By: Bob Pisani 
CNBC Reporter

Every day, traders write to me saying, have you ever seen anything like this rally, Bob? When was the last time you saw this?

Well, now we know, thanks to the number crunchers at Bespoke: it’s pretty rare. Since September 1, the S&P 500 is up 27 percent.

Bespoke found 5 periods where the S&P charts matched nearly perfectly with the action of the last six months: 1935, 1949, 1953, 1958, and 1995.

What they found: in each of those five cases, the S&P 500 saw additional gains over the following 12 months with an average gain of 22.1%!

Thank you, Paul Hickey at Bespoke.

Link to article: http://www.cnbc.com/id/41669239

Rumors of Steve Jobs’ cancer returning might be true. But I doubt he is going anywhere anytime soon.

Proof: He showed up to the White House to attend the President’s dinner yesterday. And in the picture, he looks fine to me, although you cannot see his face.

Here is a blog post with the picture along with a story about Steve bulldozing his house on Monday to build a new one. If he thought he only had a few months or weeks to live, would be waste time tearing down an old house? Probably not.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/18/apple_ceo_steve_jobs_photographed_at_dinner_with_president_obama.html

Happy Holidays!

Just wanted to wish you the best and happiest holiday season.

I hope that you had a great 2010 and I pray that 2011 brings you closer to all that you desire.

2010 was a crazy year for the stock market. Nonstop ups and downs – kinda like a roller coaster at Six Flags.

The S&P is up over 6% in just December alone – and we aren’t even done yet!

But what will 2011 bring?

I would be lying if I told you I knew. No one knows. The TV, radio, and magazines are filled with “pundits” giving their predictions on how high the markets will go next year. But they have no clue. They couldn’t predict with any accuracy what the market will close at on Jan 1, much less Dec 31.

But I like guessing games so I will make some guesses too – based on what I see.

#1 I agree with the [...]

Published: Wednesday, 31 Mar 2010 | 10:09 AM ET

By: Jeff Cox
CNBC.com
Investors should acclimate themselves to years of lower-than-normal returns in both stocks and bonds, Pimco’s Bill Gross told CNBC.

As part of the firm’s forecast of a “new normal” in the slow-growth economy, Gross, co-CIO at the largest bond management firm in the world, said returns probably will be half of the normal 8 percent or so annualized profits to which investors have become accustomed.

“We should expect less as opposed to more—new normal as opposed to old normal,” he said in an interview. “We should expect that the private economy is delevering on a global basis. That means consumption and household income growth will be less than it has in prior years.

 “And that means ultimately in terms of risk assets, whether it’s stocks or high-yield bonds or even bonds themselves that those types of returns will reflect a slower rate of [...]

I frequently get asked which way I think the market is headed. Especially after the event of recent days where the markets have been on a sprint to the upside but with pull backs the last couple days.

I usually respond the same way every time.

“I don’t know.”

If I could predict the market I wouldn’t be here blogging, I would be out enjoying my billions.

Believe me, I have tried to learn how to predict the markets. That’s what technical and fundamental analysis is – an attempt to understand and predict market direction.  In the end, I gave up.

I cannot predict market direction. The pundits on TV and radio can’t do it, all the blogs and gurus online with their fancy explanations, charts, candles, lines, and waves can’t do it with any regularity and neither can the folks on Wall Street.

So why bother?

Why not trade in a way where it doesn’t matter which way the market moves?

Makes sense to me. And that is why I love option selling.  It does not matter what is going on in the market, what news comes out or doesn’t, the premium I sell loses value everyday, and I profit.

Let me give you an example. This month I have a McDonald’s (MCD) trade on. I want MCD to stay within a range. A couple days after I put the trade on, MCD moved higher and almost out of the range. So I adjusted the trade and made the range bigger.

That day a member emailed me with news that there is a rumor going around the MCD is going to raise its dividend. That might be why it went higher. And if the news about the dividend is correct, it might go higher still.

This member wanted me to know that this trade was not a good idea. He was warning me to what could happen. Thanks to this member, who had my best interests at heart, I began to worry about this position.

What if he was right and MCD shot up higher?

But after a while I calmed myself down and realized that it was not in my hands. If MCD went higher I would evaluate the position, adjust if possible or in the worst case scenario take a small loss. But the odds were on my side.

As it turned out, MCD has behaved fine since and the trade is right in the middle of the profit zone. Let’s hope it stays that way.

But my point is that it does not matter if the dollar is stronger or weaker. It does not matter what oil or gold do. The markets still move in ranges and if you play the ranges, 8 times out of 10 you will win. And those wins allow you to make much higher returns that you will in a savings account, a CD, a money market fund, or a mutual fund.