It may not be the best six months we've seen in this post-recession period, but the 18 percent rally in the S&P 500 (^GSPC) since November is certainly the longest streak of monthly gains. With stocks pushing deeper into record territory, John Canally, economic strategist at LPL Financial, says investors need to heed the conflicting signals.

"It's very strange. You have markets telling different stories," he says in the attached video. "I think I trust the commodities markets a little bit more than the U.S. stock market as an indicator."

While stocks have been able to overcome every obstacle for the past 6 months, Canally says they're sending an "everything is great" message to investors, while bonds and especially commodities are reflecting the risk of deflation or economic contraction.

That doesn't mean he's bailing on stocks, it simply means he's positioning for a modest pullback. "If and when we do get a pullback, it's not going to be a 10-20% pullback like we had in these past three years," he says, noting the improved fundamentals, especially in the housing sector.

It only took a year and about $6 billion of lost sales to get here, but JCPenney (JCP) says it's learned its lesson. In a humbling new multi-media ad campaign, the Texas-based department store chain is openly admitting that it messed up when it revamped its stores, styles and sales promotions under the brief leadership of former CEO Ron Johnson.

As my co-host Jeff Macke and I discuss in the attached video, the mea culpa is remarkable on many fronts but it remains to be seen if the strategy works. It's a strategy that is more in line with its historic roots and formerly loyal customers rather than the younger, hipper shoppers it was aiming to attract, which is evident from the vintage storefront photos shown in the opening frames of the 30-second spot.

Within its plea for scorned customers to "come back" is the admission that JCPenney made mistakes, but more so, as the ad copy goes, that they intend to correct them.

"Some changes you liked and some you didn’t, but what matters from mistakes is what we learn. We learned a very simple thing, to listen to you. To hear what you need, to make your life more beautiful. Come back to JCPenney, we heard you. Now, we’d love to see you."

As much as the video is reaching out to the sentimentality of its core middle-aged demographic, the 110-year-old retailer with 1,100 stores is also mindful that not all of its customers are older, as evidenced by the 3.6 million "likes" on its Facebook page, as well as an active presence on Twitter where it is hosting a dialog with its 115,000 followers under the #JCPListens theme.