Quote of the day

Francisco Dao, “Success doesn’t come from feel-good messages and overinflated self esteem. It comes from grit, rules, and discipline.”  (Pando Daily)

Chart of the day

The portfolio manager strategy cycle.  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

Markets

Share repurchases are a huge positive for the market.  (Capital Observer)

Check out the spread in asset class returns year-to-date.  (Capital Spectator)

Three things not to worry about.  (Mark Hulbert)

What to do about REITs?  (Mebane Faber)

Investors are pouring into junk stocks.  (FT)

The Mexican stock market is pulling back.  (Bespoke)

Strategy

Why blowhards don’t make money.  (The Reformed Broker)

Time to trim.  (Aleph Blog)

In a complex world, investing should be simple.  (CBS Moneywatch)

Companies

Taxes are not Apple’s ($AAPL) biggest worry.  (FT)

Why Warren Buffett may very well be irreplaceable.  (Dealbook contra Jeff Matthews)

Finance

Tim Cook 1: The Senate 0.  (Felix Salmon also Dealbook, Bloomberg)

How much does Jamie Dimon matter?  (Bethany McLean via Dealbreaker)

Funds

A showdown is coming over the management of the Firsthand Technology Value Fund ($SVVC).  (MoneyBeat)

Why buy the fund when you can buy the fund manager?  (InvestmentNews)

QuantShares gets acquired.  (IndexUniverse)

Economy

Are we living in a time of asset bubbles?  (Marginal Revolution)

On the need for clarity in unwinding quantitative easing.  (Tim Duy)

Transport

Truck traffic is up solidly year-over-year.  (Calculated Risk)

Gasoline prices are not going down.  (Bespoke)

How rail is reshaping America’s energy system.  (Open Markets)

Mixed media

Teens are switching from Facebook ($FB) to Twitter to avoid “drama.”  (AP)

Embrace the business model that threatens you.  (HBR)

Everybody is raving about Microsoft’s ($MSFT) new XBox One.  (Pando Daily, Slate, Wired, AllThingsD, New Yorker)

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The post Wednesday links: overinflated self-esteem appeared first on Abnormal Returns.

Jason Zweig, “Turnaround Tuesday is a reminder of Wall Street’s most enduring mental handicap: amnesia. Tuesdays haven’t always been a lucky day. Far from it.”  (Total Return)

Chart of the day

The Credit Suisse Global Risk Appetite Index is nearing euphoric levels.  (Sober Look)

Markets

Sentiment by this measure is “extreme.”  (Andrew Thrasher)

Some market divergences.  (Charts etc.)

Investors can’t get enough leveraged loans.  (FT)

Why do so many investors believe in a ‘summer rally’?  (Mark Hulbert)

It would be nice to see faster revenue growth from the S&P 500 companies.  (Dr. Ed’s Blog)

Check out the move in silver.  (SurlyTrader, The Short Side of Long)

Strategy

Stocks the “ultimate stock pickers” are buying.  (Morningstar)

The Great Rotation isn’t all that true.  (Quartz)

Fighting against confirmation bias is tough, but necessary.  (Bucks Blog)

Tumblr

Yahoo! ($YHOO) can afford a mistake with Tumblr.  (Dealbook, Pando Daily)

Tumblr is in large part a one man band.  (Marco Ament)

The downside of cash: the tax implications of the Yahoo! ($YHOO) deal for Tumblr. (Dealbook)

Yahoo should have bought Pinterest instead.  (GigaOM)

Companies

What Tesla ($TSLA) says about the future.  (Chicago Sean)

Conditions are right for an M&A wave.  (Slate also Dealbook)

Compensation for outside directors keeps rising.  (WSJ)

Four companies that are ignoring shareholder votes.  (Quartz)

The true spirit of the corporate tax code.  (Dealbreaker)

Finance

A Fed paper on why HFT needs to be slowed down.  (WSJ)

Why hedge funds want to advertise: it works.  (SSRN)

VC-backed IPOs are rocking year-to-date.  (peHUB)

Financial chat seems to be splintering a bit as firms look for alternatives to Bloomberg.  (WSJ, Dealbook)

