“If you’re in the business of making market calls, you’re going to wrong. That’s just how it is. I’m wrong all the time. So is Jim Cramer. It happens. But I won’t tolerate someone trying to run away from their calls. There’s no excuse for that.”  (Crossing Wall Street)

Will investors in Covestor and kaChing‘s new investment accounts fare any better than they would have in mutual funds or ETFs?  (Abnormal Returns also Kirk Report)

What time frame is the promising for individual traders?  (CSS Analytics, A Dash of Insight)

“There is now only one problem with the rally in stocks…CNBC and some real shitty money managers are getting off the hook. I hate that more than anything. Some time the guilty just get off.”  (Howard Lindzon)

Should we care if the VIX dips below 20?  (Bespoke, Daily Options Report)

“The real issue here is that the idea of monolithic bond indexes just doesn’t work.”  (IndexUniverse)

More notes from the Value Investing Congress.  (footnoted, Rolfe Winkler, market folly, Deal Journal)

Breaking down how a (non-leveraged) mutual fund returned 121% YTD.  (Morningstar)

What lessons did investors learn from Black Monday?  (Floyd Norris)

“For all the damage from the crisis, the exposure of ordinary folks — Main Streeters — to the financial markets looks to remain at best unchanged and at worst more extensive than when the crisis began.”  (Dealscape)

“Hard and fast rules like this “fill the gap” belief were made to be broken.”  (The Reformed Broker)

Apparently investors in Galleon Group hedge funds don’t want their money with an accused inside trader.  (WSJ, Dealbreaker, Clusterstock)

Where is the line between insider trading and just good old fashioned information?  (NYTimes)

A blunt tool, a windfall profits tax, is being wielded against bonus-paying banks.  (Big Picture, Economist)

“By failing to withdraw its support of an overtly strong dollar when one was no longer desirable (quite the contrary), the US Treasury has done America and the rest of the world a disservice.”  (Macro Man)

A slew of currency pairs are at or near parity with the US dollar.  (The Money Game)

Brazil puts the kibbosh on financial inflows with a 2% tax.  (WSJ, FT Alphaville)

China still has a bunch of stimulus in the pipeline.  (The Pragmatic Capitalist)

The commercial real estate decline has a ways to go.  (EconomPic Data, Calculated Risk)

A nice primer on relative strength rotation models.  (Market Rewind)

Apple (AAPL) reports blow out earnings.  Is the stock now overvalued? (Bespoke, ROI)

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