The S&P 500 may be down slightly this Friday afternoon after a fairly flat week, but that does not mean that all traders are bearish. In fact, option traders still appear to be quite bullish. Investors buying call options still outnumber put option buyers by more than 2 to 1 in the S&P 500 SPDRs ETF (SPY) for the September at-the-money strike price.

When a traders buys a call option they think the stock is going to go up, and when they buy puts they think the stock may go down. The ratio between calls and puts is often looked at as a reflection of underlying trader sentiment. Significant changes in this balance may indicate that sentiment is changing.

Today was one of those market days where you just felt like the stock market was headed lower no matter what. A report from the World Bank showing lower recovery is expected in 2009 and in 2010 did not help. It took the sails out of the commodity sector and therefore out of stocks.

With little economic data to center on, traders just continued the momentum of selling to take profits. We are also seeing a reversal here where now the market needs great news to rally.

Here are today's closing bell levels:

Dow 8,339.01 -200.72 (-2.35%)
S&P 500 893.04 -28.19 (-3.06%)
Nasdaq 1,766.19 -61.28 (-3.35%)

Top 10 Analyst Calls

The PPT is the vaunted Plunge Protection Team, a much derided but often alluded to collusion of the major prime brokerages (Goldman, Morgan, Stanley, Citi) to halt major stock market declines by manipulating the market. It's never been proven, of course. But a firestorm of comments on ZeroHedge and in other places where hardcore (and some institutional traders) gather has zeroed in on the difficulties many have had borrowing shares of the S&P Index (SPY) in order to short the index. The commenters believe this is a result of the PPT holding back shares to stop any shorts that could torpedo the ongoing rally.

This post was written by Minyanville contributor James Kostohryz
I believe that the market is currently poised in a binary position.

Better than expected earnings and/or guidance by the major banks and/or other major companies this week could send the S&P 500 flying past its 200 day moving average triggering a wave of long purchases and short covering (note that short interest has been rising sharply in the past few days).

On the other hand, disappointment from any of the major financials such as Goldman Sachs(NYSE:GS), JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM) or Citigroup(NYSE:C) and/or major companies reporting this week such as Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)or Google(NASDAQ:GOOG)could send the market reeling into a quick 10% correction.

Here is my baseline view of the week, subject to change at any moment.

This post is part of our feature on Money Winners of 2008. See all 20.

This past year has been a pretty rough one for CEOs in general. The stock market has tanked since October of last year, dragging down strong companies' share prices to some extent and weak companies' even further. It has been even worse for most financial executives, who have been ousted as their stocks fall to roughly zero and their company goes bankrupt or is taken over by a stronger institution. While many of these CEOs have golden parachutes that open upon their dismissal, much of their compensation is in the form of the company's stock and when that value dwindles, they feel the pain as well. One of our other 2008 Money Winners, Alan Fishman, who walked away with more than $11 million for three weeks work at Washington Mutual, had 600K shares of WM that he saw evaporate.

James "Jamie" Dimon, CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), has not had this kind of trouble over the past year, which places him squarely in the minority among his peers and makes him a money winner. Strictly speaking, Mr. Dimon raked in a salary for this year of "just" $1 million. His bonus allows for an additional $14.5 million, and the way things have been going for JPM, I'd wager a hefty portion of my savings that he gets the full amount. Plus on top of that, he has exercised options worth about $40.1 million this year, bringing the grand total compensation to $55.6 million.

I am the Global Editor at MoneyShow.com and each week I interview an investing expert. This week, I spoke with John Rutledge, chairman of Greenwich, Conneticuit-based Rutledge Capital, who casts a wide net, shedding light on the global recession as well as upcoming opportunities around the world.

Q. John, are we at the bottom yet (in equity markets) and what do you see for world markets in the next 12 months?

A. The US economy has substantially worsened in recent months; and the US and global economies are now in the early stages of a significant recession.

In early 2007, the problem was confined to the leveraged loan market as banks revealed their $300 billion in toxic loan commitments to US private equity deals. This was an isolated capital market problem, which had not materially impacted GDP. But in September 2008, the safety of money market funds came into question, seriously frightening individuals into taking cash from their bank accounts, putting all spending on hold and hoarding cash. Since then, GDP has been in serious decline.

