Friday the 13th links - Paraskevidekatriaphobia

The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskevidekatriaphobia, a word derived from the Greek words Paraskeví (Παρασκευή), meaning Friday, and dekatreís (δεκατρείς), meaning thirteen, attached to phobía (φοβία).

Eight Trading Superstitions - The Reformed Broker. I'm guilty of a couple of these myself.

The latest from Martin Armstrong: Gold is going to $5000+ by 2016. Is he a prophet, a financial genius, or a paranoid nut? Time will tell.

Montreal's Jewish General Hospital vaccinated top 200 donors against swine flu. “It has nothing to do with the fact that they gave money." - spokesperson Karen Ohayon

Kevin's Market Blog: Have Stocks Turned The Corner? "On Wednesday we saw all 3 major indices break to a new swing high with the Dow Jones Industrials being the strongest of the three. When we take a closer look at what is really going on, I think you might agree with me that yesterday's breakout to new highs was a false move and that the market is about to head south."

Scott Adams Blog: Invest in Whatever Makes You Angry. "I wonder if you could make money by investing in whatever companies make you angriest. For example, when oil prices were climbing to the sky, it was popular to hate oil companies. It also would have been a good time to buy their stock." Case in point: many years ago, after the Valdez oil spill disaster, Exxon became the most hated company in history. The stock was beaten down so far that it was acctually yielding 8% on a very secure dividend. But even then, any moron could see that oil was going to the moon eventually. I stepped in and bought a pile of Exxon stock and I still have all of it. XOM has gone up and up and split so many times that I have lost count, and the dividend has been increased every year, so that now my annual dividend is way more than I paid to buy the original shares.

But in the short term, the technicals show that the price of oil is probably going down.

OPEC production is at a 9-month high, and quotas may be increased next month.

Floating oil storage hits 10-year high at 19.2m tonnes.

World's smallest mother to risk giving birth for third time. Wow! Check out the bizarre pictures, especially the second one. What is the little girl's father doing with his fingers?

The Real Unemployment Rate: “Lets call it what it is: 17.5%.” - Jeff Joerres, CEO of Manpower Inc.

Workers returning to the labor force after being laid off are taking an average 40% pay cut from their old jobs. Folks, this is deflation.

Thursday’s Unemployment Claims: Both Good and Bad News - Mark Thoma. There were 502,000 new claims this week, a decrease of 12,000 from the previous week. This is good news in that unemployment claims are falling, but bad news in that we are still losing jobs. The breakeven point is closer to 400,000 new claims.

Why Employment Might Not Fully Recover Until 2013.

The US government has a plan to invade Canada? Incredibly, yes. It's a classified 94-page document called "Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan -- Red."

State tax revenues will continue to decline until at least 2012. “These are the worst numbers we’ve ever seen.” Well, just wait until the stimulus wears off.

State of the US hotel business: Not so good. Year-over-year, occupancy fell 3.6% to 54.8% and the average daily rate dropped 8.5% to $97.19.

Wall Street Faces ‘Live Ammo’ as Congress Aims to Unravel “too big to fail” Banks. The bill introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner 90 days to come up with a list of banks, hedge funds and insurance companies deemed “too big to fail.” Geithner would have one year to break them up.