Quote of the day

David Merkel, “Skilled amateur investors are few.”  (Aleph Blog)

Chart of the day

Almost nobody investing today has lived through a secular rise in interest rates.  (James Stack via Big Picture)

Markets

Rates of change, not levels, matter to investors.  (Money Game, FT Alphaville, MarketBeat, Don Fishback)

A review of this bull market’s pullbacks.  (VIX and More)

A ‘solid’ earnings season to-date.  (FT Alphaville)

A look at some critical levels for silver.  (Afraid to Trade, Market Anthropology, Trader’s Narrative)

Negative real interest rates and the commodity boom(s). (The Source)

On the (delayed) danger of buying a closed-end fund at a premium to NAV.  (research puzzle pix)

The Global X Fishing ETF (FISN) rolls out.  (IndexUniverse)

Strategy

Ten summer projects to improve your trading.  (Dynamic Hedge)

Proper positions sizing can provide an “easy fix” to trading problems.  (Tyler’s Trading)

How to play a momentum name gone wrong with options.  (Investing With Options)

What advantage do individual investors have over institutions?  (Finance Trends Matter)

RSI 101.  (All Star Charts)

Companies

Sometimes a great stock is hiding in plain view.  (A Dash of Insight also Asymco)

Encana (ECA) and Potash (POT) both have resources in the ground, however investors only covet one of them.  (Globe and Mail)

What it has been like for Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA) shareholders over the past seven years.  (ETFReplay)

The fundamental and technical attractions of CVS Caremark (CVS).  (market folly, )

ConAgra (CAG) hearts Ralcorp (RAH).  (Deal Journal)

Hedge funds

Hedge fund returns lagged the S&P 500 in April.  (FINalternatives)

Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC (OZM) as an exemplar of the “new face of hedge funds.”  (Institutional Investor)

Signs that hedge fund of funds are experiencing renewed investor interest.  (All About Alpha)

Finance

It’s all good so long as banks keep on lending.  (Money Game, Big Picture)

Community banks are now on the radar screens of private equity.  (Fortune Finance)

The junk bond market may have experienced its Waterloo.  (WSJ)

Global

Buy Canada.  Sell Australia.  (Humble Student of the Markets)

Estimates of global equity risk premia by country.  (CXO Advisory Group)

In what countries are unit labor costs falling?  (Free exchange)

Why have global crop yields flattened out?  (Greed, Green and Grains via Economist’s View)

Yandex rules the Russian Internet.  IPO here we come.  (beyondbrics)

No one ever says ‘sell’ in South Korea.  (MarketBeat)

Economy

The ISM Services Index “missed by a mile.”  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

Still waiting for a surge in private jobs via ADP.  (Calculated Risk, ibid, Capital Spectator)

Why the US dollar is declining.  (Felix Salmon)

Higher oil prices are not likely to tip us into recession, yet. (Econbrowser, Bonddad Blog)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

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

Mixed media

A review of the big investing, “megatrend crosscurrents.”  (A VC)

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