ETFs

Checking in on the ETF industry at $1.5 trillion in AUM.  (IndexUniverse)

A nice start for Global X Top Guru Holdings Index ETF ($GURU).  (Businessweek)

A closer look at the Cambria Shareholder Yield ETF ($SYLD).  (Invest With an Edge)

Why financial advisors are warming to ETFs.  (Wealth Management)

Survivorship bias is a growing problem with the ETF space.  (WSJ)

Goldman Sachs ($GS) has a mutual fund made up with hedge funds.  (Big Picture)

Global

Capital is only flowing towards emerging markets with some growth.  (FT)

The Aussie dollar has broken down.  (Bonddad Blog)

Economy

Putting the farmland bubble to the test.  (FT)

The end of the car age.  (Money Game, Quartz)

What’s the deal with falling lumber prices?  (Calculated Risk)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

The mirage that is financial literacy: a take on Helaine Olen’s Pound Foolish: The Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry.  (Amazon Money & Markets)

Mixed media

Writers should be paid.  (Pando Daily)

Chris Dillow of Stumbling and Mumbling on why he blogs.  (Pieria)

This just goes to show that intellectual breakthroughs can come from anywhere.  (kottke also NYTimes)

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The post Tuesday links: street amnesiacs appeared first on Abnormal Returns.

James Surowiecki, “It’s still possible that investor hysteria could eventually inflate stock prices, or that investor panic could send them crashing, but there is no profit bubble and, for now, no stock-market bubble, either.”  (New Yorker)

Chart of the day

Per Morningstar the stock market is nearing post-crisis high valuations.  (M*)

Valuations

A valuation check on the stock market bubble talk.  (Turnkey Analyst)

Some thoughts on elevated equity risk premium.  (Musings on Markets)

The case for structurally higher corporate profit margins.  (Money Game)

Markets

On the prospects for a market melt-up.  (The Reformed Broker also Dr. Ed’s Blog)

Today’s market context does not show up in the history books.  (Big Picture)

How QE2 has rippled through the markets, ending in equities.  (Market Anthropology)

Markets seem to love political gridlock.  (RCM)

Why exactly are silver and gold tanking?  (MoneyBeat)

Strategy

Six ways to improve your trading consistency.  (Kirk Report)

The real lesson Japan’s stock market surge.  (Capital Spectator)

Beware the lessons learned from the ‘stock market game.’  (Marketwatch)

Does the ‘Magic Formula‘ work?  (Old School Value)

Portfolio management

Simple advice is not easily followed.  (Crossing Wall Street, Capital Spectator)

Rick Ferri, “Investing in bonds is a hedge against bad investment decisions.”  (Rick Ferri)

Startups

Keep an eye on the balance between public and private markets.  (Howard Lindzon)

Every startup can’t be run like a Google ($GOOG) clone.  (Bijat Sabet)

Too much cash makes for bad decisions.  (Crossing Wall Street)

Companies

There is a fair amount of skepticism about the Yahoo! ($YHOO)-Tumblr deal.  (WSJ reactions AllThingsD, SAI, Fortune, GigaOM, Engadget, Felix Salmon, Wonkblog)

Some thoughts on Apple’s ($AAPL) big share buybacks.  (TechCrunch)

Finance

Are US banks now being TOO aggressive in lending?  (FT)

How Jamie Dimon became a risk factor.  (Justin Fox)

Global macro hedge funds have changed their stripes.  (FT)

Funds

The thinking behind the Cambria Shareholder Yield ETF ($SYLD).  (IndexUniverse)

Individual investors shouldn’t obsess about their fund portfolios.  (Chuck Jaffe)

The WisdomTree Japan Hedged Equity ETF ($DXJ) now has $10 billion in AUM. (IndexUniverse)

Global

Confidence is returning to the Japanese economy.  (Quartz)

Air cargo volume is weak.  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

Economy

The Chicago Fed National Activity Index slowed in April.  (Calculated Risk, Capital Spectator)

The housing recovery still has some room to run.  (Real Time Economics)

On the costs of dropping out of college.  (Kids Prefer Cheese via @tylercowen)

Mixed media

Don’t worry about today’s retirees.  (Fortune)

Investors are tapping their 401(k)s to buy homes.  (CNNMoney)

A meeting is a meeting no matter what you call it.  (FT)

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The post Monday links: the profit bubble appeared first on Abnormal Returns.

