Quote of the day

Paul Amery, “Index providers will license any methodology for money, and exchange-traded product issuers will sell pretty much any concept that can gain assets.”  (IndexUniverse)

Chart of the day

Expedia (EXPE) closes the gap on TripAdvisor spin-off news.  (Dealbook)

Markets

Emerging markets have bounced hard.  (Bespoke)

William Bernstein, “The market will come to you eventually.”  (IndexUniverse)

Check out the volatility of cocoa.  (Marketwatch, Bloomberg)

Reasons to avoid the silver bandwagon.  (Trader’s Narrative)

How much fear is priced into oil prices?  (Street Sweep)

Strategy

On the use of infrastructure stocks as an inflation hedge.  (Businessweek)

Using holdings level data to sort skilled from lucky fund managers.  (CXO Advisory Group)

Diversification is more than adding more stocks to a portfolio.  (Tyler’s Trading)

On the benefits of mental accounting ‘buckets.’ (Systematic Relative Strength)

On the rise of prepackaged portfolio solutions for individual investors.  (Bloomberg)

Companies

Is Cisco (CSCO) cheap enough yet?  (MarketBeat)

The challenge Facebook is putting to Google (GOOG) in data center design.  (SAI)

Are restaurants better off being privately held?  (24/7 Wall St.)

Finance

How a government shutdown might affect Wall Street.  (NetNet, Dealbook, Deal Journal)

Jefferies Group (JEF) is making a play to be a Wall Street bigfoot.  (Breakingviews)

Would new private share rules actually hurt venture capitalists?  (Term Sheet also Felix Salmon)

Australia throws a wrench into that whole stock exchange consolidation meme.  (WSJ, FT Alphaville)

Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) apparently had a lot of stuff to move.  (Street Sweep)

Roddy Boyd on how AIG (AIG) blew itself up.  (The Daily Ticker)

Funds

More low volatility equity ETFs are coming soon.  (IndexUniverse)

Another look at a ‘cheapskate ETF portfolio.’  (ETFdb)

Global

Just how intertwined are the US and Chinese markets?  (Data Diary)

How might ECB rate hikes affect the Euro?  (WSJ, The Source)

The bond market does not think Spain is Portugal, yet.  (MarketBeat)

Asian central banks are trying to fight off currency strength.  (WSJ)

Economy

With QE2 the Fed has “altered investor expectations in unpredictable and undesirous ways.”  (Pragmatic Capitalism also Calafia Beach Pundit)

Who will purchase all the Treasury bonds when the Fed stops buying?  (Money Game)

Commodity prices and deviations from the Taylor Rule.  (FT Alphaville)

What are ‘rational inattention models‘?  (Economist’s View)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

A catalyst in the making – activist investors are urging CVS (CVS) to break itself up.  (AR Screencast)

Our Friday morning live link look-in.  (Abnormal Returns)

Mixed media

Forty things Bryan Caplan thinks.  (EconLog)

Web 2.0 is so 2010.  Web 3.0 is already here.  (Howard Lindzon)

A soon-to-be publicly traded vehicle to play the cupcake craze.  (The Daily Ticker)

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