Put a fork in it. The days of easy money for the trader are gone and may not return. It was a good run, but just when you wrote off buy and hold investing, such a strategy may be exactly what works going forward.

After a rousing and predictable sell-off last Monday, the market rallied for the remainder of the week. On the back of a broken economy, bad news followed by more bad news, and investors simply defied gravity and said enough is enough.

The big kicker was the move on Friday. On a day that received the worst jobs report since 1974, stocks jumped by more than 3%. Although volatility was still huge, finishing the day with gains was very impressive, to say the least.

It was all very perplexing, and you could see it in the eyes of the so called professionals. If there were ever a reason for stocks to be down and down hard, it was Friday. The economy losing more than 500,000 jobs in the month is a big deal.

About the only certainty that can be gained from the report was that any recovery from the current state will take time, effort and lots of stimulus. This is more than just a one-year event.

While it is safe to assume that the market has priced in a recession that will last through the end of 2009, what is not so certain is what happens if the recession goes beyond that date.

That is why the moves last week are so confounding…