Thursday links: skyscraper sentiment

abnormalreturns
May 26th, 2011

Quote of the day

Felix Salmon, “But realistically anybody investing in equities over a long-term time horizon is going to have to have a comprehensively global outlook.” (Reuters)

Chart of the day

Bullish sentiment has disappeared during this rally. (Bespoke also Pragmatic Capitalism)

Markets

Equal weights vs. cap weights: a tale of the tape. (Big Picture)

The bi-polarity of the investor class. (The Reformed Broker)

Low yields and bond math. (Crossing Wall Street)

Why have coal prices held up so well? (FT Alphaville)

Happy 115th birthday to a lousy index the Dow Jones Industrial Average. (Crossing Wall Street)

Strategy

The essence of swing trading in two sentences. (Mercenary Trader also Quantifiable Edges)

It seems obvious but a company cannot create value by buying back overvalued shares. (Buttonwood’s notebook)

Volatile currencies have been the downfall of many global macro funds this year. (WSJ)

An example that trading volatility is just as tricky as trading the underlying. (Tyler’s Trading)

Are sentiment measures, like the much-hyped Twitter indicator, serve as a substitute for actual research? (Institutional Investor)

Companies

LinkedIn (LNKD) is now a popular (and expensive) short. (Marketwatch)

Why Bruce Berkowitz is undeperforming of late - St. Joe (JOE) is taking it on the chin. (Bespoke)

How to fix AIG (AIG). (Aleph Blog)

Microsoft

IBM (IBM) has now passed Microsoft (MSFT) in market cap. (Big Picture)

The Einhorn effect Microsoft stock as Steve Ballmer defends himself. (MarketBeat, WSJ)

Why Microsoft stock is still dead money. (Peter Cohan)

Finance

If nothing else the Global X Fertilizer ETF (SOIL) has a memorable ticker. (ETFdb)

Many a multi-billion dollar IPO, i.e. LinkedIn, starts with a lot of rejection. (From the Crowd)

A long time coming. Delphi Automotive is coming public. (Dealbook)

The Fed was doing in 2008 behind the scenes than previously known. (Bloomberg)

UBS is looking to reincorporate its investment bank as a separate entity. (WSJ, The Source, Fortune)

Global

Greece has to restructure its debt. Next question. (Daily Ticker)

The Thai market is overvalued and overowned. (beyondbrics)

The Longtop Financial (LFT) fraud is now explicit. (Clusterstock)

Economy

Are we facing a “false growth scare“? (Pragmatic Capitalism)

What level of debt/GDP should the US (and UK) target? (Gavyn Davies also FT Alphaville)

Weekly initial unemployment claims continue to disappoint. (Calculated Risk)

State tax revenues continue to bounce back. (Pragmatic Capitalism)

Rail traffic was largely unchanged. (ValuePlays)

On that old saw that oil speculators are driving prices higher. (Gregor Macdonald)

Earlier in Abnormal Returns

Stocks listed on US exchanges have dropped. Is this long term economic threat? (AR Screencast)

What you missed in our Thursday morning linkfest. (Abnormal Returns)

Mixed media

Skyscraper construction as an indication of overconfidence and lower stock market returns. (SSRN via @jasonzweigwsj also CXOAG)

More fun with Google Correlate including a reason why initial unemployment claims should come back down. (Freakonomics)

More remembrances of Mark Haines. (World Beta, Eric Jackson, MarketBeat, StockTwits Blog, NYTimes)

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Tickers: $MSFT, AIG, JOE, LNKD, SOIL