Top Takes From RealMoney -- Kass Reactions

The RealMoney contributors are in the business of trading and investing all day on the basis of ongoing news flow. Below, we offer the top six ideas that RealMoney contributors posted today and how they played those ideas.

TheStreet.com brings you the news all day, and with RealMoney's "Columnist Conversation," you can see how the pros are playing it on a real-time basis. However, departing from our typical broad perspective, today our commentators are all abuzz about Doug Kass' call of a market top. Here's what Kass' bold prediction elicited from the rest of the RealMoney contributors.

To see all that RealMoney offers, click here for a free trial.

1. Kass Call

By Sham Gad
11:45 a.m. EDT

If I had to make a bet on the direction of the market today, I would heavily lean toward the downside. It's very difficult for me to argue a continued run-up in the market when all we got is government spending and corporate cost-cutting paving the path to recovery. While our government can continue to expand its balance sheet, you can not have a sustainable recovery without the private sector leading the way.

Until we such signs -- declining unemployment numbers, cap excluding resumption, a stabilizing housing market (not based on increased housing sales because the condo in Vegas that was going for $220,000 last year is being sold for $108,000 this year) -- I am finding very few bargains now.

No positions.

2. It's a Small World After All

By Howard Simons
10:03 a.m. EDT

Doug, even in retrospect I find it difficult to identify the trigger for the rally in March. About the best I can come up with are a decline in sovereign CDS costs after the Fed/Treasury joint statement in late February and a shift in the forward curve of equity volatility. Neither is going to get me on Mt. Rushmore.