Your grandmother’s stock portfolio, if she has one, is probably beating most slick hedge funds with a cane this year.

A scan of the stocks leading the rally to new index highs in 2013 reveals a pantry full of household-name, blue-chips of the sort that might have entered a conservative investment account 30 or more years ago.

Shares of Campbell Soup Co. (CPB), Clorox Inc. (CLX), General Mills Inc. (GIS), Johnson & Johnson Inc. (JNJ), Kimberly-Clark Corp. (KMB), McCormick Co. (MKC), Walt Disney Co. (DIS) and Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) have all gained between 15% and 30% so far this year, not counting dividends, compared to the 9% climb in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.

The relentless rise in these traditional “account-opener” stocks stretched far enough that some fast-money performance chasers seem to have crowded in, based on the way they acted in Wednesday’s mild market selloff. Most of the above stocks fell more than the S&P 500’s 1.05% drop, despite their normally

Gold does not rust, spoil or otherwise decay. But to Nassim Taleb, it is not antifragile.

Gold may be physically durable and culturally indispensable as a store of value over the centuries. Yet the metal doesn’t itself thrive by becoming stronger as a result of the inherent and unpredictable variations in conditions that the world constantly presents.

This distinction hints at the subtle but resonant concept that Taleb (left) explores in his new book, “Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder,” the trader-philosopher-professor’s follow-up to the immensely timely and popular – if widely misconstrued – “Black Swan.”

In his first U.S. lecture on the new book – to a group of institutional investors at the Strategas Research Macro Conference in New York on Thursday – Taleb stressed that antifragility is not synonymous with more familiar attributes such as stability, resilience or robustness against threats.

Think instead of natural systems or species that become healthier through and, in

As world markets recoil at the harsh terms of the European Union's bank bailout for tiny Cyprus, expect plenty of soothing words from Stateside market partisans. The "this-too-shall-pass" crowd will point out the trivial economic profile of the Mediterranean island, decrying traders' knack for overreacting to weekend surprises and reiterating the sturdy economic fundamentals that, they'll tell you, continue to support stock indexes shadow-boxing all-time highs.

It is, of course, true that imposing principal losses on Cyprus bank depositors in itself shouldn't cause the sort of economic disruption that would justify hundreds of billions on global market value shifting at once. Which is why Monday's selloff in risk assets is best viewed here as a handy excuse -- rather than highly targeted cause -- for an overstretched stock market to pull back hard and undergo a reality check on its gentle and previously unflappable first-quarter rally. Here are a few reasons markets are registering

The Senate committee report blasting J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM) executives for allegedly misleading regulators and investors about the extent and details of its $6 billion derivatives-trading lost last year is unflattering, and the hearings will no doubt pose embarrassing questions to the bank executives involved.

But for an investor, either in J.P. Morgan, other banks or the broad stock market, neither the provocative details of emails and outbursts in the report nor the whirl of the Senate hearings are particularly relevant looking ahead. Here are some key elements of this episode that investors ought to keep in mind:

- The report, overseen by bank critic Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), almost by definition contains the most damning revelations we are likely ever to learn about the episode. Levin had comprehensive access to employee communications and interviews. He and his staff had motivation to describe and point out the events that appear closest to internal mismanagement or

A bull market feeds on forces that are good until they go too far, while shrugging off things that will be a problem eventually (but just not yet).

Low interest rates, ample liquidity, rising risk appetites and a quickening pace of corporate deal-making are all nourishing the current rising stock-market trend. This will likely be the case for a while to come, until this recipe spawns hazardous excesses, or economic setbacks intervene.

Companies’ present zeal to buy back their own shares in bulk also fits into this category of behavior that supports stocks in the near term but could ultimately prove a poor use of capital.

So far this year, companies have announced new plans to repurchase more than $128 billion of their stock, according to a tally furnished by TrimTabs Investment Research. This is board-authorized buying that will occur at the companies’ discretion over time, and comes atop any existing buyback programs in place.

Banks' capital plans

On Thursday evening, banks disclosed

Investors are studying their financial horoscope for hints about whether the third time will prove a hex or a charm.

Sure, this question hovers over the big picture, as the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 has nosed above the 1,550 mark for the third time since first tagging that level in March 2000, and now sits about 1% below its all-time closing peak set in October of 2007.

Yet the more pressing “three-peat” market analogy is the way the 2013 market action has followed along the path carved at the outset of both 2011 and 2012, when a first-quarter rally peaked as Gemini gave way to Aries on the calendar.

[See related piece: Surprise! It's Been a Decent Decade for Stocks]

In each of the past three years, the S&P 500 hustled to a gain of between 6% and 8% by Valentine’s Day, almost in a straight line. The 2011 rally then faltered for a few weeks as Libyan unrest and inklings of a European-debt-flu relapse emerged, before recovering to an April high.

A close resemblance

It’s the 2012

It’s obvious that Carl Icahn can make himself be heard. But can he make the average investor any money?

Icahn, the billionaire activist investor, has been unusually active and vocal lately. Beginning last October with the disclosure of a nearly 10% position in Netflix Inc. (NFLX), the 77-year-old investor has focused his opportunistic agitation on several high-profile situations.

Since then, Icahn has built a 15.5% stake in Herbalife Ltd. (HLF), an apparent score-settling gesture with outspoken Herbalife bear William Ackman of Pershing Square Capital. This feud famously took to the airwaves during a live insult-trading episode on CNBC. In recent weeks, Icahn has also rattled the CEO suite at energy-services giant Transocean Ltd. (RIG) and barged into the cozy plan for Michael Dell and Silver Lake partners to take Dell Inc. (DELL) private.

Icahn’s typical mode of operation is to build an ownership interest in a stock, and then either contact management about his ideas for unlocking

The news on jobs was good, and the market discussion quickly pivoted to whether the U.S. economy was ready to be weaned from the Fed’s extra-easy monetary nourishment.

“U.S. employers added more than 200,000 workers to their payrolls … in February, a sign the economy was strengthening and in less need of further monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve,” reported Reuters. “Stocks on Wall Street closed higher on the data, while Treasury debt prices dipped as traders dialed down the prospects for more bond buying by the U.S. central bank.”

This all happened, and was written, exactly 364 days ago. From December 2011 through February of 2012, the economy generated an average of 245,000 new jobs per month. The general interpretation was that the labor-market recovery was strengthening, and indeed President Obama’s odds of re-election immediately improved following the February employment report a year ago.

The stock market was already up nicely for the year and was in the process of