In February, I wrote that the decline in stocks was just about over. Why? There was more money available to buy shares than at any time in almost two decades. The $8.85 trillion held in cash, bank deposits and money market funds was equal to 74% of the market value of U.S. companies, the highest ratio since 1990, according to the Federal Reserve.

No one really knows how long the global recession will last, but based on a recent article it may persist longer than predicted. The message to investors, therefore, is that bonds and gold may be the best way to ride out the storm instead of trying to cherry pick winners.

With all this talk about bailouts here in the U.S., one name is conspicuously absent: Sovereign Wealth Funds. These trillion-dollar national funds made news earlier in the year as they dove headway into big U.S. banks when they began to teeter. The SWFs figured they were buying low, severely underestimating the bottom of the market. So rather than get a bargain, they took a beating – and are now making a hasty retreat from the West.

Sara Nunnally says Middle Eastern states are using their petro-dollar Sovereign Wealth Funds to boost their international profile and reduce dependence on oil. She says “following the money” is a good way for investors to profit from this shift in global economic and financial power.

The plummeting price of oil could cause another source of capital to dry up: the Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) of the Persian Gulf. This could be another blow for global credit markets, says Irwin Greenstein. These oil-rich funds fueled with petrodollars invested trillions over the past few years, notably with high-profile infusions of billions in CitiGroup, Carlyle Group, Merrill Lynch and the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Concerned about the recent decline in stock prices, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, yesterday (Tuesday) called for the creation of European sovereign wealth funds. The funds would be virtual carbon copies of the state-owned investment vehicles that have sprung up from Beijing to Abu Dhabi to disperse their respective nations’ cash reserves in foreign assets.

If you had all the money in the world, where would you invest it?

For sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), the answer is commercial real estate. These mega funds are homing in on the sector right now, according to emerging markets expert Irwin Greenstein.

We keep hearing about the real-estate meltdown. But as of the end of September, REITs have been up about 2% for the year — a far cry from the wreckage of other markets.

The increase of state-controlled resources is ulitmately bad news for American consumers, says Irwin Greenstein, writing for Contrarian Profits. Not only are state-run resource companies inefficient compared to private sector firms but also many of them are hostile to US interests.

Investors woke up this morning to a new era on Wall Street.

The last two big investment banks, Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), have abandoned their freewheeling, frat-boy days to become bank holding companies. The move puts them under stricter Federal regulation. More important, they will now look to more conservative sources of money – such as customer deposits – over highly leveraged trading bets.

What remains to be seen, though, is whether the shift could dam up a torrent of money flowing into emerging markets.

Lynn Carpenter at Investor’s Daily Edge says that for every super-smart investor there are several spontaenous and irrational money-chasers. Some of the biggest risk takers are Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF), state-owned funds that hold an estimated $3 trillion in assets worldwide. These funds have little transparency and no clear long-term objectives, but can show investors where money is flowing in the market.