Among investment gurus, Ken Fisher is undoubtedly one of the best. The Only Three Questions that Count is one of the best investment books to come out in recent memory, he has put together an amazing track record with Fisher Investments, and he's even on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans.

So why, Ken, must you promote yourself with all the subtlety of a late-night no-money-down infomercial guru?

Just once, I would like to be able to log on to Forbes.com without having to smash my speakers to silence your pitch for your firm.

I feel like a lot of serious, smart investors skip Ken Fisher because they're so turned off by the incessant marketing... we associate that kind of relentless pitching with charlatans, which Ken Fisher is most certainly not.

So the purpose of this post is two-fold: if you haven't read Ken Fisher's book, you really ought to go buy it. It's 58% off on Amazon. And if you're Ken Fisher, please consider hiring a new, more nuanced marketing firm.

According to a piece on Bloomberg, U.S. equities entered this week the cheapest that they had been in 16 years: "The benchmark for American equity is valued at 15.5 times estimated profit, the lowest since January 1991, according to data compiled by Bloomberg."

But does that really mean anything? More importantly, is it indicative of strong returns?

In his great book The only three questions that count, Ken Fisher presents compelling data suggesting that a low price/earnings ratio for the market is not a predictor of strong future returns. In fact, markets tend to perform better when they are "overvalued" based on this metric.

Pick up the book to learn about more paradoxes of investing, and learn to think like one of the best investment minds in business today.

Mark Hulbert, the newsletter guru's guru, had an interesting piece on Markewatch today. While numerous media sources have attributed Tuesday's market's drop to shaky consumer confidence, Hulbert looked at the data objectively rather than subjectively. Here's what he found out, based on an analysis of 30 years worth of economic and market data:

In a column in Sunday's New York Times, newsletter guru Mark Hulbert makes the case that small-cap stocks are significantly overvalued, and that large caps are undervalued. His argument is based on expanding price/earnings multiple for small-cap stocks, while the average large-cap P/E is down to one third of what it was seven years ago. This, in part, explains the underperformance of stocks like Home Depot Inc. (NYSE:HD) and Wal-Mart Stores(NYSE:WMT), whose CEOs have taken some heat for their heavy compensation in the midst of a flat stock price. These companies have provided consistent earnings growth, but the multiples have contracted to the point where the stock has remained relatively flat.

But are these companies on the verge of reward, or at least avoiding the downturn that Hulbert seems to be predicting for small-caps? I wonder. The piece does not provide any data on this going back earlier than 2000. In his book The Only Three Questions that Count, Ken Fisher made the case that the price/earnings ratio of the market is not an accurate predictor of whether stocks will move up or down. In fact, stocks seem to move higher when they exhibit high P/E ratios. I wonder if this phenomenon would hold true for the spread in the P/Es between small-caps and large-caps.

Before you go off and dump your small-caps to buy General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE) and Exxon Mobile Corp.(NYSE:XOM), remember this: While small-caps may underperform large-caps as a whole, the predictive value of this for any one stock is almost nonexistent; there will be underperformers and out-performers in both categories. I believe that investors will find the most success with stock picking in small-caps and micro-caps, where research is more likely to pay off (with large-caps, everything is often already factored into the price).

• The gap between the S&P earnings yield, which is 6.8%, and the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond, which is 4.45%, will close over time. If it were to close simply by lowering the S&P earnings yield to the level of the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond, the market would rise 47%.

• He advised to "forget everything you know about" P/E ratios, as the figure is meaningless without factoring in the cost of borrowing.

• He was "wildly optimistic" about '07, for reasons including the upcoming third-year presidential term to the prevalence of stock buybacks worldwide.