Five signs of a fading financial bubble. Plus, mistakes you may be making when viewing investment returns

The S&P/TSX Composite Index and S&P 500 are up about 12 per cent and 11 per cent, respectively, from the Oct. 12 lows. But strategists at RB Advisors, including company founder and former Merrill Lynch chief U.S. quantitative strategist Richard Bernstein, believe the rally has all the hallmarks of speculative excess and won't last long. A Monday RB Advisors research report entitled Don't Speculate on Speculation begins, "The stock market rally so far this year seems based largely on speculation rather than fundamentals." The authors go on to argue that investors have been buying stock on the assumption that central…