Many fund managers, if they're not in for a two-day rally, they risk falling behind for the whole year. How do you minimize risk? By hugging the index as best you can.

It's a great deal for individual investors, but I don't know what kind of incentive the elimination of the tax is going to give to some of the cash cows to start offering dividends.

You do not want to try to time these short-term rallies. The market is trading on propaganda, not fundamentals. It's crazy. There's nothing else to say.

They don't want give out a dividend because they think they'll give up their growth stock status. But they aren't growth stocks anymore.

Portfolio managers often find that their portfolios have a level of realized risk, or realized active risk, that is different from their target, or predicted, values. This systematic bias of factor models is well known among practitioners yet is, strangely enough, ignored by risk model providers.

Risk managers who saw their renewal prices drop said they felt lucky, because those who experienced the hurricane effect are now explaining to their management why renewal premiums just went through the roof. The real question is whether Katrina and Rita will have a lasting effect and strengthen the market for a time -- potentially in all lines of business, not just property -- or whether this is a short-term blip in what has proved to be a pretty resolute soft market.