The worst of 2008 were first in 2009.  (Bespoke)

Can’t wait until Tuesday.  (Sentiment’s Edge)

There is very little that indicates a momentum effect for the overall stock market.  (NYTimes)

It doesn’t get much better than this for the junk bond market.  (Barron’s)

Investor sentiment at week (and year) end.  (Trader’s Narrative, The Technical Take, Disciplined Approach to Investing)

Sometimes it pays to keep it simple when it comes to options.  (Barron’s)

Covered call strategies get all the press.  (WSJ)

The 2010 Buy List.  Performance of the 2009 Buy List.  (Crossing Wall Street, ibid)

Why closed-end funds are attractive targets for activist investors.  (Simoleon Sense)

Brett Steenbarger, “When frustrated traders attribute losses to general and persistent forces beyond their control…, there is no way that they can summon the motivation to make corrective efforts in trading and improve performance. ”  (TraderFeed)

“Acquiring great wealth in a spurious quest for happiness is a pointless and pathetic occupation.”  (The Psy-Fi Blog)

Conspiracy theories generate pageviews, but little in the way of investment insight.  (A Dash of Insight)

Were the bank stress tests the administration’s best economic decision in 2009?  (TNR also Atlantic Business)

Edward Harrison, “The reason economists failed to anticipate the crisis is because they were fixated on avoiding downturns and driving the economy to unsustainable growth rates by using debt to consume today what will be earned in the future.”  (Credit Writedowns)

Mortgage modification programs have made things worse.  (Business Insider, Big Picture, naked capitalism)

Rail freight traffic continue to expand  year-over-year.  (The Pragmatic Capitalist)

What we lost in relying on a bailout mentality in 2009.  (Nancy Miller)

Daniel Gross, “We’re in a Missouri economy now, one in which recovery has to be shown, not told.”  (Newsweek)

Ugly graph showing just how bad the economy was in the past decade.  (WashingtonPost)

The world’s most populous nations, outside the U.S., made great economic strides in the past decade.  (NYTimes)

To do inflation right, you have to be a little sneaky.”  (Rick Bookstaber)

The wireless carriers have some catching up to do on their 3/4G networks.  (Ultimi Barbarorum)

Jon Gruber on the much-rumored Apple Tablet, “I say they’re swinging big — redefining the experience of personal computing.”  (Daring Fireball)

Why Apple (AAPL) was company of the decade.  (GigaOM)

Why Twitter will endure.  (NYTimes also Parkman’s Blog)

Areas that Fred Wilson finds of interest.  (A VC)

Ron Lieber, “Savers are never losers, even if some stocks have let us all down in the short term.”  (NYTimes)

Where is the next “call of the decade” going to come from?  (The Reformed Broker)

Evil is as evil does.  Google (GOOG) shuts down the Bronte Capital blog.  (Felix Salmon, Clusterstock)

Costly signaling theory” helps explain why men can be conspicuous spenders.  (New Scientist)

Economists are cheap.  (WSJ also EconLog)

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