David Merkel, “Ignore anyone who tells you that debt levels don’t matter.”  (Aleph Blog)

Rydex market timers have abandoned precious metals.  (Trader’s Narrative)

Corporate stock buybacks have ticked up.  Beware. (Marketwatch, Minyanville)

Why is a defensive sector like the utilities down so much YTD?  (Afraid to Trade)

Jeff Miller’s own set of sentiment indicators show fear.  (A Dash of Insight)

Can a simple trading strategy like the 4×2 system beat the hedge funds at their own game?  (Financial Adviser)

The fund fee debate just heated up.  (WSJ)

Hell freezes over.  Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB) enters the S&P 500.  (WSJ)

“Simply put, Paulson & Co is betting on the devaluation of the US dollar. They see inflation in the cards for the future and are positioning themselves accordingly.”  (market folly, ibid)

What happens to oil prices when the Fed is increasing interest rates?  (UpsideTrader)

The pitfalls (and potential benefits) of breaking your own trading rules.  (Kirk Report)

How long is the long term?  (Morningstar)

How Apple (AAPL) could add $5 in earnings.  (Tech Trader Daily)

Unfavorable demographics” could lead to a doubling in long-term government bond yields in the US and UK.  (FT Alphaville)

Beware fund marketers pushing the relationship between economic growth and equity market returns.  (FT Alphaville)

Of course Goldman Sachs (GS) and other investment banks front-run their clients.  (Clusterstock also Deal Journal)

Yves Smith, “But why in God’s name does Goldman want or need to be a bank?”  (naked capitalism)

Keep an eye on the Claymore/AlphaShares China Real Estate ETF (TAO).  (VIX and More)

China is trying to cool its economy.  (Bloomberg also Atlantic Business)

On Greece, the EU is “all words and no action.”  (Mean Street also WashingtonPost, Baseline Scenario, Telegraph)

Sovereign risk is out of the bottle. There is no easy way of putting it back in.”  (Economist)

On the parallels between Greece and Bear Stearns.  (DealBook)

Why is European economic growth so slow:  “consumers within the euro zone are not spending enough and the strong currency is making it hard to tap demand in the rest of the world.”  (Economist)

Retail sales expand based on easy comparisons.  (Calculated Risk, EconomPic Data, DJ Market Talk)

How often should we expect a financial crisis?  (Big Picture)

Great graph of how the entire financial sector got too big for the overall economy.  (Economix)

Is “uncertainty” hurting bank lending or is it something more than that?  (peHUB)

How is Toyota like Citigroup and Goldman Sachs?   (Big Picture)

A talk with Scott Patterson author of “The Quants.”  (Tech Ticker, ibid)

Brett Arends, “Even before looking at all the transaction costs, diamonds have proven an absolutely disastrous investment for decades.”  (ROI)

Aggregators can’t extract value from your content if it is ordinary, because it is already worthless.  (Leigh Drogen)

Om Malik, “When I look at the iPad, I see a clean slate to reinvent pretty much how we think of media, information and in fact the whole user experience.”  (GigaOM)

Umair Haque, ” I think Google Buzz is actually really, really cool — it’s just not yet a meaningful service.”  (HBR)

The myth of efficiency and how purveyors of technology like Blackberry have profited.  (Baseline Scenario)

Do e-readers cause eye strain?  (Bits)

Spray-on liquid glass sounds cool.  (kottke)

Abnormal Returns Now is the real-time component of this site.  Check it out.

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