The stock market is as oversold as it was back in March 2009.  (Bespoke)

What is mutual fund cash telling us about the market?  (Marketwatch)

Is America’s “broken equity culture” ultimately going to lead to lower returns down the road?  (Barron’s)

Distressed debt and arbitrage strategies had positive returns in January.  (FINalternatives)

Marking the top in the high yield bond market.  (Distressed Debt Investing)

Are investors piling into the BlackRock iShares TIPS ETF (TIP) going to be disappointed?  (IndexUniverse, ibid)

Does Pimco have a better way of weighting a global bond index?  (Morningstar)

Investors are pulling back from the emerging markets.  (The Money Game)

Five themes that play off of the divergence between industrialized and emerging economies.  (market folly)

Exotic ETFs do not have the tax efficiency of plain vanilla index ETFs.  (DailyFinance)

Institutional money managers trade more than they tell clients they will.  (WSJ)

Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB) is entering the S&P 500 on Friday.  What to expect?  (Barron’s)

Don’t overlook the benefits of portfolio rebalancing.  (Capital Spectator)

In defense of the management of the United States Oil Fund (USO).  (FT Alphaville)

Apparently the coast is clear for private equity dividends again.  (NYTimes)

Goldman Sachs (GS) responds to its critics, blog-style.  (Huffington Post, Felix Salmon, Gapper Blog, Deal Journal)

The US dollar is going down, on an inflation-adjusted basis, whether Bloomberg says it is or not.  (Finance Trends Matter)

Howard Simons, “Just because the value of paper money is declining doesn’t mean the value of a static asset has to be increasing at an equal and opposite rate.”  (Minyanville)

Is the Fed making it too easy to borrow short and lend long?  (The Money Game)

The good news coming from the temporary job market.  (Atlantic Business)

How the Federal Reserve plans to mop up the excess liquidity sloshing around the financial system.  (WashingtonPost also Fox Business)

Elizabeth Warren takes Wall Street to task for throwing away their customer’s trust.  (WSJ also Baseline Scenario)

Are the wise old men back in charge of fiscal policy?  (Guardian)

Given its relative size why are we so worried about Greece?  (Free exchange)

Venture capital went from “cottage industry” to “asset class.”  What now?  (Institutional Investor)

On the relationship between fear and loss aversion.  (Reuters also Scientific American, TraderFeed)

How is neuroeconomics changing economics?  (The Psy-Fi Blog)

Morningstar (MORN) acquires the excellent footnoted.org blog.  (footnoted)

What induces people to e-mail a New York Times story?  (NYTimes)

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

“It may be hard to believe, but 35% of the S&P 500’s gains since the start of 2009 have now been erased over a span of less than 14 trading days.”  (Bespoke)

Is the secular bull market in bonds coming to an end?  (Big Picture)

Why haven’t higher sovereign CDS rates been reflected in bond yields?  (FT Alphaville)

PIMCO favors emerging market (and German) bonds.  (WSJ)

Peaks in leading economic indicators are not great for market returns.  (The Money Game also FT Alphaville)

Why is lumber continuing to power higher?  (The Pragmatic Capitalist)

Listening Nouriel Roubini would have been a mistake last year.  (Telegraph UK)

The volatility of the VIX has surged.   (Daily Options Report also WSJ)

ETFs have joined the rest of the mutual fund complex in a battle of branding.  (New Rules of Investing)

Some Bogleheads are anxious that Vanguard is getting into alternative investments.  (FT)

Roger Nusbaum, “Investment products aren’t greed-causing or speculative in and of themselves. They may create the means with which to express those behaviors.”  (TheStreet)

“For all the concern over the $1.6 trillion U.S. budget deficit and record debt load, the dollar is as valuable now as 35 years ago.”  (Bloomberg)

Where will the Euro bottom?  (VIX and More)

Simon Johnson, “The euro depreciates, the dollar strengthens, and our path to recovery starts to run more uphill.”  (Baseline Scenario)

Is Greece the first step in a “global margin call“?  (naked capitalism)

John Thain takes over CIT Group (CIT).  (NYTimes, naked capitalism, FT Alphaville)

