“I want to buy Dell and HP stock.”

Apart from the breathless announcements from CNBC flashing on my screen regarding the bidding war between Dell and HP for 3Par – a company that makes data storage equipment – I have only tangentially been following this farce. 

Frankly, I will proclaim my ignorance.  This may be The Greatest Acquisition in the History of Mankind.  But I am skeptical.

That is what the past few days have been.  Clearly, the market had gotten too pessimistic, including yours truly. 

The catalyst for the melt-up was Wednesday's ISM survey, coming in at a surprising 56.3, handily beating estimates of under 53.  This contradicted several of the regional surveys – Empire Manufacturing, Philly Fed, Chicago Fed – which were more bearish. 

Frankly, I do not know.  I do not make big, grand predictions.  I am loathe to make such prognostications.  But I have been wondering if something bad is soon coming in the market.

Everyone is biased by their own portfolio, including me. You must understand that my positioning may be affecting my state of mind.  Thus, this is my personal portfolio:

In our never-ending quest to profit from the works of others, we here at Running of the Bulls present to you two papers on the Canadian housing market, which is a bubble, or kinda bubble-like, at least in some places.

A couple of weeks ago, I highlighted the absurdity of large, high-quality companies paying higher dividend yields than yield to maturities of their bonds.

This evening, I scanned through the components of the Russell Utilities Index and found nearly 40 companies with dividend yields greater than the yield-to-maturities on their bonds. 

In this chart, the bonds expire in eight to twelve years.

We have the biggest economic crisis in 80 years, yet most economists were admittedly clueless about the cause of the crisis. 

The Wall Street Journal published this story regarding the recent high volume of bond issuance on Friday. 

The global corporate-bond boom is gathering steam as companies rush to take advantage of some of the lowest borrowing costs in history.

The one word you won't find on Running of the Bulls is "hyperinflation," at least as it pertains to the United States.

I have seen "hyperinflation" used to describe the inflation of the 1970s, but I do not consider 7%-9% inflation to be "hyperinflation."  Instead, hyperinflation is what has happened in Zimbabwe or Latin America during the 1980s or the Weimer Republic.

And I do not believe hyperinflation is coming to America.