Happy birthday, bull market!  (Crossing Wall Street)

How overbought are the markets here?  (Trade to Learn)

The Nasdaq Composite is above pre-Lehman levels.  (Bespoke)

Equity mutual funds are burning through their cash on hand.  (Bloomberg)

Why a 17 or so VIX is not that surprising. (Options Zone)

Barton Biggs thinks global large cap stocks are wicked cheap.  (The Money Game)

Outperformance aside, by one measure small caps are still cheap.  (Trader’s Narrative)

Americans much prefer overseas stocks to their own.  (WSJ also The Money Game)

International diversification, over the long term.  (CXO Advisory Group)

The world’s biggest hedge fund managers.  (Pensions & Investments)

Why hedge funds like Mead Johnson Nutrition (MJN).  (market folly)

Whatever happened to nanotech?  (Bespoke)

Be careful when quoting fund dividend yields.  (EconomPic Data)

Why does J.P. Morgan (JPM) trade at book value?  (Breakingviews)

AIG (AIG) is out of “crown jewels” to sell.  (DealBook, Deal Journal)

John Hussman, “A deleveraging cycle is much like a secular bear market in that the market experiences a great deal of volatility, but tends to establish a sequence of troughs, each at lower levels of valuation (even if not at lower absolute prices).”  (Hussman Funds also The Technical Take)

Sorry critics, Tim Geithner’s plan worked.  The financial system was saved.  (New Yorker also Baseline Scenario)

Roger Lowenstein, “Protecting consumers and breaking up large banks is fine. But neither will prevent banks from acting stupidly again. The surest safeguard is to ensure that, when they do, they aren’t up to their necks in debt.”  (Bloomberg)

A new index of financial conditions.  (Econbrowser, FT Alphaville)

The Greek crisis has faded.  (MarketBeat, Clusterstock)

Portugal tries on an austerity program.  (FT Alphaville)

The problem of the long term unemployed remains.  (Calculated Risk)

Why a tax advantage for carried interest continues.  (New Yorker also Private Equity Beat)

An interview with the always interesting James Montier.  (Simoleon Sense)

On the benefits of regulatory vagueness.  “Like firemen, regulators confronting a financial emergency must have the freedom and the tools to do what they need to do.”  (The Epicurean Dealmaker)

“At its best, the econo-blogosphere can be the last haven of truly independent, non-captured, and crucially, informed, commentary able to affect policy and opinion makers positively. It used to do just that.”  (Ultimi Barbarorum)

Felix Salmon, “Big mainstream-media publications, when they hire people to write their blogs, generally hire people with no blogging experience at all — something which is both ill-conceived and dangerous. Some journalists make good bloggers; most don’t.”  (Reuters)

Transparency is the new alpha.  (Howard Lindzon)

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