A big jump in consumer confidence from three-year lows is usually a good sign for the stock market.  (Sentiment’s Edge)

“It doesn’t take much in this environment to spark a relief rally coming out of earnings.”  (Breakout Peformance)

Don’t underplay the importance of the beginnings of a bull market.  (Fundamental Insights)

“Drawing macro conclusions from the performance of small-cap stocks is a risky endeavor.”  (Sentiment’s Edge)

Using high yield bond volatility as in indicator of market sentiment.  (TraderFeed)

If nothing else, swine flu news will provide fodder for market volatility for some time to come.  (Breakingviews)

While there were other things going on at the time, a look at how the stock market reacted to the 1918 Spanish Flu.  (Bespoke)

“Let’s consider these two core beliefs of modern investing: the reliability of stocks as the higher-return asset class and the efficacy of bonds in portfolio diversification and in risk reduction. On careful inspection, we find many misconceptions in these core views of modern finance.”  (IndexUniverse.com)

“Fairholme (FAIRX) shows you can follow the spirit of Buffett’s moves without blindly aping them.”  (Morningstar.com)

“A binary [trading] strategy that merely produces buy and sell signals is not very expressive at all: it voices full confidence or complete doubt about the asset every time it speaks.”  (Condor Options)

On the responsibility of finance blogs to document their sources.  (A Dash of Insight)

Publicly traded investment banks are a bad idea.  (Curious Capitalist)

More people are going to start thinking about “countries going to zero” than ever before.  (Felix Salmon)

It is hard to justify what people are currently paying for GM shares.  (Ideas Report, MarketBeat, Market Talk)

With bankruptcy looming, can General Motors (GM) get 90% of bondholders to agree to a restructuring?  (WSJ.com, Clusterstock, The Hearing, FT.com, Breakingviews)

Chrysler apparently did.  (WashingtonPost.com)

“There’s nothing wrong with stress-testing the banks. The problem is when the results are ignored.”  (NYTimes.com)

Bank of America (BAC) and Citigroup (C) are in the stress test spotlight.  (WSJ.com, Clusterstock, naked capitalism)

“Unconventional monetary policy” is going to be with us for quite some time to come. (Mankiw Blog)

“The Geithner presidency seems to have represented the high point of a long tradition of cozy relationships between the head of the New York Fed and the banks it supervised.”  (Baseline Scenario also Felix Salmon)

“Given the behavior of bankers before the crisis and of shifty policymakers during, we have every reason to watch warily and to insist upon every precaution while we hand over suitcase after suitcase of freshly printed Federal Reserve notes.”  (Interfluidity)

The rate of decline in housing prices has eased.  (Real Time Economics, Calculated Risk)

Mexico is having a bad 2009, and that does not take into account the astonishing drop in oil production.  (Foreign Policy, Gregor.us)

Blaming the Chicago School of economics for today’s economic ills is off-base.  (Free exchange)

Why a global market idea for ideas (and products) is better for everyone.  Alex Tabarrok on economic growth.  (TED.com also Infectious Greed)

News abuzzing about Apple (AAPL), Verizon (VZ) and the possiblity of two new iPhone-related products.  (BusinessWeek.com, Silicon Alley Insider, Gizmodo)

Could Portfolio magazine have been saved?  (The Big Money also Slate.com, BuzzMachine)

Blogging doesn’t pay the bills, even for the highest profile bloggers.  (FT Alphaville also footnoted.org)

Is Twitter-envy going to doom Facebook?  (The Big Money)

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