Felix Salmon, “It’s crucial, in financial markets, that investors walk into risky asset classes with their eyes open, rather than kidding themselves that they can simply hedge those risks away by buying a fancy financial product from Citigroup.”  (Reuters also Risk)

Bryan Caplan, “None of this means that mood is the whole story.   Mood, market conditions, and policy all interact.”  (EconLog)

Deflation is back on the table.  (Econbrowser)

Males aged 25-54 are increasingly not employed.  (Brad DeLong)

Is a value-added tax or VAT the inevitable fix to the budget deficit?  (CNNMoney)

Economic populism is a function of the poor economy.  (New Yorker)

Is Canada facing its own housing bubble?  (WSJ)

“I take issue with Krugman’s “partisanization” of economics – if I could coin a new word”  (Kid Dynamite)

“Despite all my jurisprudential research, I have been unable to locate a statutory basis for the right to cheap insurance.”  (finem respice)

How winning streaks end:  “Winners become sinners when confidence turns into complacency and arrogance.”  (HBR)

Jeff Jarvis, “If you are selling a scarcity — an inventory — of any nonphysical goods today, stop, turn around, and start selling value — outcomes — instead. Or you’re screwed.”  (Buzz Machine)

Ten reasons Sherlock Holmes is the ideal VC.  (peHUB)

Check out who made this “all star team of online finance.”  (New Rules of Investing)

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

More oversold readings.  (Bespoke)

Investment sentiment at week-end.  (Trader’s Narrative, The Technical Take)

Doug Kass thinks it might be time to start getting greedy again.  (TheStreet)

Nobody’s perfect. Paulson’s gold-focused hedge fund reportedly lost 14% in January.  (BusinessWeek also Clusterstock)

David Merkel, “(Y)ou can’t take illiquid assets and make them liquid.”  (Aleph Blog)

More iShares country ETFs are coming.  (ETF Trends)

Is this the beginning of a wave of fund conversions into actively managed ETFs?  (WSJ)

Where Burton Malkiel puts his own money.  (DealBook also Random Roger)

Why your time frame matters.  (A Dash of Insight)

Fund companies now realize their target date funds were a tad too aggressive.  (WSJ)

How can faith be restored in Wall Street?  (WSJ)

An awesome idea.  Pay bankers with subordinated debt.  (Clusterstock)

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein only earns a $9 million bonus in 2009.  (FT, Deal Journal, Felix Salmon)

“It’s a hell of a lot harder to build a new set of railway tracks than it is to set up a new website.”  (Psy-Fi Blog)

Short-selling bans, at best, had a neutral effect on stock prices.  (voxEU)

Five ways to improve your trading including;  “Improving risk-adjusted returns is as important for a long-term career as improving absolute returns.”  (TraderFeed)

The US dollar is still king, for now.  (Real Time Economics)

The three (not so great) ways out of the PIIGS problem.  (Rolfe Winkler also The Money Game)

Can the US stand by while Europe deals with its own fiscal problems?  (Baseline Scenario, ibid)

Can there be investment banks without conflicts of interest?  (Justin Fox)

Oh, the irony.  (DJ Market Talk)

Floyd Norris, “A global recovery in manufacturing appears to be accelerating.”  (NYTimes)

An unprecedented contraction in consumer credit continues apace.  (Calculated Risk)

David Altig, “What are we to make of the productivity gains in the United States relative to other countries?”  (macroblog)

Five myths of job creation.  (WashingtonPost)

What David Wessel (and Daniel Gross) learned from Hank Paulson’s book.  (Real Time Economics also Washington Post)

Gregor Macdonald, “21st century energy prices overlaid on a 20th century economy? That’s no fun at all.”  (Gregor)

The returns to writing a book, aka Bookonomics, are pretty dismal.  (Big Picture)

The economics of supermarkets prior to a blizzard.  (EconLog, Marginal Revolution)

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

Bearish sentiment is on the rise.  (The Pragmatic Capitalist)

Pullback or new bear market?  (VIX and More)

Adam Warner, “Well, you don’t need a chart to tell you volatility is percolating.”  (Daily Options Report, ibid)

Post BGI, Blackrock (BLK) is now the largest money manager in the world.  (Morningstar)

Some interesting discussion about how multi-strategy was the best hedge fund structure to take advantage of alpha opportunities.  (market folly)

Which Nassim Taleb “investment advice” should we listen to?  (Felix Salmon)

Just what the MAVINS all about? (Wall St. Cheat Sheet)

Ten investment trends including:  “Diversification will remain key.”  (Capital Spectator)

The Burlington Northern acquisition costs Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) its AAA rating. (24/7 Wall St.)

