Monday means two things at Abnormal Returns HQ. First, the Carnival of Investing is up over at MyMoneyBlog. Second, the Ticker Sense Blogger Sentiment Poll is up and is showing a noticeable rise in bulllish sentiment.

Brett Steenbarger at TraderFeed has a longer-term look at a familiar stock.

Speaking of peak earnings, DealBook reminds us of a piece in Barron’s on the question of whether brokerage earnings have topped out.

Tom Lydon at ETF Trends highlights an interesting sign of rationality in the world of ETFs.

On the subject of buybacks, Ticker Sense does some interesting math on the wisdom of one prominent company’s proposed stock buyback program.

Paul Kedrosky at Infectious Greed on the growing clarity of Google’s (GOOG) plan to invade the applications space.

Rob Hof at BusinessWeek.com looks at how Google’s application plans may impact Microsoft (MSFT).

Roger Ehrenberg at Information Arbitrage on the link between “stock spam” and the urge to gamble. DealBook also weighs in on the topic.

James Surowiecki at the New Yorker looks at the hostage situation that is the relationship between domestic automakers and their dealer networks.

Eduardo Porter and Geraldine Fabrikant in the New York Times on research showing that few, if any, movie stars can actually move the needle on the box office.

Matthew Lynn at Bloomberg.com on what is not all that surprising that Tom Cruise’s production company found funding from hedge funds.

Speaking of creative types, Kathleen Fackelman in the USA Today looks at a new book on the creative process, including a “creativity workout.”

Say it isn’t so! There is evidence that the Snakes on a Plane internet hype buzzsaw may have be artificially manipulated. (via Freakonomics Blog)

Do you know the probability of your team making the playoffs this year? It has got to be better than our team’s .00027%. (via The Daily Fix)

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