Insider sales surge as short interest plunges.  (TrimTabs via Kirk Report)

WTF AIG (AIG)?  (NYTimes, WSJ)

“So…if we have many panic buyers who have been chasing performance with long positions of questionable underlying value, then the potential for some high volatility trading in the next month or so may be higher than recent stock market activity has led many to believe.”  (VIX and More)

“The fact of the matter is that risk was not wrung out of the market five months ago. It only hibernated briefly. Not a single lesson was learned by some investors.”  (24/7 Wall St.)

“So if you are working hard and wrong, take a few steps back and go for a walk. Don’t get too stubborn as this market continues to do the unexpected.”  (Howard Lindzon)

“I think the popularity of high frequency trading will end not with a bang but a whimper. As the field gets increasingly crowded, market impact will rise and opportunities will diminish”  (Rick Bookstaber)

Valuation, not growth, drives country returns.  (Economist)

Are TIPS still attractive, when compared with fixed-rate bonds?”  (IndexUniverse)

“Long story short, this year we are going to have more natural gas than we need — or potentially even store.”  (Time also The Money Game)

What it takes to be a full-time investor.  (Controlled Greed)

Would speculators be deterred by a transactions tax?  (The Stash)

Did Bernie Madoff kill the hedge fund of fund business?  (All About Alpha)

Rail traffic and the irrelevance of the Baltic Dry Index.  (The Pragmatic Capitalist, Research Reloaded)

“A “huddle” is not a forum for sharing stock or sector “tips.” (Dealbreaker also FT Alphaville)

Financial education breeds overconfidence, and overconfidence was a much more important cause of the crisis than insufficient education was.”  (Felix Salmon also Clusterstock)

The TARP and the Fed are nice little profit centers for the US Treasury.  (Deal Journal, Real Time Economics)

Too big to fail banks have gotten bigger as more banks are added to the troubled list.  (WashingtonPost, ibid)

$9 trillion in deficits IS a big deal.  (Econbrowser)

“Japan has spent 20 years fighting deflation with loose monetary policy and deficit spending. To what end?”  (Rolfe Winkler)

A spate of recently filed private equity-backed IPOs.  (peHUB)

How Vizio became the number one seller of LCD TVs in the US.  (Gadgetwise Blog)

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