Quote of the day

James Altucher, “You don’t need full employment for the stock market to go up.”  (Marketwatch)

Chart of the day

A look at the risk on/risk off environment.  (StockCharts Blog)

Markets

Checking in on depressed market valuations.  (Crossing Wall Street, Calafia Beach Pundit, allETF)

Checking in on some market stress indicators.  (MarketBeat)

Checking in on the 2-10 year Treasury spread.  (Crossing Wall Street also Pragmatic Capitalism)

The stock market has the distinct feel of a casino of late.  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

The myth of cash on the sidelines.  (Big Picture)

The bond bubble that wasn’t.  (Market Blog)

An explanation for why market crashes seem to come in September/October.  (All Star Charts)

Strategy

Josh Brown, “If you go into the close short, you’re a total pig. Come on, dude.”  (The Reformed Broker, ibid)

Barry Ritholtz, “The bottom line remains that investing is a proactive — not reactive — endeavor. If you respond to every twitch, every news story, each turn of the wheel, you will become whipsawed.”  (Big Picture)

An EKG of the crash.  (Market Anthropology)

On the advantages of options in a volatile market environment.  (Investing With Options)

Is this 2008 or 2009?  (A Dash of Insight)

Companies

If Leo Apotheker had to go shouldn’t Ray Lane go as well?  (Eric Jackson)

What is Hewlett-Packard ($HPQ) worth?  (Peridot Capitalist)

Is Facebook a new threat to Microsoft ($MSFT)?  (SplatF)

What do Nike’s ($NKE) performance tell us about the global consumer?  (Crackerjack Finance)

Yum! Brands ($YUM) slims down.  (Dealbook)

ETFs

Morningstar ($MORN) is going to start covering managed ETF portfolios.  (InvestmentNews)

Leveraged ETFs are not for retail investors.  (FT Alphaville)

Finance

Money market funds continue to slash their exposure to European banks.  (FT, FT Alphaville)

Pension funds are getting crushed by super low long term interest rates. (WSJ, FT)

Global

Two really bad scenarios for Greece and Europe.  (Bronte Capital)

Local currency emerging market bonds have not served as a safe haven.  (beyondbrics)

The EU wants to speed up the recapitalization of 16 troubled banks.  (FT)

The continued case for emerging markets.  (Fortune)

The Australian dollar is caught in the downdraft.  (MacroBusiness)

What are Greeks going to do with their bank deposits?  (FT Alphaville)

The Fed

Speculation about what (if anything) can the Fed do next?  (WSJ, The Source, Economist’s View)

The Fed is “not going to jam it on.”  (naked capitalism)

The Fed is already doing the heavy lifting according to the Leading Economic Indicators.  (EconomPic Data)

The effects of Operation Twist will be modest at best.  (Econbrowser, Freakonomics)

Economy

The ECRI WLI continues its downward trek.  (MarketBeat)

The rail economy is not yet in recession.  (Bloomberg)

Telling.  US gasoline demand is at a 10-year low.  (Real Time Economics)

Why low mortgage rates are not translating into mass refinancings.  (Calculated Risk)

We still haven’t come to terms with the financial crisis.  (Project Syndicate)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

In praise of doing very little.  (Abnormal Returns)

What you missed in our Friday morning linkfest.  (Abnormal Returns)

Mixed media

How Business Insider plays the pageview game.  (Ryan McCarthy, Marco Ament contra Business Insider)

Watching Moneyball with Bill James.  (Businessweek)

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