Did I say the G20 governments were going to give $500 billion to the IMF? Make that more than $1 trillion. The meeting has wrapped up and results are in — no to protectionism, yes to more stimulus and tighter regulation.

Several studies have calculated dollar-weighted returns* for mutual funds. Research firm DALBAR, for example, finds that mutual-fund investors earned 8 percentage points less than the annual rate of return posted by mutual funds, on average. But what about hedge fund investors? Are their dollar-weighted returns less than reported returns too?

Alfred and his family came over for dinner during the holidays. While I was in the kitchen getting tea and dessert ready, he came in to talk about the stock market and confide that a hedge fund he had invested in was closing down after a precipitous drop.

On Friday, Nov. 14, stock markets were on their way to confirming a bottom to the bear market but got blindsided by another wave of forced selling by mutual/hedge funds in the last hour.

Breakingviews.com is collecting names for the U.S. government's $700-billion bailout plan -- send suggestions to newseditor@breakingviews.com. The U.S. Treasury likes "Troubled Asset Relief Program," or TARP. Breakingviews.com says one of its readers has suggested "Secured Housing Investment Trust.”

The flight to safety has gone to historic extremes, as highlighted today by the plunge in three-month U.S. treasury bill yields to levels not seen since 1941 (0.02%). That’s one sign of how serious things have become. This is a “seven-standard-deviation” event unfolding before our eyes.

Some analysts say a big-picture trend presently unfolding involves hedge funds and other players unwinding bets on commodities/foreign currencies and plowing the proceeds into U.S. financial and other stocks. They are doing this for valuation reasons and as a haven against weakening economies overseas.

1. Weren't stocks supposed to be sure bets for the long term? That's what some pundits are asking lately: the annualized gain (to June 30) in the S&P 500 is just 1.2% over the past 10 years. Hey, wait a minute one might counter — stocks still are good bets ...