Investors in common stocks tend to ignore warning signs coming from the credit markets, often at their peril. Right now, the credit markets are broadcasting the following warning: The equity of overleveraged REITs is at risk of elimination or permanent impairment.

ChartoftheDay.com had an update of their chart labeled “Depression-Era Bear Market Rallies (Dow 1929-1932)” which is interesting in many, many ways, starting with the fact that it only concerns one particular three-year span, which implies that thereafter there were no more bear market rallies of note, …

But the surge in pay is still keeping millionaires on the sidelines.  Simon Mellon, of our new Bonner and Partners Family Office service, has been eyeing the sentiment of high net worth Americans.  And the picture ain’t pretty.

The markets have been choppy over the last couple of days. This is hardly surprising, with one of the most bizarre quarters in living memory drawing to close. To say recent indicators are a “mixed bag” is an understatement Consider the following (hat tip, Dave Rosenberg, Gluskin Sheff):

It’s the end.

In 1961, the great free-market economist Milton Friedman wrote a paper called “The Lag in Effect of Monetary Policy,” wherein he discovered a six- to nine-month delay in how long it would take for a change in monetary policy to be felt in the economy and the stock market.

Native Tennessean John Templeton saw Hitler’s army roll up one Central European country after another and then take aim at Western Europe. Companies left and right were falling into bankruptcy. Stocks were nose-diving, many going for under historic lows. So what did John do at the height of this nightmarish freefall?

Iron Ore Rising… Is the current rally in stocks is just a bear market variety, or is it the real thing? The debate has been going on for quite some time now…

“Little else is required,” Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations, once remarked, “to carry a state to the highest degree of affluence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”

“Little else is required,” Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations, once remarked, “to carry a state to the highest degree of affluence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”