If you are looking for a "where to invest 2010" list of investment ideas, strategies, and predictions, you are not getting what you were looking for here; however, this post may be exactly what you really needed -- a discovery...

Let's make this interesting, informational, observational, conversational, and introspective:  I will pose several questions related to the annual onslaught of "where to invest" articles, generated every December by every media type that exists, to provoke thought and elicit responses from readers (you).  Please feel free to share your own "where to invest 2010" ideas if you wish, but also consider aiding those who have been conditioned for so long by conventional thought that a New Year means a new investment strategy.

"The average man doesn’t wish to be told that it is a bull or a bear market. What he desires is to be told specifically which particular stock to buy or sell. He wants to get something for nothing. He does not wish to work. He doesn’t even wish to have to think." ~ Jesse Livermore

Perhaps this can serve as useful source of unconventional thought (the right kind, if you ask me) that aids those who found this post and unexpectedly found an intervention!

Please read the questions and proceed to the comments:

• How might recent market conditions color the decisions of those conventional media sources supplying the "where to invest" ideas?
• What if the market were at the same position now as it was in early March of this year (2009)?  Wouldn't the extreme sentiment of the time predict more turmoil ahead?  Note: The broader market indexes, as most of you know, have advanced more than 65%, as of the writing of this post, since March 9, 2009, which was not something many "predicted" at the time.
  
• Similarly, won't the huge run up in prices influence the "where to invest" articles coming out now?
• What correlation, if any, does the calendar year have with market and economic conditions?  Is it simply a behavioral ritual similar to New Year's Resolutions?
• Does the annual "where to invest" ritual have at least some value for those who would otherwise never look at their investments or would most people be better off not looking at (and hence not tinkering with) their investments anyway?
• How do you feel about the annual re-balancing (returning investment allocations back to the original percentages -- in effect buying the "losers" and selling the "winners") strategy?  Is re-balancing even a good idea to begin with?
• Can a trader gain any kind of advantage or insight by observing and perhaps taking action (i.e. momentum trade or contrarian play) based upon the most common themes found in the "where to invest" articles?  For example, if all of the "where to invest" articles say to "buy gold," what might a prudent trader do?
• Have you ever made money by following a "where to invest" article's suggestions?

"The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason." ~ Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

With the Global Warming debate front and center this week, I am reminded of how arguments on the subject find themselves rooted almost entirely in science and risk analysis with little consideration of consequence.  While I am well aware that ideology and money, unfortunately, play large roles in shaping the scientific arguments, the Global Warming debate is most prudently framed by an analysis of uncertainty and consequence.

Perhaps the greatest lesson in uncertainty and consequence is found in Pascal's Wager:

"Belief is a wise wager.  Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false?  If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.  Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists." 

Pascal's Wager underscores, quite effectively, the human folly of not prudently measuring the consequences of our choices in relation to their potential outcome.  To Pascal, the consequences of a choice may be far more important than the likelihood of its outcome.