Jeff Matthews on how the Burlington Northern deal will transform Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A).  (Tech Ticker)

Kraft (KFT) had no problem raising funds via debt to close the Cadbury acquisition.  (Breakingviews)

Commission-free trading of ETFs IS a great deal for smaller investors.  (IndexUniverse)

Can Microsoft (MSFT) become a “very different company”?  (GigaOm)

Does GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) have the right formula for improving research productivity?  (Gapper Blog)

A new paper argues that high frequency traders need to have controls in place to avoid high-speed errors.  (Real Time Economics)

Neat graphics on the shadow banking system and what the Volcker Rule might cover.  (Rortybomb)

Goldman Sachs (GS) continues to claim it did not need government assistance.  (Atlantic Business)

Tim Duy, “In this environment, I don’t see how the Fed is interested in substantially tightening policy – but I can see how some policymakers could perceive that their hand was forced if they see a string of upside surprises in growth indicators..”  (Economist’s View)

Anal_yst, “We must accept the fact that the crisis wasn’t caused just by bad actors on Wall Street, but by Main Street, as well.”  (Atlantic Business)

Carmen Reinhart, “..historically, following a wave of financial crises especially in financial centers, you get a wave of defaults. You go from financial crises to sovereign debt crises. I think we’re in for a period where that kind of scenario is very likely.”  (Real Time Economics)

No wonder the US CDS prices have risen so much.  (Fund My Mutual Fund, Bespoke)

Drop in unemployment rate aside, this has been the worst post-War employment recession.  (Calculated Risk also The Reformed Broker, The Pragmatic Capitalist, EconomPic Data, Economix, Big Picture)

Will 5%+ mortgage rates scare off potential home buyers?  (24/7 Wall St.)

Brett Steenbarger, “Market technician Joe Granville famously asserted that if it’s obvious, it’s obviously wrong.  That’s the salience principle, and it’s why impulsive trades so often are losers.”  (TraderFeed)

On the difference between process and outcome.  (Farnam Street)

Bonuses affect activity, not necessarily performance.  (Wired UK)

A review of James Picerno’s new book “Dynamic Asset Allocation: Modern Portfolio Theory Updated for the Smart Investor.”  (CFA Institute)

This season what NFL teams generated the most “alpha”?  (Analytic Investors via InvestmentNews)

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

What the timber market is telling us about the housing economy.  (Minyanville)

Mutual fund investors are still positioned quite conservatively.  (The Pragmatic Capitalist)

Altman says bond default rates could fall but 2011 could be trouble if the economy doesn’t turn.  (DealBook)

Can you base an investment strategy on the turn-of-the-month effect?  (Crossing Wall Street)

Should investors take a more active approach to commodity investing?  (IndexUniverse)

Adam Warner, “But pick virtually any timeframe and you will come to the same conclusion. VXX is a terrible portfolio hedge.” (Daily Options Report)

Market volatility, as measured by 1% days, is on the rise.  (Bespoke)

Investors don’t spend enough time thinking as opposed to doing.   (the research puzzle earlier Abnormal Returns)

John Bogle’s simple investing message has remained consistent over time.  (Morningstar)

Lower (or free) commissions make higher turnover strategies more attractive.  (VIX and More)

Mutual fund performance persistence is scarce except for bottom quartile losers.  (SSRN)

The active vs. passive debate reaches Norway’s “petroleum fund.” (Economist)

Using interest rates to help explain currency returns.  (SSRN)

Apparently short-sellers know what they are doing.  (CXO Advisory Group)

