One of the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) current dilemmas is how to square its battle against deflation with investors’ fears of inflating asset bubbles. The former is part of the Fed’s mandate, the latter is not.

I have no idea if that means a top, but this market increasingly looks very, very tired if not seriously wounded.

2118. This is the number the S&P 500 Price Index has struggled in vain to cross since mid-February. It came close on March 2, closing at 2117.393. It got even closer on April 24, closing at 2117.69. But no dice. One analyst calls it the “iron ceiling.”[i] Technical analysts would call it resistance. We shun jargon and prefer to draw a picture:

Here is a question worth weighing these days: If a strong currency is so devastating to stocks and economies—as many allege—why did stocks in a tiny, export-heavy economy not succumb to a nearly 20% shock appreciation?

"Once a company is as big as Apple, it needs to start eating up other industries in order to keep growing. Surely though, there are lower-hanging fruit than the auto industry? Most notably, there is the finance business."

In early 2009 the financial press was dumping praise on any mutual fund manager who had evaded a bulk of the stock market decline. These managers were lauded as heroes, visionaries with the keen insight to see that the worst market and economic environment for 80 years had been just around the corner.

After a bubble-fueled rally of 138% from the start of 1999 to March 2000, the Nasdaq Composite proceeded to fall 79% from a high of 5,132 on 3/10/00 to a low of 1,108 on October 10th, 2002. After the dot-com bubble burst, many investors thought the Nasdaq may never get back to its all-time highs from March 2000.