Quote of the day

Fred Wilson, ” I don’t want to put my friends into circles. I want a machine to do it for me.”  (A VC)

Chart of the day

Defensive sectors are still leading the market year-to-date.  (Afraid to Trade)

Markets

Is 2011 going to play out like 2009 & 2010?  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

The biggest caps continue to underperform the market.  (StockCharts Blog)

Just how fast does the market incorporate information these days.  (black swans & white crows)

You can’t have a market without ‘dumb money.’  (can turtles fly?)

Bonds

How to invest for safety in a world where even Treasurys are no longer safe.  (WSJ)

The bond market doesn’t care about headline CPI.  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

Why is there so much demand for AAA credits?  (Felix Salmon, Deus Ex Macchiato)

The ratings agencies never get things right.  (Aleph Blog)

Strategy

Investing in an age of austerity.  (Credit Writedowns)

Greece will default.  Buy Europe.  (WSJ)

What does the rise of ‘gentlemen farmers‘ tell us about the state of agriculture these days?  (The Reformed Broker)

Companies

Who besides Carl Icahn wants to buy Clorox ($CLX)?  (Deal Journal, WSJ)

America loves its highways.  How to profit from it.  (YCharts)

Corporate cash as a percentage of market cap.  (Ticker Sense)

Technology

The ultimate Apple ($AAPL) Q3 earnings preview.  (Apple 2.0)

Microsoft ($MSFT) needs to take a page out of the McDonald’s ($MCD) playbook.  (Barron’s)

Google ($GOOG) is acting awfully nimble for a company of this size.  (Phil Pearlman)

What is the ultimate endgame for Google+?  (TechCrunch)

Blame the studios for price hikes at Netflix ($NFLX).  (Felix Salmon)

Funds

Five questions to ask about your ETF.  (Barron’s)

AQR gets all multi-strategy for its newest mutual fund.  (InvestmentNews)

Finance

The world makes sense when Apple is at a new high and Bank of America ($BAC) is at a new low.  (Howard Lindzon)

More wrangling over the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy settlement.  (FT)

More on the role of Fannie and Freddie in the financial crisis.  (Marginal Revolution)

The frozen pork bellies market is no longer.  (NYTimes)

Economy

The global sovereign debt crisis is here.  (FT Alphaville)

Barry Ritholtz on why economists have gotten this recovery so wrong.  (WashingtonPost)

Why have companies been so slow to fill jobs?  (Bloomberg)

Who is to blame for the unemployment crisis?  (The Money Illusion via EconLog)

Is low job turnover a cause or a symptom of higher unemployment?  (Floyd Norris)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

What you missed in our Saturday longreads linkfest.  (Abnormal Returns)

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

Mixed media

Some great lessons on trading and life.  (Kirk Report)

The neuroscience of the debt debate.  (Scientific American via EV)

Twitter cascades are rare and unpredictable.  (FT)

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