Burton Malkiel, “The major inefficiency in financial markets today involves the market for investment advice, and poses the question of why investors continue to pay fees for asset management services that are so high.”  (askblog)

Chart of the day

The stock market has powered higher despite positive economic surprises stalling out.  (VIX and More)

Markets

Keep an eye out for a “melt up mode” market.  (UpsideTrader)

In case you needed another reminder of the strength of the market. (Dynamic Hedge)

Equity market sentiment is getting frothy.  (The Short Side of Long)

All eyes are on record high corporate profit margins.  (MoneyBeat)

What’s the deal with the drop in lumber futures?  (Sober Look)

Cancelled trades destroy the integrity of the market.  (Kid Dynamite also MoneyBeat)

Strategy

Why you should take a business-like approach to trading.  (StockCharts Blog)

Traders should focus on this one goal.  (Joe Fahmy)

The gender gap in financial knowledge is a myth.  (NYTimes)

Companies

The only way a Yahoo! ($YHOO)-Tumblr deal makes sense.  (GigaOM)

What is the problem(s) with Wal-Mart ($WMT)?  (Slate)

Why we need a Bitcoin bubble. (Pando Daily, ibid)

Finance

Blackstone Group ($BX) is trying to build a super-hedge fund.  (FT via Dealbreaker)

Acquiring BGI was a huge move for Blackrock ($BLK).  (Morningstar)

Blackrock is beginning to flex its shareholder muscles.  (NYTimes)

Tech IPOs are once again seeing big first day pops.  (MoneyBeat)

We are paying too much attention to 13-Fs.  (Dealbreaker)

Money

Everyone calling for a surge in inflation these past five years has been dead wrong.  (Money Game)

Beware knee-jerk reactions to Fedspeak.  (A Dash of Insight)

A sign that Abenomics might actually be working.  (Money Game)

Economy

Don’t ask an economist for stock market advice.  (NYTimes)

Talk of another housing bubble is premature.  (ValuePlays, Term Sheet)

Ben Bernanke is a techno-optimist.  (Wonkblog)

A look back at the economic week that was.  (Bonddad Blog)

The economic schedule for the coming week.  (Calculated Risk)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

What you might have missed in Saturday’s linkfest.  (Abnormal Returns)

Top clicks this week on the site.  (Abnormal Returns)

Mixed media

Remote state capitals tend to be higher on the corruption scale.  (Wonkblog)

Want to get a degree in ‘heavy metal music‘?  (Marginal Revolution)

Generational stereotypes are stupid.  (Pando Daily)

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The post Sunday links: high fee follies appeared first on Abnormal Returns.

1. How the (really) rich invest.  (Jason Zweig)
2. GMO is now sitting in 50% cash.  (Market Folly)
3. Bearish investment advisers are on the endangered species list.  (The Short Side of Long)
4. Is David Tepper right on net debt?  (A Dash of Insight)
5. On the great stock shortage.  (The Reformed Broker)
6. If you think 2013=1999, then you are smoking PCP.  (The Reformed Broker)
7. The 4% retirement withdrawal rule is now outdated.  (NYTimes)
8. Don’t trade: the machines have you beat.  (Mark Hulbert)
9. Every Wall Street strategist has been wrong about this rally.  (Money Game)
10. Check out these market divergences.  (Charts etc.)

Here is a look at what else you may have missed on the site:

1. In praise of doing the opposite of your investment instincts.  (Abnormal Returns)
2. An interview with me on a range of topics including HFT and the future of blogging.  (QuantConnect)

Thanks for checking in with Abnormal Returns. You can follow us on StockTwits and Twitter.

The post Top clicks this week on Abnormal Returns appeared first on Abnormal Returns.