Felix Salmon, “The point is that it’s pretty much impossible to have a bubble in something which doesn’t have a liquid asset class supporting it. “  (Reuters)

Simon Johnson, “The Fed is apparently, at last, moving the right direction on the issue of “too big to fail”.  But how long will it take to get there?”  (Baseline Scenario)

Andy Kessler, “Increased [bank] reserves may be the best financial reform we can hope for without politicians mucking it up. “  (WSJ)

The FHA is kidding itself about default ratings.  (Clusterstock)

There is no wage inflation on the horizon.  (EconomPic Data)

Growing financial woes beset municipalities.  (Clusterstock, ibid)

Floyd Norris, “Can the world economic recovery continue with a stumbling Europe?”  (NYTimes)

Why the world remains so dependent on coal as an energy source.  (Free exchange)

Large pharma needs new business, scientific and organizational models.  (Knowledge@Wharton)

Just what is Prozac and other SSRIs actually good for?  (The Frontal Cortex)

Why Microsoft (MSFT) ceased innovating.  (Farnam Street)

An interesting interview with value investor Mariusz Skonieczny. (Simoleon Sense)

A profile of StockTwits CEO Howard Lindzon.  (Globe and Mail)

Why Twitter is a “vital part of the information economy..”  (Bits)

Copycat companies are everywhere.  Execution is what matters.  (Andy Swan)

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

Would a stock split move Apple (AAPL) stock higher?  (A Dash of Insight)

Commodities had had a rough start to the year.  (StockCharts Blog)

Another oversold metric.  (VIX and More)

A very long run view of the stock market.  (Crossing Wall Street)

What you exclude from an index may be just as important as what you include.  (Random Roger)

Japan is ripe with stocks trading below liquidation value.  (The Source)

A sector momentum strategy is less reliable than previously believed.  (CXO Advisory Group)

Can you guard your personal finances against the costs of higher deficits?  (ROI)

Why a buy and hold investment strategy may be the least worst option.  (The Psy-Fi Blog earlier Abnormal Returns)

What Dow Chemical (DOW) is telling us about the global economy.  (Value Plays)

Beware Russians bearing IPOs.  (DealBook)

Some REITs now have the problem of having too much cash.  (WSJ)

The chances of homeowners walking away from their mortgages increases as negative equity rises.  (Calculated Risk, naked capitalism)

Disentangling the many causes of the mortgage/financial crisis.  (Big Picture also DJ Market Talk)

Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS) will be able to evade the Volcker Rule.  (naked capitalism, Felix Salmon)

Round 2 of the AIG bonus controversy.  (WashingtonPost, DealBook)

The Fed quietly ends some of the lending facilities launched in the midst of the crisis.  (Real Time Economics)

A scary chart depicting subprime mortgage loss severity.  (Alea)

Core inflation measures are falling even though few believe it.  (Economist’s View)

Jim Chanos on the “malinvestment” problems in China.  (Credit Writedowns, designing better futures)

Michael Pettis, “The idea that massive levels of reserves are a guarantor of economic stability is, in other words, based on a profound misunderstanding both of history and of the nature of reserves.”  (China Financial Markets)

Findings from the inaugural ‘Economic Outlook: A Quarterly Survey of Top Economics Bloggers.’  (Kauffman Foundation)

An interview with Ed Thorpe.  (Infectious Greed, The Pragmatic Capitalist)

More on the online brokerage price wars.  (WSJ, 24/7 Wall St., Bucks)

Free ETF trading is not a boon to investors.  (IndexUniverse earlier Abnormal Returns)

Some resources for those of you interested in “piggyback investing.”  (New Rules of Investing)

A spreadsheet analyzing the profitability of the Oscar nominees.  (WSJ)

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

Fidelity’s lower commissions and commission-free trades in 25 iShares ETFs advances the online broker price war.  (Marketwatch, ETF Trends, Morningstar)

What is the “third generation ETF platform“?  (FT Alphaville)

Another oversold reading for the stock market.  (Bespoke)

Hedge funds had a quiet January.  (FINalternatives)

