The best we can hope for.

It was a long run: March until the middle of October. For the risk trade that is viz. buy junk and ignore quality. In practice that meant the names that by luck or patronage survived the Paulson Panic came back briskly through most of the year. But that was then and this is now.

You're probably sick of hearing about the 'New Normal". Lots of words but sadly no one knows what it will look like (besides nothing like the '70s, '80s, '90s or early '00s.) So what does a cash bloated money manager do? Go to more cash, buy more teetering banks and insurers or reallocate to safer names like foods, drugs, WMT and AAPL? With rates close to zero, I think door number 3 is the likely course.

So today stocks were up on strength for safe rather than risky names. Tiens tiens! If this keeps up everyone will be happy and there will be a Coke, Oreos and Lipitor waiting under the tree for Santa this Xmas.