Is the bear market over? Is the recession ending? Well, stocks have rallied off their lows in impressive fashion, the economic backdrop is improving, the Federal Reserve is buying every kind of asset imaginable and the consensus seems to be that this is nothing but another one of the sucker rallies we’ve experienced over the last six months. Put all that together and I’m pretty comfortable with the idea that stocks can continue to rise for a while longer.

One thing that a lot of the recent commentary ignores though is that while the Spring stock market rally has been nice, it still leaves the major averages down for the year.

In times like these, cash is king, and companies with a lot of it are set to succeed and poised to take advantage. Cash-laden companies are able to scoop up market share and increase revenues with the scarce capital it holds, whether it be through acquisitions or aggressive growth strategies via increased research and investment or updating and increasing production capabilities.

Here are the top 15 companies (along with their quotes, charts, and total cash positions) that have hoarded the most cash, in that order. Financials were excluded for obvious reasons (and that includes GE):

The stock market is now back near its November lows and the pessimism is as thick as a copy of Keynes General Theory. The “stimulus” package has been deemed either insufficient or overkill depending on your political persuasion, but certainly not stimulating. The joy over the selection of Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary has faded to a fear that his creative abilities were exhausted in the preparation of his personal tax returns. The natives, or at least those at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, are getting restless and the fear trade is the only thing that seems to work with gold and Treasury Notes the only assets that seem to catch a bid for more than day or two.

Amid the gloom and doom it is easy to overlook the good news in our midst, but it does exist. I have little confidence in the ability of government to fix our problems but I am ever the optimist about the capitalist system that so many seem intent on blaming for our economic problems. Despite the declaration of Newsweek that We Are All Socialists Now, the market, not knowing it has been declared obsolete, continues to do what it has always done. Prices rise and fall, the forces of supply and demand interact and the excesses of our recent past are purged.

There is no argument about the current economic situation. We’re in a recession and it is fairly deep. Investing, though, is about the future - not the present or the past. Investors will want to keep their eye on indicators which can give early signals of recovery. A number of these early cycle indicators have recently turned positive.

Monday morning, the manufacturing portion of the ISM was reported and it was up for the first time since June of last year:

President Obama, like so many in the Democratic party, idolizes Franklin Roosevelt. He has called for a new New Deal, portions of which are passing through the pork grinder called Congress and spent most of his campaign playing class warrior. In perfect Rooseveltian fashion, he spent the last week tongue lashing Wall Street over their pay packages, calling year end bonuses ”the height of irresponsibility” and shameful after a report from the NY state comptroller. Despite the business bashing, weak economic reports, falling earnings and a new Treasury Secretary who acts a lot like the old one, stocks managed to hold their losses to less than 1%.

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In a week where change was the word on everyone’s lips, not a lot changed in the economic data. Jobless claims are still rising, housing is still in the dumps and the big financial institutions are still struggling. With the economic dreariness as a backdrop, the stock market fell again, although only about 2%. Earnings reports were generally pretty ugly, but several companies managed to overcome the economic environment to post better than expected results. Volatility spiked higher but remains well below the panic levels of the fall.

The Martin Luther King holiday Monday and President Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday gave all Americans a reason to feel good about things for a little while, but the happy mood didn’t extend much beyond the Mall and didn’t come within striking distance of Broad and Wall. The market greeted the new President with the worst Inaugural day selloff in history, not that that means a whole lot. The selling was fierce in bank shares as the UK plan for essentially nationalizing their banking system put the fear of, if not God, at least the government into bank shareholders. State Street (STT) led the selloff after finally fessing up to having some lousy investments on its balance sheet following months of denial, but the selling was widespread with the banking index falling 20% on Tuesday alone.

The steady stock market uptrend since the November lows was broken last week as the bad economic data and bailout uncertainties continued. Market action was dominated by news in the financial sector. JP Morgan (JPM), Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC) all announced more writeoffs last week although JP Morgan at least was able to report a profit after an extraordinary gain from the Washington Mutual acquisition. Without the gain, JP Morgan would have reported a loss as well.