Ten largest hedge funds of 2009.  (HedgeCo.Net)

Mixed results from a couple of economic bellwethers.  (MarketBeat, DealZone)

Is Norway risking an asset bubble?  (Money Supply)

Has China switched from bull to bear?  (The Pragmatic Capitalist)

Australia decides to hold rates steady.  (FT Alphaville also Mish)

“Can one devise a way of spotting those countries which are most at risk from a debt crisis?”  (Buttonwood)

“Investor misreaction to crises, not economic fundamentals, appear to drive stock return predictability.” (CXO Advisory Group)

Ten year venture capital returns continue to slide.  (TechCrunch, techblog)

Roy Smith, “We need to do something about firms that are too big to fail. These firms have become loss transmitters and accelerators to the rest of the system.”  (Time)

The FHA has got itself a bit of a delinquency problem.  (WashingtonPost)

Home ownership rates are down to levels last seen in 2000.  (Calculated Risk)

Comparing US and EU unemployment rates.  (EconomPic Data)

Large pharmaceutical companies can shrink only so much.  They now need new financial and scientific models.  (Atlantic Business)

The madness behind the Tesla IPO. (The Big Money)

How are we going to charge of these new electric vehicles?  (Economist)

What is “cognitive fluency“?  (Street Capitalist)

An online finance wishlist.  (New Rules of Investing)

Good reason to wait for iPad version 2.0.  (TechCrunch)

Hedge funds got crushed by the problems at MGM.  (Gawker)

Oscar nominations announced.  How Oscar campaigns work.  (IMDB, WashingtonPost)

Talk about a lost decade.  The music industry saw its sales get cut in half in the past ten years.  (CNNMoney)

The debate over multi-tasking, attention, laptops and the classroom.  (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Giant squid=lower calamari prices.  (The Reformed Broker)

Your coffee sucks.  (DailyFinance)

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

The junk phase of the rally is over.  What next?  (The Reformed Broker)

2010 will be a year of “nuance” in asset class returns.  (Capital Spectator also Investment Postcards, EconomPic Data)

How much stock should we put into the small cap effect?  (MarketSci Blog also New Rules of Investing)

The bulls are nominally still in charge in the US equity market.  (Investment Postcards)

By this measure the correction has more to go.  (Big Picture)

February has not been that a great a month for the Dow historically.  (Bespoke)

Does sector performance have anything to do with happens in January?  (Kirk Report)

The market’s mood turned in January.  Is that an opportunity?  (Mean Street)

One year of the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX).  (VIX and More)

Why the CME Group (CME) should buy the Dow Jones index business.  (MarketBeat)

Check the spreads on an ETF before trading.  (WSJ)

What implied volatility tells us about future returns.  (CXO Advisory Group)

On the link between preparation and performance.  (TraderFeed)

Disentangling the effects of a CFA or MBA on investment performance.  (SSRN)

Finally some one found a bull on the economy and markets.  (Clusterstock)

Will merger arb hedge funds benefit from a pick up in MA& activity?  (All About Alpha)

UK and US natural gas prices diverge.  (FT Alphaville)

Will Goldman Sachs (GS) thumb its nose at the government by paying Lloyd Blankenfein $100 million?  (naked capitalism, Deal Journal, Felix Salmon, Dealbreaker)

Is private equity consolidation coming?  (WSJ)

Traders are fleeing the Euro.  (The Money Game)

Are Greek bonds the new subprime?  (MarketBeat)

Obama plans a $3.8 trillion budget. (WashingtonPost)

Confusion reigns as the deficit continues to balloon.  (24/7 Wall St., Atlantic Business, Rolfe Winkler)

“The financing backbone of the American mortgage market has effectively been transferred from the banks to the government.”  (FT Alphaville)

“The British screwed us,” Henry Paulson stated in regards to the British stance on a Lehman Brothers rescue.  (WSJ also Clusterstock, DealBook)

CIA agents are moonlighting for major financial institutions.  (Politico also Farnham Street)

Katie Fehrenbacher, “If investors actually respond positively to Tesla’s public offering, to me, it will mean that in this media-saturated day and age, branding is truly everything.”  (earth2tech)

