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Quote of the day
Jared Woodard, “The slogan, popular among many traders, that “we eat what we kill” isn’t just absurd, it’s dangerous.” (Condor Options)
Chart of the day

Amazing in retrospect but for a decade Greek bonds traded in line with German bonds. (MarketBeat)
Markets
The 2011 S&P 500 trading range. (Afraid to Trade)
The bull trap illustrated. (Market Anthropology)
What happens when industry groups all trade together. (Bespoke)
The past year in charts. (research puzzle pix)
Strategy
What a very high TRIN reading implies for the market. (My Simple Quant)
Checking in on the seasonality timing system. (Mark Hulbert)
Companies
Cisco ($CSCO) reportedly set to cut 10,000 jobs. (Bloomberg, SAI)
Using Fastenal ($FAST) as a manufacturing bellwether. (WSJ)
Social media as a threat to News Corp ($NWS). (Big Picture)
Inside the turnaround (and sale) at Skype. (Fortune)
Another way in which 2011 has been a bad year – insurance losses. (Infectious Greed)
Hedge funds
Hedge funds are sniffing around private technology companies. (WSJ, Dealbreaker)
Banks are vying for hedge fund business with cheap loans. (FT)
Schadenfreude and the coverage of John Paulson. (Term Sheet)
Finance
In this environment bank net interest margins have nowhere to go but down. (Economic Musings)
Wall Street trading desks are getting rationalized as profits stagnate. (Clusterstock)
Steve Randy Waldman, “The economic value of a bank franchise, both to shareholders and managers, is intimately wound up with its accounting position.” (Interfluidity)
Global
The endgame for Europe. (Free exchange)
Italy=Lehman Brothers. (The Reformed Broker)
Why ask why? It is simply Italy’s turn in the spotlight. (The Source)
George Soros saved the UK a lot of headaches. (Megan McArdle)
Economy
Only 58% of adult Americans are employed. (Atlantic Business)
Temp staffing up, but sluggish. (ValuePlays)
Four charts on this odd economic recovery. (Pragmatic Capitalism)
Have we learned nothing? Proposed housing solutions don’t make sense. (Kid Dynamite)
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
What you missed in our Eurozone-focused Tuesday morning linkfest. (Abnormal Returns)
If trading is a small business then traders need to manage all of their expenses including taxes and commissions. (AR Screencast)
Mixed media
Phone call patterns as alternate states. (strange maps)
Why Gatorade works. (The Frontal Cortex)
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