Blog Posts by Matt Nesto

For most of this year, U.S. stocks have been able to dodge every obstacle thrown at them and deflect every new headwind that arose, all while continuing their uptrend en route to record highs. "We're just waiting for a better entry point," scores of lagging fund managers said, while ruing each passing day and record close.

But now, thanks to the weakest jobs report since last spring, the stock market is selling off in early trade and forcing investors to, once again, take a long look in the mirror and make a tough decision: buy the dip or stay on the sidelines.

Related: Jobs Data Misses But the Recovery Lives On, Says Paulsen

As my co-host Jeff Macke and I discuss in the attached video, the decision to get in or get out of stocks depends on whether you're in or out in the first the place. "Right now, today, you decide whether or not you want to be long," Macke says. "Truthfully, if you've been long year to date, you're going to be more inclined to take some gains off than the folks

Nearly three years after Facebook (FB) and Taiwanese device-maker HTC first offered up the unpopular ChaCha and Salsa phones to highlight the social networking site, they're at it again. Only this time, there's a twist. With the newest offering, you don't necessarily have to buy a particular phone, you can also download Facebook's just unveiled Home to any Android device.

The question now is, will you want to?

Some users will surely embrace what CEO Mark Zuckerberg describes as a "new experience" and "a simple, social device that was designed around people rather than applications and tasks." Others may balk when it comes to actually handing over the familiar icons of their Android home screen for an unending stream of photos, messages, texts, "likes", and alerts known as Chat heads that automatically pop into view.

"It's an effort to be more relevant," says David Garrity, principal with GVA Research in the attached video, while acknowledging that Facebook has tried to "cover as much of the mobile operating system as possible" by pairing with Google's (GOOG) Android platform.

While this new image-heavy, interactive system falls short of being granted game-changer status, Garrity thinks it will take a long period of "consumer road testing" before we know if Home is actually a behavior changer or simply fun to look at.

It takes a lot to truly surprise those who follow and interpret the actions of central bankers around the world; partly because it is a central banker's job to clearly inform markets of their intentions to calm them, not roil them.

As my co-host Jeff Macke and I discuss In the attached video, when the newly appointed Governor of the Bank of Japan announced plans to double its bond-buying over the next two years in a bid to push inflation to 2-percent, markets and their typically cool-headed observers, went nuts.

"Kuroda’s impressive inaugural policy setting meeting has been greeted with awe in the world’s financial markets," wrote Miller Tabak & Co's chief economic strategist Andrew Wilkinson.

"Huge moves in Yen, Equities and Bonds. The Yen slumped the most in 17 months, and the Nikkei jumped almost 3%," quipped Stifel Nicolaus trader Dave Lutz in his morning note.

The BOJ was "expected to boost bond buying by 50%, and have surpassed that. Looks like 100%," penned SocGen's Forex veteran Kit Juckes, adding that "the show of commitment is sincere/aggressive," and that the surprise move was "the kind of aggressive easing we are used to seeing from the Fed and would just love to see more of from the ECB."

Say what you will about the news cycle, but it is amazing how quickly stories go from dominating our thoughts on the front page, to taking their place alongside countless other dramas that get stored in our mental informational warehouses.

A timely example of this is Cyprus. The beleaguered island nation was thrust into the global spotlight two weeks ago as its bank-led economy and secretive depository system was being publicly dismantled in order to stave off a government default. The very existence of the Eurozone was being questioned.

As much as Cypriot banks and their depositors were suffering, gold and its investors were making out as the precious metal raced back above $1600 an ounce.

"Any kind of distrust or nervousness or uncertainty about paper money, typically lends itself to people feeling like they need some kind of store of value or hard asset in their portfolio," says Will Rhind, managing director of US operations at ETF Securities, in the attached video.

No sooner had Cyprus relinquished its grip on the news and gold began its retreat. Its correlation with the dollar appeared over, at least for a bit.

