Quote of the day

Bethany McLean, “If you took BankUnited’s rebirth to be a parable about the private market’s ingenuity and its capacity for renewal you would be missing the point.”  (Slate)

Chart of the day

Higher coffee prices are taking a chunk out of Starbucks (SBUX) earnings, but not the stock.  (Money Game)

Markets

Sentiment is still bullish. (Bespoke, Pragmatic Capitalism, Trader’s Narrative)

A sign that retail investors are beginning to ramp up activity.  (WSJ)

A look ahead to February seasonality.  (MarketSci Blog)

Have we seen a ‘selling climax‘ in the muni bond market?  (Money & Co. also MarketBeat)

Betting that the Brent-WTI spread relationship has changed.  (FT Alphaville)

If gold is going to bounce, now might be a good time for it.  (Dragonfly Capital)

Strategy

Steven Place, “But in order for you to take a thesis in the markets or an opinion in general, you need to ask yourself one thing: “how will you know when you’re wrong?”  (Investing With Options)

How hedge fund managers are like Lady Gaga.  (Globe and Mail via Clusterstock)

Why individuals are running away from the markets.  (Points and Figures)

Some things never change on Wall Street.  (Crosshairs Trader)

Companies

The uranium trade rolls on.  (The Reformed Broker)

Potash is hot, hot, hot.  (Money Game)

You can’t understand Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB) unless you understand the role of leverage in its returns.  (GuruFocus)

Netflix (NFLX) crushes earnings as streaming drives new subscriber growth.  (WSJ, TechCrunch, Tech Musings)

Can Hulu find a sustainable business model?  (WSJ)

Social media

Social media takes a whack at another industry:  jobs boards, i.e. Monster (MWW).  (Herb Greenberg)

Analysts are way behind the curve in identifying winners/losers from the group buying revolution.  (Leigh Drogen)

Speaking of social networking LinkedIn appears to be coming to market.  (Bloomberg)

When are Tweeters happiest?  (Infectious Greed)

Finance

Can regulators accurately analyze all this financial firm data?  (Dealbook)

Moody’s to start counting unfunded state pension liabilities into credit ratings.  (NYTimes, FT Alphaville)

More sector ETFs are coming.  (IndexUniverse)

Global

What Caterpillar (CAT) sees for the global economy.  (Real Time Economics)

S&P’s downgrade of Japan as a “signpost on Japan’s way to a sovereign-debt crisis.”  (The Source also Curious Capitalist)

A look at the effect of political unrest on Egypt’s stock market.  (FT Alphaville also beyondbrics)

Economy

Weekly initial unemployment claims increase sharply.  (Calculated Risk, Bespoke)

Parsing the latest statement from the FOMC. (Aleph Blog)

Gregor Macdonald and Paul Kedrosky, “We are now the East’s shipwreckers, mindlessly tearing apart our aging infrastructure to generate cashflow from these emerging economies.”  (Gregor.us)

Also on Abnormal Returns

Consensus asset allocations, and by extension target date funds, haven’t provided investors much benefit of late.  (AR Screencast)

Hedge fund herding and the decline in US listings.  (Abnormal Returns)

Our early morning look-in.  (Abnormal Returns)

Errata

Economic stagnation and the cost of clout in Chicago.  (New Geography via RCM)

Good advice on how to fail well.  (Information Arbitrage also A VC)

Gil Meche, a baseball anomaly.  (NYTimes)

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