A new monthly options magazine from the blogosphere’s best options bloggers.  (Expiring Monthly)

Take journalist’s stock picks with a big grain of salt.  (The Big Money)

The “disposition effect” shows up in NFL betting markets.  (SSRN)

The e-book business is getting all shook up.  (NYTimes, GigaOM, Tech Trader Daily)

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

The so-called January indicator in perspective.  (dshort)

The state of investor sentiment at week-end.  (Trader’s Narrative, The Technical Take)

Your equity portfolio allocations are all off.   (WSJ)

In praise of home bias.  (Aleph Blog)

Why are so many companies hoarding cash instead of paying out dividends?  (Barron’s)

Some much needed perspective on what it takes to become a successful trader.  (SMB Training)

On the need for and benefits of a trading sabbatical.  (Abnormal Returns)

A look at Whitney Tilson’s larget positions (long and short).  (market folly)

Why exactly is Warren Buffett buying Burlington Northern.  (Contrarian Edge)

Who is going to buy the Dow Jones index business?  (New Rules of Investing)

How your political leanings may affect your investing.  (NYTimes)

A closer examination of the intended and unintended consequences of leveraged and inverse ETFs.  (SSRN)

More reactions to the 4Q GDP estimates.  (Fundmastery Blog, Calculated Risk, Bespoke, Economist’s View, Atlantic Business)

According to ECRI the recovery is humming along.  (The Pragmatic Capitalist)

The Restaurant Index turns higher in December.  (Calculated Risk)

Robert Shiller, “In reality, business recessions are caused by a curious mix of rational and irrational behavior. “  (NYTimes also Economist’s View)

The laws of supply and demand at work in the housing market. (Floyd Norris)

No matter how you look at it the deficit picture is ugly.  (The Money Game)

Is the “Build America Bonds” program becoming permanent?  (WSJ)

A story of cynicism and institutional failure in corporate America.  (Chris Dixon also The Reformed Broker)

Tesla Motors files for an IPO.  (24/7 Wall St. also DealBook, Deal Journal)

Kevin Kelleher, “After 15 years, the evidence is pretty clear. The web is just not a part of Microsoft’s DNA.”  (GigaOM also The Reformed Broker)

Why are so many people, so interested in reading about Apple (AAPL)?  (MarketBeat)

Peter Kafka, “Apple has yet to sell its first e-book, but it is already engaged in a bruising battle with Amazon for control of the market.”  (All Things D)

How investors can combat confirmation bias.  (The Psy-Fi Blog)

Felix Salmon talks with Nouriel Roubini.  (Reuters)

Geography is destiny when it comes to Europe’s “alcohol belts.” (Strange Maps)

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

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. - Benjamin Franklin

Have you ever taken a structured break from your trading, not unlike that of an academic sabbatical?

For some one who spends their time tracking and trading the markets it seems like there is never enough time to do the reading and research necessary to advance one’s trading knowledge.  In this situation stagnation, or burnout if you like, is a likely outcome.

This was point was driven home this week when we read that El Bulli, the famed Spanish restaurant known for its widely creative cuisine announced it was going to close in two years time.  The chef/owner Ferran Adria plans to take time to re-balance his life, invest in R&D and find new ways of doing business.  (Matt Goulding in the Wall Street Journal has an interview with Adria.)

Most people would agree that cuisine as practiced by the likes of Adria is a highly creative endeavor.  We would argue that same thing could be said about trading as well.  However the relentless desire to be in front a trading screen can detract from the time needed to have some balance in one’s life and generate some measure of creativity.

Where one looks for that regeneration is a highly personal decision.  Academics take sabbaticals to study, write and sometimes teach.  For some it may mean physically going some place else.  For others it may mean holing up with a stack of books, or Kindle, you have been neglecting. The point being that traders are unlikely to do their best thinking in front a bank of monitors.

If Ferran Adria can close El Bulli, which has been named the best restaurant in the world by Restaurant magazine for four years in a row, you can take a few days away from trading to as Benjamin Franklin puts it to “invest in knowledge.”