You have to squint to see it but taken as a whole U.S. economic data is gradually improving. Yes, the move is glacial in pace and there are those who question the numbers but consumer confidence is rising, GDP is still on the happy side of zero, and jobs are being added to the economy.

According to economic theory, bonds and stock yields should both be moving higher as money floods into higher risk assets. It's not happening that way. Stocks are weak and yields remain depressed, suggesting investors remain content to earn something close to nothing on risk-free money rather than roll the dice on stocks.

Ed Dempsey, chief investment officer at Pension Partners says the yields in particular are a red flag for equities. The confluence of factors are "indicative of a shrinking economic pie," notes Dempsey. In a globalized economy a shrinking pie means the best most investors can hope to do is break even. That's not a formula for rising equities.

A positive resolution to the fiscal cliff

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Josh Brown won't make any big calls on the outcome of the presidential election. Brown, the author of widely read "The Reformed Broker" blog and a vice president at asset management firm Fusion Analytics, says market reaction to the next president will be "huge" and some people will be rewarded handsomely for their bets. Hospital REITs could see a 10% pop if Obama wins, Brown believes, while a Romney victory means a boost for traditional pharmaceutical stocks.

But that momentum will fade and investors will redirect their attention back to the looming crisis in Washington: the convergence of massive automatic tax increases and spending cuts — more commonly referred to as the "fiscal cliff." These concerns, coupled with decelerating corporate earnings, have convinced Brown to reduce exposure to equities and take a cautious investing approach as the year comes to a close.

"This third quarter earnings season was just atrocious and the guidance was not

Apple (AAPL) shares have tumbled 18% from their record high of $705 -- causing many to wonder whether the company has lost its mojo.

Despite the stock plunge, the company continues to beat expectations and its own sales records. Apple sold a record 3 million iPads from last Friday to Sunday when its latest iPad and iPad mini went on sale. That is double the number of tablets Apple sold in March when the third generation iPad went on sale.

Related: iPad Mini: Will It Cannibalize Apple's Regular iPad Sales?

As a result of the positive news, Apple stock was up 8% to $585 in mid-morning trading Monday.

In the accompanying video, Fusion Analytics' long-time Apple fan Josh Brown joins The Daily Ticker's Aaron Task to discuss why he is still bullish on the company.

"We are long Apple," he says. "We still like it," adding that it is the one stock that Fusion believes should be a core holding for its clients.

While Brown has historically been "hesitant"

Shares of Apple (AAPL) rose modestly in early trading Monday on news that the release of the new iPad Mini and updated iPad saw strong demand, despite hurricane Sandy. "Customers around the world love the new iPad mini and fourth generation iPad," CEO Tim Cook gushed in a statement. "We set a launch weekend record and practically sold out of iPad minis."

The mini rally was welcome relief to Apple shareholders who have seen the stock fall over $100 since the September 21st release of the iPhone 5, nearly entering official bear market territory.

Perspective is in order regarding Apple shares. The stock is still up over 40% in 2012, 210% in two years and more than 7,000% over the last decade. On the way to those staggering returns Apple collapsed of almost 50% in 2008 and dropped over $100 once already in 2012. For most Apple shareholders this pullback is just another dip to be bought. Business as usual, in other words.

For the last 15 years, any day the market is open has been a great day to buy Apple, but in 220 years of formal U.S. stock trading no company or stock has seen gains the likes of AAPL without a subsequent calamity. IBM (IBM) rose 1,000% in five years ending in July of 1999 then took 11 years to get back to old highs. Wal-Mart (WMT) rose 1,000% in the 1990s and went no where for the next decade. Those are best-case scenarios; most rocket stocks collapse and are never heard from again.

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Thanksgiving is right around the corner. For some people this means family, food and football. But for others it means just one thing: shopping.

Black Friday has become synonymous with fire sales and door-buster deals. Shoppers often camp out Thanksgiving night to take advantage of great deals on hot items when stores open at the crack of dawn Friday morning.

Unfortunately, a lot of savvy shoppers fall prey to common Black Friday myths, says Lindsay Sakraida, features director of dealnews.com. She stopped by The Daily Ticker to debunk some common Black Friday lore, including the following:

• Black Friday sales begin on Black Friday "Not true," says Sakraida. "I'm sure that a lot of people have heard that stores are even opening on Thanksgiving now." Each year, sales get earlier and earlier, if you wait until Black Friday to start shopping you'll miss out on some great deals. There's no longer any need to leave holiday festivities early in order to hit

A well worn adage about Wall Street suggests that markets can adjust to almost any circumstance, as long there are no surprises. "We don't like the idea of higher taxes," investors often say, "but we can deal with it (within reason) as long as you leave things alone after that."

While this degree of flexibility may seem, to some, totally out of sync with an otherwise polarized world of entrenched partisan positions, it really is laudable for the "we'll find a way" optimism and attitude it implies.

"Elect whoever you want, just leave us alone" the battle cry goes, but the problem is, there's always something else to worry about. Just as Superman buckled at Kryptonite and vampires implode in the light, markets loathe the smell of uncertainty as much as they refuse to wait for news before reacting.

What's interesting, as SocGen forex strategist Kit Juckes points out in a note to clients this morning, is that stock and bond investors have drawn different conclusions. "Romney cuts taxes and spending and eventually replaces Bernanke with someone less dovish. This helps stocks, is bad for bonds," Juckes writes, adding that "Obama raises taxes and healthcare, bad for stocks and therefore good for bonds."

As insightful as this disparity is, it is also troubling in that it also means a lot, as in half, of investors are about to be proven wrong and therefore will need to adjust 180-degrees.

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The decline of the middle class has emerged as a key issue in the presidential campaign with both candidates promising policies to restore the economic stability of the middle class.

The conventional view has wages for the middle class, particularly men, stagnating over the past 40 years. But Michael Greenstone, economics professor at MIT and director of The Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, says the situation is much worse than that.

Greenstone tells The Daily Ticker that after studying the data more carefully he found "that a lot of men are no longer in the workforce or are working part time."

"If you put them back in, the earnings of the guy in the middle have declined 20% over the last four decades," he says. "As a result, the median earnings of men are back to the levels that prevailed in the 1960s."

In the latest jobs report released Friday, the average hourly earnings for men and women rose a penny to $23.58 an hour. That caps a 1.6%

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Superstorm Sandy fled the East Coast as quickly as she arrived but her presence will linger for years to come. For the 5,900 year-round residents in Belmar, N.J, a beach community about 90 minutes south of New York City, Sandy destroyed their homes, their beach and their 20-block boardwalk. Six pumps are still working 24 hours a day to push the neck-deep salt water back into the ocean. Chunks of boardwalk have been floating along the flooded streets for days. Residents' yards and rooftops are still littered with storm debris and sand. The boardwalk shops and cafes that sold daily beach passes, ice cream and cold drinks just three months ago have been washed away with the waves, barely leaving a trace of their existence.

On Friday residents were trying to resume a modicum of normalcy even as they continued to remove refuse and flotsam from their homes. Getting around town the past few days has involved jet skiing, boating or kayaking — fun water