From the tidal wave of e-mails and comments I have received from numerous different sources I am under the impression that most investors view the recent rally in the world’s stock markets as a bear market rally. I suppose we would need to define a bear market rally as a rally that fails to make a new all-time high (for the S&P 500, above the 1576 reached in October 2007) and is also followed by a new low for this cycle (below 666 for the S&P 500 reached in early March 2009).

In a field of dead financial institutions, the opportunities are plenty for the hungry value investors. They key, of course, is identifying which provide a tasty meal and which are rotten to the core. It’s a matter of separating the EZ pickin’s from the E. coli.