port and manufacturing center near Hong Kong.
Maximum speeds on the new rail connection can top 240 miles an hour, making these trains the fastest in the world.
Linking Guangzhou and Wuhan is just the beginning of an ambitious high-speed rail network planned for China ndash; more than 40 new lines and 1,000 trains are envisioned …