The market has been in flux this morning following news of a possible flu outbreak. Not surprisingly, commodity prices have been affected, including grain prices and hog and cattle futures. "For the moment, nothing else… not even rationality… means anything," according to Dennis Gartman of the Gartman letter (via FT Alphaville). Here's why.

Despite Generation Y's apparent spending priorities and debt issues, this group is tucking away more money than the nation overall. According to a recent survey from Money Management International, a credit and debt counseling nonprofit, 44 percent of Gen Ys say they're funneling more money into savings (Americans as a whole say they're saving 36 percent more.)

Maybe we shouldn't beat up on Gen Y so much. Case in point: "Characterized by their sense of entitlement, casual clothes, Blackberries and high expectations, Gen Y has presented Generation X and Baby Boomer employers with the problem of managing and retaining them as employees," writes MMI.

Whether it's that we're short on cash or short on job opportunities, fewer Americans are moving. According to the Census Bureau, the national mover rate declined from 13.2 percent in 2007 to 11.9 percent in 2008, which is the lowest since the bureau began tracking this figure in 1948.

Let's say you think the S&P is bound to go up--way up--in the coming months. Why not double down with a leveraged fund that gives you double the return of the S&P? Or on the other hand, if you're convinced that a sector is going to fall hard, why not bet against it with a fund that returns three times the opposite of that sector's index?

It's not as simple as it sounds. Kiplinger columnist and investment adviser Steven Goldberg (a former colleague of mine) explains the arithmetic behind these funds and why they often return a lot less than you'd expect. The most important thing to know is that they only deliver the performance of a single day, not of a year or even a month. That fact makes a huge difference. Consider his example:

The Vanguard REIT Index fund tumbled 50% through April 7. Now, suppose you were smart enough to buy a fund that goes in the opposite direction of the Vanguard fund, namely ProFunds Short Real Estate fund. Its objective is to return the inverse of a REIT index. Your gain: Not 50%. Not even 25%. Instead, you lost 11%.

The story delves into the specifics of the strategy and includes several other examples that illustrate the hazards of investing in leveraged and inverse funds. Goldberg's conclusion: "Like cigarettes, these funds tell you on the package exactly what they do. And just as surely as cigarettes can cut years off your life, these funds can reduce your wealth substantially. You're better off at the craps tables."

Leveraged and inverse strategies are popping up in ETF form as well. Here's a look at one of the newer offerings, which seeks to triple the return of a given index.

For a quick primer on exchange-traded funds, see 10 Things You Didn't Know About ETFs.

Not to suggest that if everybody's doing it so you should you, but a just-released Citigroup survey reported that almost two-thirds of institutional investors said they're looking to add more stocks to their portfolio. That's up 10 percentage points from Citi's December survey.

According to Citi, they favor the tech sector and expect utilities to perform worst in 2009 (in December, they expected financials to perform the best and consumer discretionary to perform the worst.) Attitudes about growth stocks have also changed: In mid 2007, 80 percent believed that growth would outperform value, but in December only 40 percent stuck by growth.

Other interesting results:

Think your mutual fund manager can outrun the pack? You better really believe in him or her, because data spanning the past five years shows that nearly three-fourths of active managers have lagged their indexes over the past five years.

According to the just-released S&P Indices Versus Active Funds Scorecard for year-end 2008, the S&P 500 generated higher returns than 72 percent of actively managed large cap funds from the beginning of 2004 to the end of 2008.

Is this rally for real? Investors are basking in the fourth rally of the current bear market--and this one has yielded the biggest gain for stocks since the markets began to tank in 2007, according to Citi global equity strategists.