After 29 years of loyal government service, Tuesday will go down as a sad day for Edgar. That's the acronym the Securities and Exchange Commission uses for its Electronic Data-Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system --a digital data dumping ground that is often seen as the place where financial reports go to die.

Not only is this Byzantine database a lawyer's paradise, where even the simplest of updates come with a pile of disclaimers and legalese, but its obscurity makes its actual usage relatively small, at least compared to the billion people who use Facebook (FB) or the 400 million tweets that stream across Twitter every day.

By authorizing public companies to use social media, the SEC has now, in the words of Forbes magazine, entered the 21st century. Not willingly, of course, they were dragged there, following an unspectacular Facebook posting 9 months ago by Netflix (NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings.

If you thought the process was excruciating, wait until you see the outcome. In allowing social media to be used to disseminate what's known as "material information," the SEC has required companies to let investors know "where to look for it" to keep the playing field level.

It is the biggest, fastest-growing market on earth for consumer goods, but China is also still one of the few places where large foreign companies can wake up one morning and find themselves expelled from doing business there. And it's exactly why Apple (AAPL), after two weeks of being hounded in the local press about customer service and warranties, finally caved in and offered a public apology to the people of its second most important market.

"I don't like the notion of bowing down to anyone because Steve Jobs wouldn't have even responded," says Ted Parrish, director of investments at Henssler Financial. "I think it was a mistake (for CEO Tim Cook) to do that," he says in the attached video, adding that "you need to manage the company the way you've been managing it and the earnings will take care of the stock price."

Speaking of which, had shares of Apple not just shed 40% in the past 6 months, Cook probably wouldn't have made the move either. But times are different today, and the stakes for succeeding in the world's 2nd largest economy are higher than ever. While some have argued that, aside from a little face, the cost of apologizing and reiterating existing warranties was nothing, and therefore, the company should have moved quicker to resolve the crisis.

At the same time, the Cupertino, California computer giant is facing a different battle on the home front, where Goldman Sachs has just removed it from its elite Conviction Buy List and slashed its price target to $575 from $660 previously.

Much has been said lately about a great shift of investor assets that has seen billions of dollars rotating from bonds into stocks. So pronounced is this wave of money that it is consistently cited as one of the key reasons why markets have been able to defy all sorts of threats and obstacles and surge to all-time highs. While it may still be too early to call the end of a 30-year bull market in bonds, the demand for reasonable alternatives is real.

"There's kind of a low-yield burnout from a lot of our clients," says Ted Parrish, the principal and director of investments at Henssler Financial in the attached video. "They're tired of sitting around in bonds that are paying nothing, and they're stepping up to the plate and buying income-oriented stocks that pay a good dividend and give them some upside potential."

For him, the case to "go big," so to speak, is easy. Not only are large-caps 25% cheaper than small and mid-caps, but he says their dividend yield is at a 10-year high and

The Dow (^DJI) and the S&P 500 (^GSPC) may be at record highs but stock prices are still far from peak. As much as this may sound like some sort of bad financial riddle, the fact of the matter is that by most accounts, stocks are still cheap.

"Whether you look forward, or to the past," explains Sam Stovall, chief equity strategist at S&P Capital IQ, "in general, it says we are trading at a discount," with an approximate 15% discount to long term average price-to-earnings ratios. Of course there have been times of triple-digit PEs and single-digit PEs, but all in, Stovall says, things "still look relatively attractive."

This kind of confidence in the wake of a four and a half month sprint that's come on the heels of a bull market that just marked its 4th year is not without basis, but it is also not without skepticism either, as legions of doubters feel the market is overbought and overdue for a correction.

Related: Strong Q1 Typically Leads to an Even Stronger Year, Says Stovall

For Stovall, the path to reaching his just-increased 12-month price target of 1670 for the S&P 500 is a tricky one that requires several layers of analysis and assumption. He explains in the attached video, economic projections for GDP growth in the second half of the year are improving and could ''perhaps hit 2.7% to 3%" this year." But that's just in the U.S.