Ben Bernanke is Time Magazine’s “2009 Person of the Year” despite his broad unpopularity.  (Time also Clusterstock)

Rydex market timers are really bullish.  (The Technical Take)

Why there is so much skepticism about the stock market rally.  (The Pragmatic Capitalist)

The Crash Confidence Index still shows some anxiety out there.  (Bespoke)

Felix Salmon, “What’s the correlation between wealth and risk appetite?”  (Reuters)

Scott Burns, “The pricing wars are under way in ETF land, and investors are enjoying all the spoils.”  (Morningstar)

Jeff Miller, “In the investment world, there is little respect for the training and education of others.  There is a lot of attention to who has had the hot hand.  This is a serious mistake.”  (A Dash of Insight)

On the differences between fast and slow knowledge and why it matters for traders.  (Abnormal Returns)

Hedge fund of funds are lagging badly in 2009.  (WSJ)

Hedge funds vs. mutual funds.  (World Beta)

Alex Berenson, “SAC works differently. The firm has about 100 portfolio managers who work independently, each making investments that are relatively small compared with SAC’s overall portfolio and each paid based only on his own results.”  (NYTimes)

Despite a rough year money is still flowing into managed futures.  (Pensions & Investments)

Who knew?  Mutual funds that hold excessive cash outperform their cash poor cousins.  (SSRN)

Is the future for natural gas now clear?  (WSJ, ibid)

Distressed debt, by one definition, has disappeared from the US market.  (FT)

What Marty Whitman can teach us about distressed debt investing.  (Distressed Debt Investing)

How well-calibrated is the Morningstar Solvency Score.  (SSRN)

Game on.  Banks are poised for a CLO comeback.  (BusinessWeek)

Was 2009 the year of the market maker?  (FT Alphaville)

Citigroup (C) gets an early Christmas present from the Feds while Abu Dhabi looks to renege on an earlier deal.  (Calculated Risk, 24/7 Wall St.)

Has the venerable Goldman Sachs (GS) ethos changed for the worse?  (NYTimes)

Driving hedge funds offshore will do nothing to reduce systematic risk in the UK.  (Buttonwood)

The Obama administration has given up its leverage over the big banks.  (WashingtonPost)

Why are Fannie and Freddie getting a pass in financial reform legislation?  (Curious Capitalist)

Reversing the easing is going to be a tricky task for the Fed.  (FT)

Did businesses overdo job cuts in this recession?  (The Stash also EconomPic Data)

Another use for Google data – predicting unemployment rates.  (VoxEU)

Is Norway the ultimate safe haven?  (Rolfe Winkler)

Airlines are in for trouble if the downward trend in business travel continues.  (Atlantic Business)

How celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay can help make you a better trader.  (Investing With Options)

Mary Meeker needs an editor.  (Silicon Alley Insider)

Tiger Woods is helping to kill off the celebrity endorsement.  (Harvard Business also Daily Options Report)

The URL-shortener wars.  (The Atlantic Wire)

Just two more days to enter our big holiday book giveaway.  (Abnormal Returns)

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