Once, in Thessaly, there was a poet called Simonides. He was commissioned to appear at a banquet, given by a man called Scopas, and recite a lyric in praise of his host. Poets have strange vagaries, and in his lyric Simonides incorporated verses in praise of Castor and Pollux, the Heavenly Twins. Scopas was sulky,…

This was an amazing honor this week, even more thrilling because of how much respect I have for so many others on the list… From the Wall Street Journal: Twitter has become an increasingly popular way to share news and analysis. But, for the most part, financial advisers were generally hesitant to step into the…

Bank of America’s private wealth management (the old US Trust) Chief Investment Officer Christoper Hyzy is out with some rather bullish commentary on the heels of Friday’s employment report from the BLS.  Chris believes we are somewhere in the middle of the economic cycle and there’s plenty of room left for risk assets to perform….

I had an on-air debate with CNBC’s Steve Leisman the other day about why investors and traders shouldn’t fuss too much over economic data (unless they’re trading based on it each day). It’s a difficult concept to grasp when you’re trained to look for narratives and storylines as most journalists are. Steve is a very…

Ray Dalio’s firm Bridgewater Associates continues to bulk up and the best-of-breed hiring our of Harvard and Yale has become noticeable. Dan Gross chronicles the two-way love affair between the zen master and the Ivy kids at the Daily Beast: Bridgewater, which has 1,300 employees, isn’t for ex-jocks or day traders. Rather, it tends to…

Mr. Flynn has been through two booms and busts in the 13 years since his investing travails were first chronicled in The Wall Street Journal. In those days, Bill’s Barber Shop was a hub of stock-market fever. Mr. Flynn…was hot on technology stocks, with a special passion for data-storage company EMC Corp. There’s a really…

Video.

William Cohan’s monster article on Bill Ackman and his Herbalife battle has finally seen the light of day…

Today, in case you’ve lost track, is the fourth anniversary of the March 9th “Generational Bottom” for the stock market. We are now headed into the fifth year of what many of us have been calling “The Impossible Rally” and I thought this would be a good time to recap and reflect. Today, four years…

The below interesting little tidbits of data on our recent rally come to us from BTN Research by way of ETF provider Direxion… ♦ The S&P 500 gained +6.6% (total return) during the first 2 months of 2013, 67% of the average annual total return achieved over the last 50 calendar years. ♦ 7 of…