Daleela Farina
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In a word: yes.

Despite all the talk about regulating these speculative investment vehicles, "Obama's financial overhaul plan included no big surprises or threats to the lucrative, secretive industry," writes The Wall Street Journal.

The name of the game is lobbying, which is easily funded by the $1.3 trillion dollar industry. Even after numerous Ponzi schemes and frauds have recently been exposed, the U.S. government has failed at regulating hedge funds, the most speculative area in finance, in part due to the industry's lobbying efforts.

Normally we think of revolutionary products created by start-ups or entrepreneurial minds just out of college, but the most talked about new projects of 2009 are being produced by some of the best known companies in the world.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN): With its massive online presence and a truly efficient business model, Amazon has become the largest online retailer in the world. It is now taking on a new business, web services, namely cloud computing (learn more HERE), called the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). While hosting this infrastructure and presenting e-commerce with a reasonably affordable alternative with no up-front costs, Amazon has taken an early lead in this space, with some believing its cloud computing business will one day overtake retailing. "Amazon will be like a book store that sells cocaine out the back door. Books will be just a front to sell storage and cloud computing." says Larry Dignan, Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic.

Cloud computing is a type of on-demand hosting services on the internet. Not only a necessity for mainstream e-commerce sites, it also increases efficiency, is scalable, and lowers expenses. The monetary savings may be misleading to consumers and businesses who do not fully understand the potential risks involved.

With a pay-as-you-go type structure, users are only charged for the amount of traffic, bandwidth, and memory used. Online businesses become more efficient by only utilizing the storage and space needed, while also being assured capacity for any usage increases. The buzz has been building for years, so cloud computing has attracted a diverse customer base, ranging from popular social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, to educational websites of Arizona State and Northwestern University.

If you plan on liquidating any profitable, or taxable, positions in the stock market thanks to the current uptrend and also want to give to your favorite charity, the strategy outlined below is key to optimizing your gift, as well as your capital.

Though giving cash to causes is the most popular form of charity, desperate times call for creative measures, and any type of gift will be gladly accepted. By giving stock directly to charity, and bear in mind that the stock must be in your portfolio for one year or more as short-term capital gains are not applicable, you not only avoid capital gains taxes on your gains, but you can actually use the gift of your stock as a tax deduction. Hence, the cost of your gift is lower than giving cash directly. Think of it as an overall investment for yourself and the charity.

Has your broker repeatedly sold you on the "safe" investment vehicle, the mutual fund? Investing in a wide variety of prominent companies, with solid, long-term track records, mutual funds have been an easy-to-understand and popular investment choice for decades.

Mutual funds are hugely diversified, holding large stakes in recognizable names such as Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Citigroup (NYSE: C), Walmart (NYSE: WMT), Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX), General Electric (NYSE: GE), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), and Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM).

Despite the U.S. stock market's recent run up, the decline in the U.S. dollar and inflation fears have investors searching for safety in these uncertain times. A popular strategy that has emerged is to hedge market and currency risk with commodities, namely gold, oil, and uranium. What specific stocks and investments in these sectors are likely to outperform?

ETFs like the US Oil Fund (NYSE: USO) and the SPDR Gold Shares (NYSE: GLD) will obviously track any rise or fall in these commodities to a T, but perhaps individual companies in these sectors are a better fit for you. Below are some industry giants, as well as speculative plays that are also drawing attention from investors.

Neal Berger, the fund manager who called the market top, founder of fund-of-funds Eagle's View Asset Management, is always seeking undiscovered fund managers who exploit a legitimate "edge" or inefficiency in the market. With decades of experience at prominent firms such as Fuji Bank, Chase Bank, and Millennium Partners, he now manages the investments of wealthy families/individuals.

In celebration of Barry Ritholtz's critically-acclaimed new book Bailout Nation, he held The Big Picture Conference, which I was fortunate to attend.

Here are the main points from the most reputable speakers, Congressman Alan Grayson, Nassim Taleb, Doug Kass, and Josh Rosner.

Florida Congressman Alan Grayson discussed how systemic risk is an excuse for socialism and that interconnectedness is the main reason that these institutions are "too big to fail." In fact, these institutions no longer hold social or economic purpose, they are simply too big to exist.

This is the market view from five prominent stock market bloggers. I asked them each one simple question: Where do you think the market is headed, and why? Here are their responses (listed in alphabetical order):

James Altucher – TheStreet.com

Altucher is a financial journalist for the Financial Times, daily contributor to TheStreet.com (NASDAQ: TSCM), and founder of Stockpickr. His articles cover every angle of the market; he also stars in feature videos with other financial luminaries. He is the author of Trade like a Hedge Fund, Trade Like Warren Buffett, SuperCa$h, andThe Forever Portfolio.

"The market sold off too much. S&P 700 was anticipating the apocalypse, which is not happening. With $15 trillion in stimulus worldwide happening over the next one to four years there is only one hedge for inflation: owning a broad spectrum of stocks. Buy internets, nuclear energy (Altucher mentions Shaw Group (NYSE: SGR), Cameco Corp (NYSE: CCJ) and USEC Inc (NYSE: USU) in THIS video segment), gold producers, and healthcare stocks."