By Katherine Burton

Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Andrew Lahde, the hedge-fund manager who quit after posting an 870 percent gain last year, said farewell to clients in a letter that thanks stupid traders for making him rich and ends with a plea to legalize marijuana.

• Method: Asset Replicator with stochastic global optimisation
• Target Fund: WYASX
• Base Funds: GLD, LQD, SHY, EEM
• Start Date: 01 Jan 2003
• End Date: 11 Apr 2008
• Date set: 500-daily prices
• Lower Holding Limits: 0.0,0.0,-1.0,-1.0,0.0
• Upper Holding Limits: 1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0

------------ BACKTEST SUMMARY STATISTICS START ------------
Benchmark
Mean: 0.0010900271865032297
Var : 7.64450578974336E-5
Skew: -4.493104233234604E-7
Kurt: 2.951751422088767E-8
Asset_Replicator_0_SEQ
Mean: 0.0010156973265706283
Var : 1.506017370289151E-4
Skew: -9.83848944717364E-7
Kurt: 9.660423028641269E-8
------------ BACKTEST SUMMARY STATISTICS END --------------

JPMorgan buys Bear Stearns for $2 a share - JPMorgan Chase agreed to buy Bear Stearns, the stricken US investment bank, for $236m in shares as the Fed announced two further emergency moves aimed at stabilising financial markets [Financial Times - Financial Services]

Six ETFs (SPY, XLF, XLP, XLE, LQD, SHY) replicating the return distribution of Vanguard Asset Allocation (VAAPX). Replication of the daily return based on the immediately preceding 500-day data, i.e. 2 years.

BofA elaborates on Countrywide - Bank of America has the right to match any buy-out offer for Countrywide Financial, according to a filing made as part of BofA's $2bn preferred share investment in the troubled mortgage lender [Financial Times - Financial Services]