Quote of the day

Russ Roberts, “The challenge of economics and to journalism is to remind us that motives are less important than actions. People lie about their motives. Look at what they do, not what they say.”  (Cafe Hayek)

Chart of the day

Source:  hedgeye via Money Game

Markets

The best (and worst) performing industry groups since the collapse of Lehman Brothers.  (Bespoke also Big Picture)

Stock returns around New Year’s Day.  (CXO Advisory Group)

It feels like 2005.  Homebuilder stocks are running.  (Bespoke)

Rising interest rates and the stock market.   (ValuePlays, Marketwatch)

Have bonds found a place to bounce?  (Trader’s Narrative)

Bond managers didn’t outperform this year by owning Treasury bonds.  (Bloomberg)

Strategy and Tactics

The current bull market is “is hard to comprehend and even harder to embrace. Hence it rages on.”  (Howard Lindzon)

We’re about to enter the strongest time of the year for the stock market.  (Crossing Wall Street, Global Macro Monitor)

How informative is a steep yield curve for future economic growth these days?  (Pragmatic Capitalism, Capital Spectator)

Derek Hernquist, “A bad idea applied well often yields better results than a good idea applied poorly.”  (StockTwitsU)

Some activist hedge funds are succeeding by focusing on the long term.  (Dealbook)

ETFs

Lee Kranefuss, “Well, every significant problem that happened to the [mutual fund] industry in the past 10 years has helped ETFs.”  (IndexUniverse)

How do ETFs garner the next $1 trillion in assets?  401(k) plans.  (IndexUniverse)

“[Asset management] Customers are realising the trick of average performance is not so hard, while that of excellence is very difficult and very expensive.”  (Lex)

Companies

Shades of 2006.  Blackstone Group (BX) is close to raising a $15 billion buyout fund.  (WSJ, Street Sweep)

Bunge (BG) as a play on higher sugar prices.  (YCharts Blog)

Google (GOOG) is still a growth stock.  (twisted value also GigaOM, TechCrunch)

Apple (AAPL) sells a million Apple TVs.  (SAI)

Finance

Barry Ritholtz, “The accountants were the pushers to the Street’s junkies.”  (Big Picture also Street Sweep)

The big accounting firms are now ‘too big to indict.’  (Fortune)

Always late, never in doubt.  The SEC is moving to make it more difficult for Chinese companies to list via reverse takeovers.  (WSJ)

Bank regulators should fear a Wikileaks dump of bank data.  (Dealbook)

Cereberus Capital Management extracts itself from Chrysler Financial.  (Bloomberg, WSJ)

High frequency trading is making life difficult for day traders.  (Trader Magazine)

Global

Frontier markets have yet to make a full recovery from the financial crisis.  (Lex)

Just in case you were hoping for an ‘Andean Equity ETF‘ in the new year.  (IndexUniverse)

China hearts copper.  (FT Alphaville)

Economy

The economy is growing but remains at risk to external shocks.  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

How worried should we be about temp staffing trends?  (Atlantic Business, Carpe Diem also ValuePlays)

Truck tonnage is moving sideways.  (Calculated Risk)

A fiscal crisis is not necessarily the answer to longer term budget woes.  (Daniel Gross)

On the value of real-time measures of inflation.  (Slate)

The effect of falling house prices on new business borrowing. (Calculated Risk)

Abnormal Returns

Meir Statman on the attraction of ‘no-mental loss investments.’  (Abnormal Returns)

Is gold poised to become more volatile in 2011?  (AR Screencast)

On the parallels between ‘defunct economists‘ and ‘fund marketers.’  (Abnormal Returns)

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