Ironically, beginning in March 2008, the Federal Reserve's series of liquidity measures, designed to provide cash to troubled Wall Street institutions, made this situation worse. They sold Treasury bills simultaneously, withdrawing reserves from the banking system, resulting in less than a 1% annual rate of growth in bank reserves and the monetary base in the 12 months leading up to September 2008. Since the September crisis, both reserves and the monetary base have more than doubled, which will eventually solve the problem. But the Fed was very late to the party.

"While watching the Olympics, I couldn't thinking about the investment opportunities of the various countries participating in the games," says exchange-traded fund expert Carl Delfeld.

Recognizing that this is not a "scientific" approach nor a primary basis for seriously determining one's asset allocation the editor of Around the World with ETFs speculates, "While it is admittedly a stretch, let's consider what an ETF porfolio of the top ten countries in the Beijing Olympics medal count would look like."

"I hope that while watching the Olympic games many investors were also reminded at how the world is changing and why they need a global portfolio to capture value and growth around the world.

"The U.S. did remarkably well across the board underscoring its role as the world's leading investment destination. China surged to win the most gold and reach the symbolic level of 100 medals.

"Quite an achievement that punctuates China's growing heft. With the Shanghai Composite down 55% this year, it has come down to earth and is interesting from a valuation perspective.

"Next comes Russia with a performance fueled by a strong Olympian tradition and petro dollars but perhaps a bit overshadowed by the Georgian fiasco. I will take a pass on this one even though it is off 36% since just May.

I believe that everyone, no matter how much investment experience they have, should learn how to take control of their investing, buy a well diversified portfolio of index funds, periodically rebalance their portfolio, and allow their money to compound without fees. So do Warren Buffett (read what he wrote about fees), John Bogle, David Swensen, and other investment industry luminaries. This is because the fees charged by the financial industry, over time, decimate investment returns.

But many people just want investment advice. Most people will spend more time shopping for a car on the weekend to save $1000, than to understand the true cost of the investment advice they are receiving on the nest egg that they're spending their entire working lives building. If you must, here are some tips that I think will help you minimize the damage and give you a shot at having a successful relationship with your stock broker, financial adviser or investment manager.

1. Show Me The Fees. If your financial adviser is charging a fee to oversee your investments, he is probably investing your money in mutual funds that also have fees. Ask for a comprehensive list of all the fees you are paying each year including each fund, its fees, and his fees. Try to get these aggregate fees below 2% per year. My friend has a $6 million account with one of the largest four brokers and to make my point, I calculated his mutual fund fees, loads, and fees to his advisor. Last year he paid about $138,000! He is considering switching to index funds and where he would pay $18,000 per year.

2. Get Invoiced. Most financial advisors "debit" your account either in advance of the quarter or month. Ask them to send you an invoice and write them a check. That way you'll stay aware of the cost for these services.

3. Show Me The Commissions. Ask your adviser to disclose the exact amount of commissions, credits or any form of compensation he or she is paid as an incentive for having you invest in a certain financial product like a mutual fund, annuity, or life insurance product. Also ask for the cost of an index fund alternative so that you can understand exactly what it is costing you to be "sold" a particular product and so that you can justify its price in the future.

If you've ever delved into investing in ETFs (exchange-traded funds, basically entire indexes and sectors that trade like stocks), you're already familiar with the most popular, those being Powershares QQQ Trust (Nasdaq: QQQQ), SPDR Trust Series 1 (AMEX: SPY), Diamonds Trust, Series 1 (AMEX: DIA), iShares Russell 2000 Index (NYSE: IWM) and lately Financial Select SPDR (AMEX: XLF) and UltraShort QQQ ProShares (AMEX: QID). But have you ever looked into those that are much less followed, but more capable of yielding some big-time returns?

I primarily trade fun smallcap stocks, so until the past few days, I hadn't either. But when I began researching, I just kept finding more and more interesting ETFs -- it was addictive! Almost addictive as my new Twitter account where I've discovered I can chat with business legends, yesterday it was the founder of eBay Inc (Nasdaq: EBAY). Okay, maybe ETFs will never be that addictive!

