The biggest headfake for investors of the entire year occurred on September 18th when the FOMC shocked The Street with its No Taper decision. Virtually no one expected it and the initial reaction that day was a massive, high octane rally across the entire spectrum of risk assets. But it was a false move, it…

Janet Yellen is official according to the New York Times… WASHINGTON — President Obama will nominate Janet L. Yellen as chairwoman of the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, White House officials said Tuesday night, ending an unusually prolonged and public search to fill one of the most important economic policy-making jobs in the world. Ms. Yellen,…

I’m shoulder-deep in conference business today so forgive my absence. The livestream is available over at The Big Picture blog here. For your reading pleasure, I suggest checking out Abnormal Returns. More later!

This morning Fortune Magazine published my thoughts on the upcoming Twitter IPO. In the piece, I talk about what my game plan is to play it, why it won’t be anything like the Facebook mess and how the media will probably get the narrative wrong in the days leading up to the deal. I’ve given…

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As I write, the S&P is indicating a down-1% open as the shenanigans from Washington have ceased to be cute. I’ve written about why the markets have been able to shrug the fiscal fight off so far – owing mainly to a sentiment shift after a near limitless rewards program for dip-buyers. This morning, there…

From wknd notes by Eric Peters: World War Z: “M&A activity’s down 50% from last yr,” explained the banker. “Buyers wildly chase growth, but there’s no growth.” The backlog of companies with no top-line growth, sitting in private equity portfolios is staggering. “Yet the IPO mkt for fast growing tech companies is on fire, no one…

If you’re not familiar with Veryan Allen, he writes these insanely awesome rants about how the passive indexing cult is clueless and real alpha is out there for real managers to capture. I love reading his stuff, even when I disagree with some of it. He’s just tweeted a link to a classic post on…

What a difference a rally makes. I’ve had a dozen or so reporters ask me this week why the markets weren’t expressing any real concern about the fact that the government is shutdown. I’d told them all that if this were taking in place in 2011 or even early 2012, we’d have been back to…