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The Congressional Budget Office just published its updated budget projections.

"If the current laws that govern federal taxes and spending do not change, the budget deficit will shrink this year to $642 billion, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates, the smallest shortfall since 2008," they wrote.

Related: Debt Ceiling Deadline Delayed: The Good and The Bad

The Dow (^DJI) and S&P 500 (^GSPC) closed at new record highs Tuesday, leaving both major market indexes up 15% year-to-date, outperforming most other asset classes. Investors clearly are favoring stocks over other asset classes.

Commodity prices are little changed (oil) or lower (gold). And 10-year Treasury yields, at 1.95%, are near where they started the year, though up sharply from the year’s 1.63% lows.

Related: Here's Why Stock Market Investors Should be Nervous

Within the stock market, investors are favoring high dividend-paying stocks. They have higher yields than Treasuries and are seen as safer investments than other stocks because of the cushion those dividends provide. But Seth Masters, chief investment officer of Bernstein Global Wealth Management, says those so-called safe dividend-paying stocks are more risky than ever.

“What [investors ] have been doing in the last few quarters is moving into parts of the stock market that are perceived to be safe, more defensive

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) is on track to extend its Tuesday winning streak to 18: Blue chips were up 93 points to 15,185 in recent trading.

Seth Masters, chief investment officer at Bernstein Global Wealth Management, which has over $450 billion in assets under management, reiterates his call that the Dow would hit 20,000 by the end of this decade. Masters first made the case for Dow 20,000 last July during an interview with The Daily Ticker. Investors and market watchers are no longer dismissing these optimistic projections: the Dow has already gained more than 17% in less than 12 months and needs to rise another 32% to hit the 20,000 target. A 32% increase seems downright reasonable over a seven-year span (barring no major market crash).

Related: Dow 20,000 Is Coming in 2014 or early 2015: James Altucher

Markets are breaking their record highs at an accelerated pace yet many retail investors are still sitting on the sidelines. As Masters points out in a recent client

Shareholder activism is a rough business.

Investors who amass large stockholdings and then demand changes are usually resisted and excoriated by the companies' managements, who do everything they can to defeat them. The resulting fights for control can often be public and ugly, with both sides seeking to dig up dirt or arguments with which to discredit the other side. In the end, either the activist shareholders or the incumbent managers emerge victorious, and the losers withdraw in bloody defeat.

One of the most famous and successful activist investors in the United States is hedge-fund manager Dan Loeb of Third Point.

Related: JPMorgan’s Dimon Problem: A $20 Billion Gamble?

Early in his career, Loeb became known for writing acid-tongued letters to managements, publicly ridiculing them for their incompetence. In recent years, Loeb's rhetoric has mellowed, but his punches have landed with even more sting. Last year, for example, after buying a big stake in the reeling Yahoo, Inc.,

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The boom in North American energy (primarily related to shale in the US and oil sands in Canada) is one of the biggest stories in the global economy.

Related: Fracking Is 100% Safe: T. Boone Pickens

A new report from The International Energy Agency (IEA) agency discusses the consequences of the boom in dramatic fashion, arguing that it's as big of a deal for the world oil market as the rise of China was over the last 15 years.

Related: Gas Prices to Keep Falling Through June: Gasbuddy.com

The report describes the U.S. supply "shock" as that is sending "ripples" throughout the world, affecting every aspect of the market.

Here's the key part from the press release announcing the report:

Neither industrial metal nor an official currency, the gold commodity is an asset investors have come to either love or hate.

The yellow metal is trading near $1,430 an ounce, down 25% from a record high of $1,920 in September 2011.

Related: 12 (Misguided) Commandments of Gold Bugs: Barry Ritholtz

More hedge funds are selling short the yellow metal while other investors are getting out of their long positions. Holdings in exchange-traded funds backed by gold bullion are at their lowest level since July 2011, according to Bloomberg.

But Blackrock, the world’s largest money manager, is still buying gold, according to its president Robert Kapito and billionaire John Paulson continues to stick with gold despite a 27% loss in his gold fund in April. His company is the biggest investor in the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD). And gold demand in China and India is still strong.

Related: Gold Tumbles Again: Is the Era of Gold Over?

Brian Sullivan, host of Talking Numbers, a joint production from

Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation of the famed American novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald raked in $51 million in its opening weekend.

The film and book depict the short period of American excess after World War I but before The Great Depression. Although Fitzgerald ultimately puts a negative spin on this gilded age, one must admit that it would be fun to live like the book's protagonist Jay Gatsby.

Gatsby made his fortune by bootlegging alcohol during the prohibition era, but just how large a fortune did he make? Nickolay Lamm, a researcher and artist, looked into the matter and created an infographic to display his findings. Lamm claims that to live like Gatsby did between 1920 and 1922 would be cost about $34 million in 2013 dollars.

Related: Zara Co-Founder Increases Wealth by $22.2B in 2012

After returning home from war, Gatsby purchases a 12-room mansion in West Egg, Long Island (West Egg is thought to be a thinly veiled stand in for Great Neck, LI). Lamm estimates that

College costs have been rising nearly 5% a year for the past 10 years—more than double the rate of inflation. The annual cost for a four-year public college or university is now almost $9,000 a year for in-state residents and $22,000 for out-of-state residents, according to the College Board. Private colleges charge two or three times as much.

All these schools face rising costs for health insurance, technology, faculty and infrastructure but public institutions also suffer from a decline in state and local government financing.

Still, that doesn’t seem to have hurt the paychecks of the presidents of public universities. Their median pay packages jumped 5% to $441,392 for the 2011-2012 fiscal year, and a growing number of those presidents took in more than $1 million, according to an analysis by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The millionaires club include:

• Former Pennsylvania State University President Graham Spanier, who was fired as a result of a sex abuse scandal. His total