Investing

Meet Dylan the day trader.  (Washington Post also TRB)

Is capital loss harvesting overhyped?   (Nerd’s Eye View)

Bad things happen in the markets.  (Morningstar)

Asset allocation, indexing and rebalancing.  (25iq via @researchpuzzler)

Education

How to be a better consumer of the news.  (Learn Bonds)

Seeing is not believing: on the use of charts and R-squared.  (Enterprising Investor)

Research

Does Wikipedia usage presage stock market moves?  (SSRN via @quantivity)

A study looking at the tradeoff between spending rates and shortfall risks in retirement.  (SSRN)

Finance

Just how useless is the asset management industry?  (Justin Fox)

The global securities lending industry is in flux.  (Economist)

When too much due diligence is counterproductive.  (A VC)

Economics

The Fed should care about blowing bubbles for the sake of the little guy.  (Dealbook)

The changing nature of work.  (Pieria)

Estimating trend growth using the CFNAI.  (Big Picture)

It takes companies and government to affect working conditions in the developing markets.  (New Yorker)

Jamie Dimon

Why JP Morgan Chase ($JPM) needs to split the Chairman and CEO roles.  (The Epicurean Dealmaker)

Why Jamie Dimon is the “indispensable man.”  (Businessweek)

Jamie Dimon needs a boss.  (Felix Salmon)

Facebook

The Facebook ($FB) IPO one year in.  (WSJ)

Morgan Stanley ($MS) has done pretty well one year after the Facebook debacle.  (Fortune)

Psychology

On the importance of framing.  (Above the Market)

Our decision making ability is affected by a range of effects.  (The Psy-Fi Blog)

Why rituals work.  (Scientific American)

Society

Are Millenials ever going to drive as much as their parents?  (The Atlantic)

Philanthropy is getting more quantitative.  (WSJ)

Are MOOCs the future of education?  (New Yorker)

How hipsters became so crafty.  (Newsweek)

Health

Your microbiome is more important than you think.  (NYTimes)

On the health hazards of loneliness.  (New Republic)

Why is Indian generic pharmaceutical maker Ranbaxy still in business?  (Fortune)

The Office

Do you remember when The Office was truly great television?  (Grantland)

27 lessons learned from The Office.  (Esquire)

Mixed media

An excerpt from Annalee Newitz’s Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive Mass Extinction.  (Newsweek)

Social networks as evolutionary game theory.  (FT Alphaville)

Baseball is not boring.  (American)

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The post Saturday links: harvesting hype appeared first on Abnormal Returns.

Quote of the day

Gerard Minack, “Amateurs normally stand no chance against professionals…Investing is different. None of this would matter if achieving index returns was extremely difficult. But an industry’s been built on indexed funds that seem capable of replicating index returns at relatively low cost.”  (Money Game)

Markets

If you think 2013=1999, then you are smoking PCP.  (The Reformed Broker)

Why it’s a great time to be an investor.  (Conor Sen)

Strategy

You can’t borrow in Japanese Yen even if you wanted to.  (Money Game)

The sorry state of retirement savings.  (WashingtonPost)

Companies

The global art market is hot, hot, hot.  (FT)

Yahoo! ($YHOO) reportedly covets Tumblr.  (GigaOM)

Finance

A big cohort of tech IPOs are on deck.  (WSJ)

The spigots are opening for solar panel funding.  (GigaOM)

Now investors can’t get enough of Jeffrey Gundlach’s opinions.  (HedgeWorld)

ETFs

What’s idea behind the Pimco Foreign Currency Strategy ETF ($FORX)?  (IndexUniverse)

Comparing the big low vol ETFs.  (Morningstar)

Why is there no truly global bond ETF?  (IndexUniverse)

Mixed media

Retirement will kill you.  (BBC)

Why does everyone want everything to taste like birthday cake?  (USA Today via Pat’s Papers)

Five lessons in contentment from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.  (Zen Habits via @behaviorgap)

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The post Friday links: the index challenge appeared first on Abnormal Returns.

