Quote of the day

Felix Salmon, “My feeling is that the rise in VIX volumes is dangerous mainly to the people trading the VIX, especially in ETF form.”  (Reuters)

Chart of the day

On the rally in the Swiss franc.  (zentrader)

Markets

How did the “Hindenberg Omen” work out for you?   (Big Picture)

Financials and utilities remain the weakest of the sectors.  (Dragonfly Capital)

Silver and oil are the commodity winners YTD.  (StockCharts)

Investor interest in hedging ‘tail risk’ continues to grow.  (Economist)

The recovery in Maiden Lane asset prices as an indicator of bond market froth.  (Street Sweep)

The end of QE2 will provoke confusion in the markets.  (Confessions of a Macro Contrarian)

Strategy

On the virtues of ignoring headlines.  (Businessweek)

How one hedge fund manager misplayed the Japanese stock market post-earthquake.  (WSJ)

How to take advantage of opportunities in dual-class share divergences.  (Empirical Finance Blog)

Getting off the treadmill that is active portfolio management.  (CBS Moneywatch)

Why some investors are leaving the credit markets behind.  (Distressed Debt Investing)

How should we evaluation so-called financial anomalies?  (CXO Advisory Group)

Why retirees need to adjust withdrawals based on market conditions.  (WSJ)

Technology

Friends don’t let friends get into finance.  (TechCrunch)

Most major social media companies are already public, just not on an exchange.  (Paul Kedrosky)

Is HTML5 going to “save the web“?   (NYTimes)

The treadmill that is the “group coupon” business.  (Project Syndicate)

Finance

Speaking of profitability you will be happy to hear the financial sector is back on firm ground, profit-wise.  (Real Time Economics, Economix)

New ETF launches are becoming ever more marginal.  (Barron’s)

More details on how the Lubrizol (LZ) deal went down.  (WSJ)

Another fund manager goes activist on another Florida real estate company.  (Dealbook)

How high frequency trading can create “mispricings.”  (SSRN)

Economy

Our future fiscal crisis foretold.  (NYTimes)

The non-existent housing recovery.  (Modeled Behavior, Big Picture)

On the difficulty of separating cyclical from structural unemployment.  (Economist’s View)

On the attractions of Turkey and Poland.  (IndexUniverse)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

Our Saturday long read linkfest.  (Abnormal Returns)

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

Mixed media

A profile of blogger Carl Richards.  (Salt Lake Tribune)

TED, “Human beings are social animals. All of us want, sooner or later, to be able to understand both our own place in society and those of the people around us.”  (The Epicurean Dealmaker)

On the importance of preserving a “margin of safety” in your life.  (Stone Street Advisors)

When Twittering gets in the way of real life.  (WSJ)

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