Weekend Linkfest: Week in Review

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It was a wild and woolly week, partially rescued by Friday's snapback from Thursday's weakness.

The Dow fell 0.4% on the week, while the S&P 500 gave up 0.5%, unable to notch a new record on a closing basis. The Nasdaq lost but a single point (0.05%) for the week. The big loser was the Russell 2000 index of small cap stocks, which fell 0.8%. Gold gave up 1%, while crude gained 0.4%.

Barron's Trader column had this to say:

"while the market's uptrend remains unscathed, its quality has deteriorated. The swath of stocks broaching new peaks has narrowed. The Dow transportation average has been sluggish while brokerage stocks have struggled. The S&P 500 is running 9% ahead of its 200-day moving average, a chasm that has preceded prior pauses."

Get your suntan lotion out, because it's a special Memorial Day Weekend edition of the Linkfest:

INVESTING & TRADING

• Front-page WSJ article: Why Market Optimists Say This Bull Has Legs discusses a "Decade of gains fed by global growth." In the past, this sort of article often has marked intermediate tops.

• Treasury 10-Year Yield Rises to Almost Four-Month High on Fed: "Treasury 10-year note yields rose to the highest level since January as traders reduced the odds of an interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve this year. The 10-year note's yield was higher than that of the two-year security for the first time in three weeks on signs of resilience in the U.S. economy. Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker said yesterday it's the central bank's responsibility to curb inflation and it would be a mistake to rely on slower growth to stem price increases."(Bloomberg)

• There were so many China links this week, we had to give them their own page. We've Gone China Crazy!

• 'The Apprentice: Omaha Edition,' Starring Warren Buffett: "Then I found out that the 76-year-old Mr. Buffett had asked for applications from people wanting to become his successor. Many hundreds applied. So at the annual shareholders' meeting in Omaha this month, he announced his new search strategy: rather than decide from old-style resumes and interviews, he planned to choose three or four top candidates and then give each $5 billion or so to manage and see how they do. The winner gets the job. When I heard about this, the romance died. For all of Mr. Buffett's reputation as the ultimate nonmutual fund, he may have just fallen into one of the biggest mutual fund traps of all -- forgetting how incentives affect fund managers' behavior." (The New York Times)

• Thematic ETF Exposure: Agriculture and Nuclear.

• Why Smart People are No Better Off Financially.

• And since it's Memorial Day Weekend, Hedge Fund King Nabs $19.95M. Palace. (The New York Observer) ...