[Mr. Jeeves]

Speculating in stocks will cease do be a national pass time.

Jim badly needs an editor - he's constantly doing this. And what kind of car is an "Exxon-Mobile"?

It's interesting that on the charts above, Merck's financials look relatively solid - that kind of surprised me.

[Steven W.]

I enjoyed this, though, because they're a master of misdirection and effectively combining a mix of apples & oranges to always meet their objectives (which is usually pumping their readers toward gold). Note how he selectively chooses the highest market cap subset of the larger market (as the cliche goes, it's a market of stocks more than a stock market) to begin and then narrows the focus from the mismatch between any set of traditionally comparable equities to not only select NASDAQ stocks with the highest market caps, but, coincidentally, higher multiples and lowest possible yields to make his point, rather than doing any historically feasible analysis, like comparing S&P yield (which for the past couple days has actually even exceeded the corresponding rates in US Treasuries, an historic benchmark for trend watchers) or "dogs of the DOW" comparisons with proper adjustments to reflect today's extremely low interest rates.

In any event, one can find any number of high quality companies across sectors whose stocks are trading for decent multiples (P&E <= 12), many paying extremely good yields exceeding the 2,5 and even 10 year treasury notes. Some may not be cheap but many are not expensive, either ;)