John Gruber, “Google is a hyper-competitive company, and they repeatedly enter markets that already exist and crush competitors…They want everything; their ambition is boundless.”  (Daring Fireball)

Chart of the day

A look at the S&P 500 on a forward P/E basis.  (Dr. Ed’s Blog)

Markets

Does sentiment still matter?  (Capital Observer)

Check out these market divergences.  (Charts etc.)

Take a breath and look around: things are pretty good.  (The Reformed Broker)

Yet another reason to look at tech stocks.  (YCharts Blog)

MLPs look rich, except relative to Treasuries.  (Income Investing)

Strategy

When no news means information.  (Aleph Blog)

Models help clarify our thinking but are only as good as their builder.  (ContrarianEdge)

Companies

Elon Musk is doubling down on his bet on Tesla Motors ($TSLA).  (Dealbook, SAI, In Pursuit of Value)

The pickup market is back in a big way.  (WSJ)

Southwest Airlines ($LUV) has had a huge run. Is it still cheap?  (SumZero)

Google ($GOOG) is not the new Apple ($AAPL).  (Unexpected Returns also Babbage)

Facebook fatigue is a real thing.  (FT)

Wal-Mart ($WMT) is having a tough time finding the recovery.  (MoneyBeat, Quartz)

Finance

Hedge funds can’t wait to advertise to the unwashed masses.  (The Guardian)

Traders are nervous about the Bloomberg snooping scandal.  (Fortune)

Lessons learned from the Facebook ($FB) IPO.  (peHUB)

Funds

Investors are pouring money in bank loan funds.  (WSJ)

Top ten ETF asset gainers of 2013.  (IndexUniverse)

Global

The Japanese economy resumed growing last quarter.  (FT, WSJ)

Greek government debt has some new fans including credit raters.  (Quartz, FT)

Economy

Not a good week for weekly initial jobless claims.  (Calculated Risk, Capital Spectator, Bespoke)

Welcome to the ‘golden age of deficit reduction.’  (Daniel Gross contra Felix Salmon)

The news on manufacturing is disappointing.  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

Some local housing markets are red hot.  (Bloomberg)

Mixed media

Google+ is a ‘beautiful disappointment.’  (Techland)

The craft brewing industry has gone hop crazy.  (Slate)

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The post Thursday links: crushing competitors appeared first on Abnormal Returns.

Quote of the day

Barry Ritholtz, “There is asset management, and there is infotainment, and never the twain shall meet.”  (Big Picture)

Chart of the day

GLD data by YCharts

Where are gold and Apple ($AAPL) seemingly trading together?  (Money Game)

Markets

On the great stock shortage.  (The Reformed Broker)

Is David Tepper right on net debt?  (A Dash of Insight)

Upside breakouts are everywhere.  (Humble Student)

Just how overvalued are junk bonds?  (Income Investing)

Strategy

Don’t trade if your head is not clear.  (Joe Fahmy)

You can’t judge analysts simply by the numbers. (research puzzle pix)

Retirement

The 4% retirement withdrawal rule is now outdated.  (NYTimes)

The US retirement savings system is average at best.  (NYTimes)

Companies

Blackberry ($BBRY) opened up BBM four years too late.  (A VC)

Loews ($L) is still cheap on a sum-of-the-parts basis.  (Beyond Proxy)

Bloomberg

Bloomberg is expanding beyond its core terminal business.  (Dealbook)

Bloomberg is watching you and most companies are happy with that.  (Felix Salmon)

Is Bloomberg simply trying to do too much under one roof?  (FT Alphaville)

Finance

Banks have been too focused on product and not enough on risk.  (Institutional Investor)

Buyout funds are shifting from buy to build.  (WSJ)

Hedge funds continue to work their way into the mutual fund business.  (FT)

Seasonal Odds has big ambitions.  (Institutional Investor)

ETFs

On the dual standard for using backtest data to market ETFs.  (IndexUniverse)

Financial advisors are driving the growth of ETFs.  (FT)

Running an index is not a no-cost endeavor.  (IndexUniverse)

Global

The Eurozone recession , including Spain, just keeps on getting worse.  (Quartz, Bonddad Blog)

Expect the Bank of England to follow the Fed not the BOJ.  (Gavyn Davies)

New Zealand joins the global currency war.  (WashingtonPost)

Economy

Industrial production declined in April.  (Calculated Risk, Capital Spectator)

Homebuilders are becoming increasingly confident.  (Calculated Risk)

Farmland prices continue to rise.  (Real Time Economics)

Mixed media

The experience of Square shows us that the credit card isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.  (Slate)

Crowdfunding is changing the way we approach causes.  (FT Alphaville)

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The post Wednesday links: investment infotainment appeared first on Abnormal Returns.

