For the green shoots believers, a dose of reality: The Journal of Commerce reports that the Cass Freight Systems Index (Cass is a company that tracks freight spending) fell by a whopping 25% in April 2009 (hat tip to ZH).

This comes on the heels of a strong run-up in transports. The IYT Index that tracks this segment dipped below $40 in early March. At close of day on Tuesday it logged $59.54. Freight shipments and freight spending are the lifeblood of the U.S. economy and a key leading indicator for economic activity as both retailers use them to replenish inventories and durable goods.

Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is a company with $31 per share in cash on hand that just can't get a break. Analysts have begun downgrading the stock on fears that sales of Macs and iPhones will slow. As Apple hadn't been beaten down enough, shares dove today. Sentiment on Apple is rapidly deteriorating.

Meanwhile, Hedge Fund Research, a company that tracks hedge fund returns, released its February stats for how the hedgies performed. According to HFR, the hedgies beat the market soundly, losing only 0.5% in the month.

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Most people attribute this phrase to 19th century British politician and writer Benjamin Disraeli (it was later popularized by our own Mark Twain). But more recently, financial blogger Barry Ritholtz has embraced the motto as his raison d'etre.

Ritholtz writes the popular financial/cultural blog The Big Picture, where, among other things, he loves to take the headline numbers and debunk them. He understands the numbers. By day he's a market strategist and fund manager.

Today he rolls his eyes and examines the latest U.S. Census and Dept. of Housing and Urban Development numbers that show a 4.8% rise in new home sales.

What the mainstream press either overlooks or fails to mention is that pesky little margin of error. For September's numbers, for example, the margin of error renders the data statistically insignificant.

So statistically speaking, there was no rise. Nothing getting better on the housing front.

Damned lies and statistics. Mark Twain would surely be a fan of the Big Picture.

There has been considerable debate about the role of momentum in sports. In a landmark study, Thomas Gilovich and several colleagues provided evidence that the "hot hand" in basketball was nothing more than a myth. Since then, there has been considerable research suggesting that many of the old saws about sports are untrue, and a movement toward more enlightened analysis has emerged, best exemplified in Michael Lewis' book Moneyball.

In this weekend's Wall Street Journal, Allen St. John wonders about the idea of "momentum" heading into baseball's post-season.

He writes that "while much is often made about late-season momentum as a harbinger of playoff success, in reality the relationship between the two is small... The playoffs are truly a second season. Only once since the advent of the wild card has the team with the best regular-season mark (the 1998 Yankees) won the World Series."

So if your favorite team has limped into the post-season, don't worry about it! Occasionally, there are legitimate reasons to fret over lost momentum. If a team has experienced a disastrous September because of injuries to its top starters, that will be a problem heading into the post-season -- not because of momentum, but because the pitchers are likely to remain unavailable!

I would argue that investors should look at the stock market the same way. Rather than buying into the idea of "momentum" in the stock market (I've seen no evidence that such a phenomenon really exists), think about factors that actually effect the business. Leave the cliches about "fighting the tape" and "moving averages" to the old wives.

Most investors probably think that when an investment ratings service like Moody's, Standard & Poors or Fitch gives a company, financial institution or security the highest rating of "AAA," it carries the least possible level of risk. Most investors would think that this rating would be reserved for United States Treasuries and only the most secure of companies like Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), or United Parcel Service (NYSE: UPS). Actually, this happens to be the case, and these companies are among the very few to receive AAA ratings outside of financial institutions.

So what happened in the case of the Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDOs), where the ratings agencies determined that high-risk securities batched together had a smaller chance of default than the individual securities? Perhaps that is the case, but triple-A? Well, it seems to me that large investment banks knew they needed the AAA ratings to have a marketable security. They went to the ratings agencies that understood this and the agencies created the rational or plausible deniability to support the rating. This may be a bit harsh, but it does seem that the ratings agencies were working in reverse: first establish the rating and then the support for the rating. The ratings services are all heading for cover and many of the previously AAA-rated securities are being re-evaluated.