Where are we now? Still in the Twilight Zone economy as far as we’re concerned. US stocks ended strongly on Friday. And they’re set to rise again today if Europe’s strong morning performance is anything to go by. Commodities are up too. Nymex crude oil futures are at $74.24 a barrel at writing. Gold is trading at $953.50 an ounce – not far off Friday’s one-week high.

Our own bearish beliefs remain unchanged. From day one, we’ve said the current rally is one for suckers. But we admit suffering certain twinges of regret; stocks have proved more resilient than we expected. Here’s a quick bullet list of why we remain bearish on stocks’ near-term prospects:

Long-short investing strategies aren’t just for hedge funds anymore. Many investors believed diversified “long-only” portfolios would always serve them well, regardless of the market conditions. They expected certain asset classes would perform well even as others were struggling.

While many analysts expect U.S. corporate earnings and overall economic data to remain weak by historical standards, there may well be enough of an improvement over the prior months and quarters to spark some optimism that there are better times ahead.

Karim Rahemtulla of the Smart Profits Report is on a mission. He is here to rescue you out of the darkness, doom and gloom and into the light on investing in the “brutal bear” market.

If you save for retirement through a 401(k) plan, or have large IRA or Keogh Plan assets, you probably hurled your last statement in the bin. If you’d been making contributions consistently over the last decade, your last annual or monthly statement probably showed that the current value of your plan was well below the amount you had actually invested.

At this point, the temptation to work as long as possible, and then blow what remains of your savings on a round-the-world cruise and a suicide pill is considerable.

However, such despair is unwarranted.

Unless you have already given up all paid employment, or absolutely have to retire in the next year or two, the current bear market may have made your eventual…

A little over a week ago, Rick Pendergraft pointed out the eerie similarities between the stock market in 1974 and today. It is quite startling when you realize how much the two have in common. Even the declines in the Dow are within a single percentage point of each other.

The commodity “supercycle” isn’t dead, says Justice Litle. Global demand has flat-lined for now, but the fundamental story of emerging market growth has not changed. And low prices are forcing many mines to shut down operations. This means that when demand recovers, it will do so faster than new supplies can reach the market. And that’s when gold will soar past $1,200 an ounce.

This is what it looks like when the shit hits the proverbial fan. In this case, the shit being one subprime meltdown, eight years of a monkey in the White House and and $1 trillion in chaotic government hand outs. The fan being everything just about everything else. Yesterday, the talismanic Dow plunged 514.

In a piece entitled, “Wall Street: Three cheers for the bear”, CNNMoney.com looks on the bright-side of the bear…