I would like to thank the market for being stupid again. 

Barely six months ago Mr. Market, you were telling me that agriculture stocks should be rising 2%-3% a day. Now, those stocks are down 60%-80% in half a year.

As I look at stock after stock, I wonder if we are about to, if not crash, then break through the lows hard.

The news from Intel this evening certainly increases the likelihood.

Take a look at Motorola.

Hedge fund performance has, for the most part, sucked this year.  Read this article to see how the compensation schemes have done.

The standard fee schedule for a top shelf fund is 2% of the assets and 20% of the profits.  Over time, the stock market returns about 10% per year.  Under a typical fee structure for a hedge fund, to generate a 10% return after fees, the hedge fund has to return nearly 15% before fees to attain the long-run average return of stocks after fees.

Want to be scared?  Then read this post by Financial Ninja who argues that America is repeating the mistakes of Japan.

Given the way the government is supporting so many "zombie" companies, the comparison may be apt.

This is a graph of the Nikkei 225 since 1980.

The stock market is behaving like it is the 1930s all over again, and many commentators are saying it is the worst economic environment since, so I thought it would be interesting to see how stocks did during that time. 

Would somebody please take Goldman out back and shoot this dog?  Drip, drip, drip.  It is like a slow water torture. 

I was flipping through the companies of the S&P 500 this morning and I was stunned at how many stocks are currently trading below 10x this year's earnings.

Of the 500 names in the S&P 500, 204 are profitable and trading below 10x 2008 operating earnings.  Of those, 174 are non-financial companies, or over 40% of all the non-financials in the index.

What amazes me is how many of these names are high quality companies.

Also, 133 stocks have dividend yields above 4%.

By Tom Toles

From a New York Times interview last week with James Galbraith.

- Me, yesterday.  10% ago.

Just to demonstrate that "experts" don't know much more than you do.  Heck, if us "experts" did know, we wouldn't have created this mess in the first place.