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With stocks making triple digit gains on Monday some investors are asking, "is the action the start of the next leg higher -- or is it a su...cker's rally?" Hedge fund manager Andy Kessler isn't riding this bull. In fact he's taking it by the horns. In last week's Wall Street Journal he laid out a case that seems rather compelling for the bears. We found his perspectives so intriguing we asked Kessler to join us as a guest on Fast Money. He told us in no uncertain terms, this sure smells to me like a su....ckers rally largely because there aren't sustainable, fundamental reasons for the market's continued rise. Kessler believes it all comes back to the banks. Although they’re up something like 30% over the last few months the gains were not based on strong profits but rather the notion that “financial Armageddon was off the table.” “I don’t think the bank problems are solved,” he says on Fast Money. “What were called toxic assets only two months ago ar...

WARSAW - THE global economy may return to growth in late 2009 or in 2010, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said on Monday, and European banking officials also saw tentative signs the financial crisis could be easing. In Asia, credit rating agency Moody's stripped Japan of its AAA rating on its foreign currency debt, but manufacturing and consumer sentiment edged up, keeping alive hopes the storm hitting the world's No. 2 economy might be abating. European stock markets followed Asia higher and Wall Street was forecast to rise, too, following better-than-expected earnings from US home improvement chain Lowe's. The standout market was India where the 30-share BSE index jumped more than 17 per cent, the biggest single-day gain in almost two decades, after the ruling coalition secured a decisive election victory. Mr Zoellick, speaking during a trip to Warsaw, said the pace of decline in the global economy was set to slow. 'The question is when we will return to growth i...

By Michelle Tay EQUITY markets have bottomed out and there is growing evidence to support the 'green shoots theory' that is gaining momentum, according to BlackRock's global equities head. Mr Bob Doll, vice-chairman and chief investment officer of global equities at the investment firm that manages US$1.3 trillion worth of assets, observes that equity markets are up more than 30 per cent since the last low of Mar 6, when the S&P 500 index hit dropped to 666 points. As such, there is only 'at most a 20 per cent chance' of the S&P falling below that level from now on, he said. Speaking at a media briefing in the firm's local office, Mr Doll explained there were three factors suggesting the latest bear market rally was different from the four previous abortive ones. Firstly, the current rally has been marked by strong momentum and expanding volume on the upside, as well as diminishing momentum and volume on the downside. Secondly, more cyclical areas of the...

MELBOURNE - TALL people earn higher wages than their vertically-challenged counterparts while being obese does not mean a slimmed-down pay packet, according to a new study in Australia. The researchers found a strong link between wages and height, particularly for men, with each additional 10cm of height adding three percent to hourly wages. The 'height premium' was two per cent per 10cm for women, researchers from the University of Sydney and Canberra's Australian National University (ANU) found. They calculated that every 5cm above the average height of 178cm boosted a male's wages by the equivalent of an extra year's experience in the labour force. 'This result holds constant across a number of other factors that also affect wages, such as age, race, family background, experience and education,' said ANU professor Andrew Leigh. The researchers, who examined health and income data from almost 20,000 Australians, also found that being overweight did not mea...

FLORIANOPOLIS, Brazil (AFP) - - A few recent glimmers of economic hope emerging in the United States do not mean the global crisis is over, a top economist who advises US President Barack Obama said Saturday. The crisis "is certainly the worst that I have seen in my career," Martin Feldstein, a 69-year-old Harvard economist and member of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board told a world tourism conference in Brazil. "The evidence simply doesn't support" the conclusion that the United States is on its way to a sustained recovery, said the academic, who also served as an advisor under former presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. He added that Europe's economy is "equally bad if not worse than in the US," and "Japan has been hit even harder." While some US observers and media in recent weeks have struck an optimistic tone on the back of a rebound in the stock market and positive results from big US banks, Feldstein said that w...

GENEVA (AFP) - - Swine flu will spread further across the world, experts at the World Health Organisation warned Friday, as the number of confirmed cases surged by more than 1,000 and the US reported two more deaths. Acting WHO Assistant Director-General Keiji Fukuda told reporters that studies by experts indicated a "significant number of people" had been infected, but remained undetected or unconfirmed by laboratory tests. "Their work also suggests that the virus is transmissible enough that we will expect to see continued community level outbreaks and regional spread," he told a WHO meeting in Geneva on pandemic preparedness. The latest WHO data showed 7,520 people in 34 countries were confirmed to have caught the influenza A(H1N1) virus, up 1,000 from Thursday. According to the figures, most of the deaths had occurred in Mexico, where the Mexican officials said death toll rose by two on Friday to 66 with the epidemic having sickened 2,829 people there. "We ...

VIENNA (AFP) - - IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said Friday that he expected the global economy to recover in the first half of next year. "We still see a recovery in first semester of 2010 and the beginning of the turning point in October, November or December" this year, the head of the International Monetary Fund told a news conference in the Austrian capital.