Jason Zweig, “Bond investors who are over the age of, say, 55 know firsthand that bonds don’t always generate positive returns.”  (Total Return)

Chart of the day

High yield bonds yield less today than Treasuries did five years ago.  (Bespoke also Learn Bonds)

Markets

It has been 177 days since the market experienced a 5% correction.  (Pragmatic Capitalism also UpsideTrader)

GMO is now sitting in 50% cash.  (Market Folly)

A look at the evolution of S&P 500 earning estimates.  (Dr. Ed’s Blog)

David Tepper is “definitely bullish.”  (MoneyBeat, Pragmatic Capitalism)

Commodities

The stocks-commodities disconnect is growing.  (FT Alphaville, Free exchange)

Why is lumber correcting so hard?  (Financial Iceberg)

The Saudis welcome the shale boom.  (FT)

Strategy

In investing, as in soccer, there is a big difference between activity and results.  (Bucks Blog)

How volatility affects our investing behavior: hello buy-and-hold!  (The Reformed Broker)

Looking forward to reading Meb Faber’s new book Shareholder Yield: A Better Approach to Dividend Investing.  (Amazon)

Companies

What’s the deal with Amazon Coins?  (Pando Daily)

Netflix ($NFLX) has figured things out…for now.  (Justin Fox)

Square is reinventing the cash register.  (Fortune, AllThingsD)

TransferWise jumps into the money transfer business.  (Quartz)

Hedge funds

Dan Loeb wants to break up Sony ($SNE).  (Dealbook, Breakingviews)

A quantitative UK-based hedge fund has launched with much lower fees.  (Dealbook)

Notes from the 2013 London Value Investor Conference.  (Market Folly)

Finance

Residential REITs are going to come to market fast and furious.  (FT)

Brokerage firms are ‘extincting themselves.’  (InvestmentNews)

Marc Andreesen thinks more companies should come public with dual class shares.  (peHUB)

Should we end small cap decimalization?  (Term Sheet, Felix Salmon)

Bloomberg snooping: the fallout.  (NYTimes, FT, Wonkblog, NetNet)

ETFs

Three new ETFs that target total “shareholder yield.”  (Turnkey Analyst, IndexUniverse, ETF Trends)

Vanguard will launch its emerging market bond ETF in June.  (IndexUniverse)

Fidelity has been cleared to launch actively managed ETFs.  (ETF Trends)

Global

How should we think about Abenomics?  (Tim Duy)

The European project is losing favor among the young.  (FT Alphaville)

Not among the Germans however.  (Money Game)

Is a thaw in Greek finance finally here?  (MoneyBeat)

Is the idea of the BRICs finally over?  (WSJ)

The Odd Couple trade: short Aussie, long the Mexican peso.  (WSJ)

Big trends

World birthrates are falling faster then previously thought.  (Wonkblog)

The implications of the new robotic age.  (Mother Jones also Modeled Behavior, Wonkblog)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

In praise of doing the opposite of your investment instincts.  (Abnormal Returns)

An interview with me on a range of topics including HFT and the future of blogging.  (QuantConnect)

Mixed media

North Carolina is not crazy about Tesla’s ($TSLA) direct-to-consumer business model.  (Slate)

The NTSB is recommending a lower BAC level from .08 to .05.  (Bloomberg)

Eleven things that make you a bad driver.  (Mental Floss)

Thanks for checking in with Abnormal Returns. You can follow us on StockTwits and Twitter.

The post Tuesday links: bond disappointments appeared first on Abnormal Returns.