I've got seven reasons why the market is NOT going up any time soon. Plus, I'll give you three trades to make money from the market now.

Commodities and financial companies were hit hard earlier this week, with major banks like Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) in particular getting shellacked.

When talking about the incoming Obama Administration's fiscal stimulus package, it's easy to take heart from the pragmatic brainiacs that are coming to run policy in Washington. Unfortunately, though, the executive branch only gets to propose legislation.

Historically, the first two weeks of January is often a harbinger of the rest of the year, so beware.

The corporate bond market suffered through one of the worst years in memory in 2008 as the credit markets worldwide collapsed. But from the detritus of the credit and equity markets of the past year, both investment-grade and high-yield corporate debt instruments appear in a strong position to experience a run-up in 2009. Within this sector, I have identified 5 corporate credits as my favorites for the year.

Heading into the new year, the financial media will be making much of the Obama administration's fiscal stimulus plan, infrastructure rebuilding and other news out of Washington. But what we really need to be paying attention to is the dawning realization among America's baby boomers that rising asset prices can no longer support debt-to-income ratios of nearly 140%. As that happens, a 20-year credit expansion and associated consumption binge will come to an end.

One reason that January is even more important now than ever has to do with the way that the boards of pension funds and endowments -- which control hundreds of billions of investment dollars -- operate. People on these boards are usually not actually experienced investment pros themselves, but rather business people, socialites, union members, political appointments and the like who are subject to a lot of whims and false ideas about the markets.

The fact that small caps are beginning to outperform large caps is a sign of a bigger set of events afoot in the global economy. Large companies are obviously multinationals, while smaller companies tend to focus on domestic U.S. sales. So whenever we see a big disparity in the performance between the two, it's a head's up that investors believe there is an imbalance in the world.

Before the credit crisis worsened, health care reform was one of the primary issues on the presidential campaign trail. Now, it gets barely a mention as other more pressing matters weigh on the country and President-Elect Obama's transition team. Still, by all indications, profound investments in the health care system are on the docket for next year.

President-Elect Barack Obama's transition team publicly discussed a stimulus package costing around $500 billion. More details are beginning to trickle out on exactly which areas of the economy stand to benefit.

Alcoa Corporation (AA) has been among the strongest performers in the recent roller coaster ride of the stock market. Shares have reversed course posting some of the larger gains among Dow components.

The federal unemployment report last Friday was wretched, as you know, but there was more to be gleaned from it after a few days reflection than we could observe right away. Jon Markman takes an in-depth look at the numbers.

With more than 31,000 restaurants in 100 countries, the iconic purveyor of Big Macs and Happy Meals generated more than $22 billion in revenue last year to blow away its competition.

Bears are dominating this fall, but in keeping with my theme this week I have more good news to throw on the positive pile.

We've all heard a ton of bad news lately from the U.S. economy and overseas unrest. But there is plenty of good news to consider as well.

Why would anyone be the slightest bit bullish in this yucky environment? With a nod to a famous luxury liner named after Queen Elizabeth, it's a little something you might call QE 2. The letters stand for "quantitative easing," the strategy now being deployed by the Federal Reserve to attack the credit crisis after everything other tactic has failed.

Stocks swirled early this week within a pleasantly narrow range for once. It was exactly what you would expect on following expiration week and before a holiday -- a lot of drift and light volume.