I read a lot.

My wife tells me it is one of the few things I do well. She is always complimenting me.

Anyway, I love reading financial magazines. I even subscribe to some bad ones just so I can write letters to the editor outlining how what they said was wrong.

The headlines leading up to the stories are the real high points: Seven Ways To Fix Your Portfolio And Get Back All The Money You Lost, You Silly Fool.

You've seen them, I'm sure. I just laugh. Not that they don't have some good ideas, but what if you take their advice and do what they suggest, just exactly who do you see if something you do blows up? That's why I cannot make specific recommendations in my scribbling here.

It is my responsibility to know the customer to make sure that what I recommend is suitable for their particular financial situation. Then I need to be available to fix something if it does not work out.

Not so with those publications we are talking about. My little education lesson today is to go ahead and read their ideas, a little knowledge is a good thing, just remember that they are not held to the strict regulations that people like me are held. A grain of salt, if you will.

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How about U.S. stock markets?

To this point over the past couple weeks, the markets continue to work higher in the face of what appears to be a questionable economic situation.

The talking heads on TV keep asking why the market is going up. I never ask that question.

It is more fun to watch markets climb that wall of worry as they sometimes do. I just kind of stand out of the way and let them go.

The portfolios that I manage all have degrees of asset allocation. The various allocations such, as an example, 70 percent equities (stocks) and 30 percent bonds and cash, are really designed to reflect the amount of risk that an investor is willing to take.

No allocation that I know of keeps investors from losing money; it is just an attempt to control risk.

Let's take a look at what has happened so far this year as I write this on April 1.

My wife just chirped in "Yea, it's April Fools' Day," as though that has something to do with my writing. I just got up and closed the door.

Unless otherwise indicated, any statistics I use are measured from Jan. 1 to March 31. The Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 stocks is up 4.1 percent. The broader Standard and Poor's 500 is up 4.9 percent and the Nasdaq Composite of over-the-counter stocks is up 5.7 percent. I like to look at the Wilshire 5000 which generally measures all stocks traded and is up 6.27 percent.

The Wilshire combines large cap, mid-cap, and small-cap stocks.

The foreign markets have slowed from their incredible rally in 2009. The Dow Jones MSCI EAFE Index, which measures those markets, is up just 0.2 percent. Not unusual to see that happen. Rarely does anything go straight up. The Dow Jones International Stock Indexes of mostly larger stock markets shows no markets up in double digits after the first quarter, but of those 22 markets measured only Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Spain and Italy are in negative territory.

Again, considering the rally in those markets last year, that is not a bad showing. Something not very good is cooking in Spain, that country's market is down more than 9 percent.

As we look at commodities the DJ-UBS Commodity Index is down about 5 percent year to date. Crude oil is up 5 percent, natural gas is in the dumper, down 30 percent, gold is up more than 1.5 percent and the dollar is up almost 6 percent against the Euro. The dollar has been strong.

In commodities we eat, corn has been trending lower, soybeans are steady, cattle prices are starting to rally, same thing with hogs. Coffee has started up after being weak, and sugar has fallen about 40 percent in the past nine months or so.

This market continues to show incredible resilience. Writing in his March 31 edition of "The Chartist," Dan Sullivan says, "The public still hasn't embraced the bull market even after a 70 percent gain off the March 2009 lows. Most of the money is going into the bond market.

"The investment company institute reported that $385 billion was pumped into bond market mutual funds over the past 12 months. "If there was ever a bull market that was not getting any respect, this is it," he said.

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And, in conclusion, Dave, my CPA, just sent my tax return back to me. He enclosed a little note that said he was going to start calling me Sherlock Holmes. I called him and asked him what he meant.

He said "You have made more brilliant deductions on this return alone than Sherlock made in his whole life."

I don't think he's funny.

Howie Pentony is a Saxonburg Client Portfolio Manager.