Things seem OK - but they aren't.

In addition the securitised credit market will regain "some" of its old momentum as soon as issuing insitutions get around to

I would like to say I have no understanding about what is going on but I am paid to care.

Hundreds of thousands of "Forrest Gump" style investors, spectators and neither know nor care. I wish them well but there is no way (I know of) to decouple the credit and equity markets. All that separates the two markets is maybe a 12 month time lag.

In the movie, Forrest made a fortune out of a natural disaster then invested all his money in that little fruit company called Apple Inc, a company that easily outpaced the 1987 correction. Those who follow in Forrest’s footsteps may not be lucky.

Poorly educated investors and inexperienced, commission driven advisors place a ridiculous level of assurance on historic accounting data, not withstanding the fact that the information value of this information can be dubious. Better advisors and investors tend to look to early indicators of performance rather than annually reported results but alas they appear to be few. Why stop the bulls from having a party while they are having fun!

Milton Friedman once talked about the velocity of money. He was half right. Money invested directly in economic activity goes around the globe much faster (to create more wealth) than money sitting in cheque accounts and government bonds. As easy credit and structured debt products facilitated much of the velocity it would be reasonable to anticipate the converse is also true. The velocity of money will clearly fall if volume of easy money available for higher risk ventures declines. What Friedman didn’t clearly take into account was the momentum of money that is mass x velocity. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum ) . The cheap money has resulted in enormous level of financial momentum that like a freight train will require considerable distance to low down – even if it derails.

Back to Forrest, there will be companies with something new and innovative (like Apple and Microsoft in the mid 80’s) that will perform in most market conditions. The trick is in picking which companies will be winners before all the other Gumps get to hear about it.

Other strategies won't work in the current market.

That I am. There could still be a gem amounst the rocks.