Citigroup reported a loss of $8.29 billion and announced it would split into two seperate companies, effectively ending the financial supermarket approach of Sandy Weill. Bank of America’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch caused significant indigestion in the quarter as it reported a loss of $2.39 billion due to trading losses at Merrill among many other things. Bank of America returned to the taxpayer bailout trough, getting a Citi-like deal with the taxpayer backstopping its future losses. Both stocks declined significantly on the week, but at least recovered some from their lows.

Another week of depressing economic reports was capped by the report of another 500,000+ jobs loss in December. The stock market fell roughly 5% in its worst weekly performance since November. All in all, not a good week. There were some bright spots in the economic data but overall, there wasn’t much for a bull to hang his hat on.

The jobs report Friday was about as ugly a report as it could be. Employment and hours worked fell. Discouraged and part time workers increased. Including discouraged workers (those who have given up on finding a job) and part timers who want to work full time, the real unemployment figure is about 13.5%. The only bright spot was the rise in average hourly earnings, which when combined with negative inflation readings, means that real earnings are rising fairly smartly. Expect a good portion of the rise in earnings to be saved as consumers continue their retrenchment.

As the new Obama administration prepares to enact the mother of all “stimulus” packages, it seems that some still can’t get straight what caused the current worldwide recession. Hank Paulson still believes the problem was caused by Asians saving too much:

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson blamed the credit crisis on global imbalances. Specifically, he repeated a storyline popularized by Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke: that a global savings glut (otherwise known as an imbalance) pushed interest rates down around the world and drove investors toward riskier and more leveraged investment activities.

Another holiday shortened week and another week of lousy economics news. Consumer confidence hit a record low and home prices continued to fall. Jobless claims fell but probably due to weird seasonal adjustments - not as much holiday hiring and therefore not as much post holiday firing. The ISM survey hit its lowest level since 1980 with new orders falling to a low not seen since 1948. Okay, we get it; the economy is lousy. That’s not news anymore and as the stock market demonstrated this week, what’s not news anymore doesn’t affect investors all that much.

Stocks on the week were up over 6% with the NASDAQ Composite leading the way with a devilish gain of 6.66%. The DJIA was up 6.1% and the S&P 500 was up 6.16%. Leading the way were resource stocks of various kinds. Oil was up big on the week as the latest confrontation between Israel and Hamas continued:

It’s almost over. Just one more week before we close the books on a truly awful year. Based on the market action of the last several weeks, it is easy to conclude that many investors have already called it a year. The Christmas shortened trading week was again a fairly boring affair that has become all too familiar lately. The stock market averages were down slightly for the week as volatility continued to subside and the economic news was again, as expected, lousy. There were glimmers of hope in some of the economic data, but one had to dig deep to find them.

The Dow closed the week down 0.74% and the S&P 500 fell 1.29%. The volatility index fell slightly, continuing a trend that started in late October:

The major stock market averages produced another boring week of flat performance, but other markets provided plenty of excitement as the Federal Reserve finally reached the lower bound of ZIRP (zero interest rate policy). The Fed’s two day meeting was widely expected to produce another interest rate cut, but Bernanke surprised the market by going all in and cutting the Fed Funds target to a range of 0-0.25%. The Fed funds market was already trading near that level anyway and for once it seems Bernanke decided to go with the flow rather than fight the market.

The statement released by the Fed outlined the quantitative easing measures they are prepared to take over the next few months. Basically what it amounts to is that the Fed will be printing up some new dollars and buying everything in sight. That may or may not get the credit markets functioning again someday, but the effect on the dollar was immediate:

The markets last week were dominated by the tug of war over the auto industry bailout and the arrest Thursday of Bernie Madoff on charges of fraud. Lost in the noise of the Madoff fraud was the arrest of a prominent New York attorney, also on fraud charges. Absent Madoff’s alleged $50 billion fraud, Marc Dreier’s alleged $380 million fraud would have been the major story.

Madoff is accused of operating a massive Ponzi scheme disguised as a hedge fund. Madoff, facing $7 billion in redemption requests, confessed earlier this week to his family that his business was a fraud. Madoff has been a prominent broker on Wall Street since the 1960s and was a past Chairman of the NASDAQ. His brokerage firm was a large market maker and is not accused in the scheme. His sons turned him in to the FBI.