Trader Talk

• The Merrill Lynch financial stress index shows some hefty risk taking


• Stock buybacks are huge


• Econday's weekly recap provides a nice summation


• Stock sales by America's corporate chieftains exceeded purchases last month by the widest margin since 1987


• "Investment newsletter editors are about as bullish as they have been in nearly five years and that doesn't bode well for the stock market." - Mark Hulbert


• Meanwhile, the majority of bloggers are bearish (I'm currently neutral)


• Millionaires lose hope in economy


• Ike Iossif's weekly charts


• Five measures which generally suggest that the stock market is reasonably priced, though not in bargain territory ($)


• Goldilocks' wake-up call


• Tobin Smith does some bullish cheerleading


• Thomas Ko is worried about earnings


• The best guru quotes of November 2006


• Even the hedge funds are getting bought out


• Investors snuggle up to stock exchanges as shares soar


• The biggest customers of the NYSE and the NASDAQ are turning into their most dangerous competitors


• SEC eyes new rule to make US exit easier ($)


• Citadel's trading costs hit $5.5 billion ($)


• Amaranth's $6.6 billion dollar slide began with a trader's bid to quit


• Send in the hedge fund clones


• Credit derivatives: toxic or magic?


• The short take on worldwide growth


• China overtakes Japan on R&D ($)


• Did you know that the richest 2% of adults own more than 50% of the world’s assets while the poorest half hold only 1% of wealth?


• A behind-the-scenes guide to the things we buy


• Two of the three legs on which the consumer-dependent economy depends are wobbly ($)


• Standard & Poor's expects oil and gas stocks to outperform the market in the months ahead


• Why some believe the price of oil will be stuck between $50 to $65 per barrel for some time


• As alternative energy heats up, environmental concerns grow ($)


• The Dems will likely push for some type of carbon-emissions controls


• Biofuel may cause oil slump


• Why global warming threatens U.S. businesses


• "We continue to believe the yield curve in the U.S. has been driven into inversion by two forces: the global liquidity glut, which has allowed bond valuations to come unglued from the fundamentals; and expectations that the Fed will sanction 75 to 100 basis points of rate cuts next year. If we look at major macro variables that led up to the 2001 recession -- and the deflation scare that occurred one year later -- we would have to conclude that a growth acceleration and inflation scare is the more likely scenario for 2007 than the converse." - Michael T. Darda


• Fed Funds Futures


• The Fed has lost control over interest rates?


• Can you imagine how the market will perform when (not if) the Fed does sound a warning? ($)


• Is the stock market finally listening to the bond market?


• Marketocracy's best online stock pickers are bullish on gold


• Did you know that frillion isn't an actual number?


• What statistics on home sales aren't saying


• Just as the Fed had hoped - refinancing surges


• Seeking Alpha's housing bubble and real estate market tracker


• The flip side of the subprime mortgage boom ($)


• Where does your city rank in the foreclosure boom?


• If Mr. Toll's history of predictions is any guide, be afraid


• The Fed still isn't worried about housing weakness


• The carry trade in U.S. housing looks to be over


• Prudent Trader's market & sector review


• TickerSense looks at sector correlations during the 5th year of bull markets


• Industries with elevated sell/buy ratios and/or insider selling in November (via Yaser Anwar)


• Trading the Chart's market newsletter


• Tilson's Value Investor newsletter is always interesting


• "To state it simply, you are going to outlive almost any company you could invest in today." - TraderGordo


• It seems like everybody likes to take pot shots at Jim Cramer


• Despite lackluster performance this year, NetEase.com (NTES) seems to have its share of fans


• Along with the hedge funds, Yaser thinks MO is a buy


• Cisco Systems sets sights on India


• Mums the word on Pfizer's fallout


• Yahoo shakeout


• HXM sets a new 52-week high. Remember seeing that here?


• Marketwatch's best and worst CEOs


• Top 20 largest consolidated short positions


• Significant insider buys


• Stockpickr's stocks most likely to surprise


• StockTickr's stock tags


• Quantum Trading's low priced holdings


• Goldman Sachs' top tech picks


• IBD's tech screen of the day


• Stocks with both inverted and regular head-and-shoulders patterns


• The best and worst performing stocks in the Russell 3000 over three time frames


• Domash's 9 losers ready to bounce back


• A screen of the worst performance stocks over $20? Here are a few: ABFS, BN, CTCM, EAGL, EHTH, ENDP, EYE, FNF, FOXH, FRO, GGC, HLEX, HTE, IPSU, LIFC, MWRK, MZZ, NETL, PWI, PZZA, RRGB, SAIA, SBCF, TAM, and WIRE


• WIRE (see above) is one of Dorfman's small-stock bargains


• FOXH (see above) is a Morningstar favorite


• 5 beaten-up blue chips


• Wall Street Select's market sectors offers nice and simple sorting functions


• I'm not surprised at this research that says find that it is better to be a buyer of gaps down than gaps up


• Dennis Gartman's not-so-simple rules of trading


• The undisciplined trades always hurt the most


• What you can learn from the opening minutes of trading


• A trading day with The Doc


• So true - it is not the cards you are dealt but how you play them


• 23 Lessons from one of my favorite books


• Always keep your perspective - having lots of a cash is much better than not having enough


• A very basic premarket preparation checklist


• Call options, leaps, and warrants 101


• For the great majority of investors, making money requires a plan, self-discipline and desire


• By repeatedly committing one or several common investment mistakes, individual investors often prove to be their own worst enemy


• Procrastination is the enemy of all investors


• Do-it-yourself investors win the race


• Morningstar's best stocking-stuffer mutual funds


• The Oscars of Indexing


• Index fund fees can vary widely


• The logic of bond ETFs


• The Financial Preferred fund may be the most anticipated ETF in a long time


• Save on taxes with ETFs


• Mutual fund success has taxing ramifications this year


• Health Savings Account answers


• Six important tax changes you may have missed


• How much is sitting in your rainy day emergency fund?


• The golden rule for everyone (but especially traders), live within your means


• Track, share, and compare your net worth


• I rarely if ever answer the phone, but when I do, I'm going to keep this website handy


• Some of the weird, wild and wonderful events of 2006


• More news websites designed for mobile web browsers


• Pageflakes is a nifty way to keep track of your favorite blogs and other info. Here's a direct link to my RSS feed


• 27/7 Wall St.'s 20 best financial blogs


• How to turn a Yahoo news search into a real-time news ticker


• "The problem of junk e-mail will be solved by 2006." - Bill Gates


• Asteroid's Revenge


• 22 ways to overclock your brain (good tips for traders)


• VolunteerMatch is useful for those of us who want to give back next year


• Interesting discoveries in happiness research ($)


• "The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with but whether it's the same problem you had last year." - John Foster Dulles