Happy Labor Day

Or Labour Day to you non-Americans.

The S&P 500 is up 12.5% year to date and I am confident that for a significant majority of investors out there, it hasn't felt like a better than average year. After getting pounded in 2008, the first 2 1/2 months of this year were relentlessly down. Unless you ignored the whole thing and hung in there, or made some good moves around the March bottom, you are probably up less than the 12% that the averages show.

Even though the summer is over, there is lots of time between now and Christmas for the market move a lot in either direction, or both. Stay flexible.

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It is curious that Cadbury turned down big premium from Kraft to be taken out today. Cadbury's stock is acting like their board may be right that the price is too low. Kraft's offer was at a 31% premium to Friday's close. The stock is trading up 41% as I write this.

By the way, I thought the dollar was too weak for deals like this to happen.