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

• John Authers (Financial Times): Financialisation genie set loose, October 7, 2009. Not long ago, there were three asset classes: stocks, bonds and cash. Some were not even sure if cash counted as an asset class. The last few decades, however, have seen the “financialization” of swathes of the world economy where prices were not previously set by markets, or at least not by markets led by the same investors who also set the prices of stocks and bonds. But financialization has led to controversy since last year’s crisis.

• Randall Forsyth (Barron’s): Away from Wall Street, credit keeps contracting, October 8, 2009. Financial markets party on Fed largesse, little of which flows to Main Street.

• Eamon Javers

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New research by Morgan Stanley Europe and Merrill Lynch Asia confirms old moving average based research by Stan Weinstein that the on-going upswing in the S&P 500 and other market indices around the world quite possibly has much further to go in this current bull run albeit with some volatility along the way. That could well have negative implications for the short-term price of gold bullion but, fortunately for the ‘gold bugs’ to be found in every room, continuing bright prospects for the stocks and warrants of gold and silver mining and royalty companies are expected.

Below is this week’s table showing the relatively poor performance of gold YTD (albeit not so for silver!) as compared to the HUI, GDM and CDNX in spite of closing above $1000 for the second consecutive week. Also note that the relatively unknown and misunderstood asset class of long-term warrants associated with commodity-related companies …

In December 2005, Citigroup announced a new 10-year, $100 million bond issue... At any time, Citigroup has hundreds of different bond issues trading in the markets. Right now, for example, my Bloomberg terminal shows over 500 different Citigroup bonds. There was nothing special about this 2005 issue... The housing market was rising, Wall Street's mortgage machine was in full swing, and America was enjoying the peak of its prosperity. At the time, you and I were paying 6% to borrow money secured against our houses. Citigroup would pay 5.3% to borrow money, unsecured. For two years, these bonds traded in a narrow band between $95 and $105. Then in March 2008, Bear Stearns failed and prices started to erode... Citi's bonds broke $90 in July, when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac failed. They broke $80 in September, when Lehman failed. And by March ...

A batch of gloomy economic reports during the past few days suggested that recent optimism about a global recovery might have been premature. This caused Doug Kass to warn that “stock prices have moved ahead of fundamentals” and Kenneth Langone to caution that “investors seem to be getting ahead of themselves”, although he maintained that the long-term outlook on the market was positive.

Big banks across the US announced large common stock offerings and plans to repay the government, and the US administration attempted to bring transparency to the credit derivatives markets and also crack down on the credit card industry.

In addition to Kass and Langone, commentators featured on camera in this post include Elizabeth Warren, Meredith Whitney, Alan Greenspan, Peter Boockvar, Giles Keating, Jim Rogers, Barry Ritholtz, Dennis Gartman, Abby Cohen, Peter Eliades and Laszlo Birinyi.

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As to be expected, discussions about the stress tests on the health of the 19 biggest US banks dominated the video airwaves during the past few days, with arguments ranging from whether the tests were necessary to whether they were stressful enough.

For the rest, Warren Buffett held his annual Berkshire shareholders’ jamboree - this year sharing both concern and optimism about the future. And as the nascent stock market rally is looking more tired by the day, the debate intensified on whether this was a “real rally”.

In addition to Buffett and the usual suspects of Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke, commentators featured on camera in this post include Richard Bernstein, Bill Fleckenstein, Nouriel Roubini, Neel Kashkari, Alan Blinder, Russell Napier, Robin Griffiths and Meb Faber.

The selection kicks off with an item in lighter vein - a song entitled

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December 10, 2008 ndash; The ldquo;Q Ratiordquo; is getting attention this morning, which is a system developed by 1969 Nobel Prize winning economist James Tobin. The Q Ratio is a way of comparing the value of stocks of a public company with the value of its book value. It can also be used to value the market as a whole. And according to CLSA Ltd. strategist Russell Napier, the Samp;P is still really expensive relative to the cost of replacing assets, and from an historical perspective, the Q Ratio indicates the Samp;P may decline by another 55% to 400 by 2014. Ugh. What is Q Value? Q=(market cap + liabilities book value/ equity book value + liabilities book value), in the case of individual companies, and Q= (value of stock market/ corporate net worth) in the case of the broader markets. If the Q value is greater than 1, the market ...