Since the S&P 500 Index and MSCI World Index hit their intermittent lows on March 9, stocks have been enjoying a period of strong gains, low relative downside volatility and rising inflows into stock mutual funds. From their lows four weeks ago, stocks are now up a cumulative 24.5%, including the gains in S&P 500 futures ahead of this morning’s open.

Indeed, the CBOE Volatility Index or VIX continues to decline since hitting an all-time high last November.

Over the last several months I’ve touched on how to raise your cash management yield in an environment of super-low interest rates. Short-term rates are currently at their lowest levels since the 1950s causing a conundrum for income investors.

With money-market funds yielding about 0.5% and overseas dollar accounts paying barely 0.20% in annual interest, there’s certainly a better alternative to pitifully low or no yields.

The new global titans to emerge from the Great Credit Crash of 2008-2009 don’t lie in the industrialized economies. Rather, the new leaders will emerge from advanced emerging market countries like China and Brazil whose economic infrastructure and domestic consumption have remained relatively resilient since the emergence of the credit squeeze 19 months ago.

Be careful what you wish for. That’s how to best describe the latest Public-Private Investment Plan (PPIP) announced by the Treasury last month and its unintended consequences on debt financing

The FASB, or the Financial Accounting Standards Board, decision to ease mark-to-market accounting rules yesterday provides an official open door policy for banks to fudge the books. This is not the way to regain bank or financial sector trust.

I bought stocks for the first time since the advent of the global credit crisis twenty months ago in early March. Though this was not a major allocation to my portfolio, I suggested that investors with at least a five-year time horizon could begin dollar-averaging into the market at these lower levels.

Since hitting another intermittent low on March 9 the S&P 500 Index has now rallied a cumulative 20%.

Global stocks posted their sixth straight consecutive losing quarter for the period ending March 31. But some trends have broken free from a battered Wall Street lately as investors begin to return to markets once perceived as riskier than advanced economy markets.

Just what lies ahead for investors in global markets remains the great unknown. I’m not talking about corporate earnings or the viability of the banking system; rather, what will happen following a global government initiative to reform capital markets?

The balance of economic power is shifting. China will emerge as the pre-eminent economic giant over the next several years because it has the money to spend to grow its way out of an economic slowdown, unlike most foreign powers, particularly the United States.

The rise of China’s economic prowess will be hastened by this financial crisis. For investors, tapping into this new world economic reality should yield substantial profits once the financial system finally stabilizes.

In the May issue of The Sovereign Individual I’ll be making the case for deeply discounted senior and subordinated Canadian bank debt or investment grade corporate bonds.

Credit spreads for this sector remain historically wide and offer great value while denominated in a fundamentally stronger currency than the U.S. dollar and even the euro. In fiscal 2009, Canada will record its first fiscal budget deficit in 33 years following the passage of a spending package earlier this year to boost domestic spending and consumption.