Today, I made a ham sandwich for lunch. As I took a bite, I flipped on the TV and heard the announcer say: “Folks, you may want to put down that sandwich you’re eating for lunch – some more deli meats have been recalled in the tainted meat scandal.”

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“The risk of a full scale run on U.S. banks … is all too real,” states Nandu Narayanan in his July commentary. Narayanan has a PhD in finance from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a hedge fund manager whose fund, CI Global Opportunities Fund, has gained over 75 ...

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Hedge fund manager Goodwood Inc., an activist value investor, confirms forced selling in the stock market. “We believe there has been a significant amount of selling recently in some of our core names by other institutions that have been experiencing redemptions,” they note in their latest Monthly Commentary.

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Isn’t the financial sector supposed to be in dire straits? Maybe they are, but the latest Market Insight publication from AIC Funds says 76% of their largest 25 financial stocks raised dividends in the past year, 20% had no change, and 4% had a decrease.

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Another financial advisor has inveighed against do-it-yourself (DIY) investing. First, it was Avner Mandelman; now it’s David West. What they argue may perhaps be true of DIYers with an active approach, but not so for the growing ranks of DIYers with a passive indexing approach.

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Here’s an interesting indicator: it’s called the Surprise Index. Calculated by the economists at MFC Global Investment Management, it quantifies in one measure the extent to which U.S. economic indicators exceed or fall short of consensus estimates.

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Is the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) becoming a haven for U.S. and Canadian day traders? A comment on the tipster.ca blog gave pause for thought: “I … momentum trade stocks on the TSX, mostly to avoid the day trade rules of the US,” it went.

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“Stocks are huge bargains, relative to all other asset classes …. U.S. stocks now trade at 13x forward earnings for an almost 8% earnings yield, while 10-year treasuries yield just 4%, making equities the best bargain in more than 60 years,” write Trapeze Asset Management in their latest investment letter. ...

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Well, it wasn’t nice knowing you Mr. Stagflation. With inflation on the way out, Mr. Recession will be replacing you. He’ll still be rather unappealing but at least the central banks will have room to ease interest rates -- then we’ll eventually get the ever popular Mr. Rebound.

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“We are in the midst of a sea change in U.S. hegemonic influence in political, financial and economic spheres. American financial, economic and political power has peaked,” writes Sherry Cooper, chief economist with the BMO Financial Group (as quoted in Jeff Sanford’s column). Really? Is it all that bad?

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