Me, Myself & Irene

The East Coast is a mess even though Irene has been ultimately downgraded to a “Nuh-uh-riccane” by the Association of Storm Surveyors (A.S.S.) or some such organization.  I am fortunate to have power; the majority of people I know in my area are still living by candlelight and iPad illumination – just like in Abe Lincoln days.  We bought way to much food for the 12 hours we were couped up inside so I have a suspicion that the next few home-cooked meals around here will be of the Tostitos Casserole variety.

Anyway, market participants must have spent the weekend indoors pondering Bernanke’s Jackson Hole remarks and interpretting them positively – the lede of every article on the topic contains some kernel of “he left the door open for future stimulus/additional measures.”  The markets rallied Friday and are poised to follow through this morning as a result of Bernanke’s do-no-harm address combined with word of a massive Greek bank merger that’s lifted Europe overnight.

As for me, I’m forced to move a few items on the calendar to tomorrow as it doesn’t look like I can make it into Manhattan today (limited train service for the LIRR should come with a vial of hemlock for each passenger).  I’ll be grinding from the home office today and barking all kinds of orders for refreshments down to the kitchen.  It’s like a Norman Rockwell painting around here.

Anyway…

Don’t miss these charts of historical secular bear markets Barry has up this morning:  (The Big Picture)

And I really shouldn’t complain, for a look at how hard Irene hit Vermont and the Catskills region of NY (weird, right?), check out Henry Blodget’s collection of photos from the area:  (Business Insider)

Also, don’t miss my daily linkfest for financial advisors.  (WSJFA)

Also, with the summer winding down, I think my pal Chess perfectly nails his description of this market moment:

As another year of summer trading winds down, the S&P 500 is slightly down on the year. I find that to be quite reflective of the type of trading environment we have seen in 2011. It seemed early in the year that the “Bernanke Put” would push stocks higher in a perpetual straight line, whereas recently the steady stream of horrific headlines and persistent selling pressure and volatility all but assured a repeat of 2008. In reality, we are likely to be somewhere in the middle.

Check out the rest of his post here:

A Deviant Summer (iBankCoin)

More later…