Out the few hundred ETFs I looked into, here were some of the more interesting of the bunch:

As of Monday's close, the S&P 500 SPDR exchange-traded fund (AMEX: SPY) was down 12.25% for the year, buffeted by continuing turbulence in global credit markets and concerns over future growth prospects.

However, the relative performance of the major sector ETFs paints a far more confusing picture.

On the one hand, strength in materials and industrial shares, and weakness in the traditionally defensive health care sector, suggests that investors are not too worried about the outlook.

In contrast, strength in the consumer staples sector and weakness in technology shares indicates they are, in fact, concerned about what will happen to the economy.

So what does it all mean?

It seems that every day a new ETF is listed with a new twist on an index.

So, for a short history in ETF evolution:

1. First came the market-weight indexed ETFs. These were ETFs that benchmarked themselves to indices like the S&P (AMEX: SPY) or the Nasdaq (NASDAQ: QQQQ).

2. Then, Jeremy Siegel and the WisdomTree (WSDT) team introduced dividend -weighted indices. Instead of giving commensurate weight to the largest companies in an index, these ETFs looked at companies with the highest payouts in terms of dividends. These were shortly followed by earnings-weighted indices and the ETFs that track them.

3. Now, we read on MarketWatch that a new firm named RevenueShares has listed three separate shares: the RevenueShares Large Cap Fund (NYSE: RWL), the RevenueShares Mid Cap Fund (NYSE: RWK), and lastly, you guessed it, the RevenueShares Small Cap Fund (NYSE: RWJ).

MarketWatch was running a interview today with Will Nasgovitz, co-manager of the Heartland Select Value Fund (NASDAQ: HRSVX). The $332 billion fund has absolutely trounced the S&P 500 (AMEX: SPY) since 2000. Even with an extremely rocky 2007, the fund is up over 100% since 2000, where the S&P is actually (ugh) in the red for the same time period.

The secret sauce?

MarketWatch quotes manager Nasgovitz as saying that the team running Select Value has a background covering small- and micro-cap stocks, which don't get as much analyst research coverage, that they apply when delving into larger companies.

What's Nasgovitz buying of late?

After rising more or less in line with overall market volume for years, there has been a noticeable surge since the spring in the relative turnover of selected exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

For the SPDR Trust Series 1 ETF (AMEX: SPY), which tracks the S&P 500 index, the average daily volume (ADV) compared to New York Stock Exchange Composite ADV increased from 6.1% in April to 16.8% last month. For the PowerShares QQQ ETF (NASDAQ: QQQQ), which emulates the Nasdaq-100 index, the numbers went from 6.3% to 14.1%. For the iShares Russell 2000 Index Fund ETF (AMEX: IWM), which mirrors the small cap benchmark, relative turnover rose from 3.4% to 6.7%.

Although it's not clear whether the activity was related to hedging or outright position-taking -- or both -- the sharp increase in activity suggests that there has been an important change in the underlying dynamic of the U.S. equity market. If so, it raises some interesting questions.

Could this be a sign, for example, that the influence of hedge funds, proprietary trading desks, and other speculative operators is expanding dramatically? Are investors of all stripes becoming increasingly focused on ETFs as an investing vehicle? Does this emphasis on trading bundles of shares mean that more individual issues are "mispriced"?

Whatever the case, this is a trend worth paying attention to.

Michael Panzner is a 25-year veteran of the global stock, bond, and currency markets and the author of Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future from Four Impending Catastrophes and The New Laws of the Stock Market Jungle.

"The FOMC inspired rally has continued and a new trading range may be setting up," says Larry McMillan in his Daily Strategist, an options trading service.

The technician explains, "With continued strength, the breakout of the trading range is starting to have a more valid feel to it – and a new trading range bordered by 1480/1490 on the downside to 1550 on the upside may now be setting up."

Market breadth, he notes, is overbought and he considers this bullish – especially given the fact that we have just seen a 90% up volume day. He suggests, "As we have often seen – a market that is overbought and that adds to the overbought condition (on price improvement) – has positive price momentum in its favor."

He also points out that the $VIX has continued to trend lower, which he considers positive. Further, he adds, the Equity-Only put-call ratios remain bullish as well. Therefore, he states, "Our technical indicators are overwhelmingly bullish; and sector performance is extremely positive based on the Financial and Energy sectors."