Quote of the day
Phil Pearlman, “For the long term health of the nation, perhaps we need to hit rock bottom; perhaps we need to not just face the abyss but to fall into it head first.” (Phil Pearlman)
Chart of the day

The shipping stocks are in a wicked downturn. (Can Turtles Fly?)
Markets
A potential US default is a “neon swan, an event that is unthinkably rare, immensely important and blindingly obvious.” (WSJ)
Gold is expensive…for good reason at the moment. (WSJ also NYTimes)
Eight “social media stocks” doth not a frenzy make. (Big Picture)
Investor sentiment at week-end. (The Technical Take)
Ken Heebner’s touch has gone cold. (Businessweek)
Strategy
The road map to new market highs. (The Reformed Broker)
Trading during earnings season is a tough game. (UpsideTrader)
On the importance of a trading checklist. (Derek Hernquist)
Jeremy Grantham is expands on his resource shortage theme. (Zero Hedge)
Stop using the Altman-Z score to predict distress. (Empirical Finance Blog)
Companies
SAC Capital has been actively buying Facebook shares. (SAI, Dealbook)
Apple is practically a sector unto itself. (WSJ, Barron’s)
Thinking about Apple, post-Steve Jobs. (Daring Fireball)
Carl Icahn really doesn’t want to buy Clorox ($CLX) himself. (Deal Journal)
Leslie P. Norton, “IBM is doing precisely what a blue-chip stock is supposed to do: providing steady earnings growth without any surprises.” (Barron’s)
Amazon ($AMZN) and Wal-Mart ($WMT) are different sides of the great sales tax debate. (The Reformed Broker)
Finance
You knew it was coming. A social media ETF brought to you by Global X. (IndexUniverse, FT)
Eric Sprott keeps on selling his stake in the Sprott Physical Silver Trust ($PSLV). (Kid Dynamite)
You can’t say there aren’t enough ways to play precious metals. (alletf)
Hard to imagine the TCW-Gundlach case makes it trial. (Fortune)
Startups
How you finance your startup depends in large part on your goals. (Information Arbitrage)
Cutting out the middlemen in negotiations. (Both Sides of the Table via A VC)
Hulu is constrained in it ability to meet its stated goals. (NYTimes)
Global
Are Chinese stocks finally cheap? (Globe and Mail)
Floyd Norris, “The rest of the euro zone still has a long way to go if it is to regain the competitive position it had only a few years ago.” (NYTimes)
Europe still has a further crisis in its future according to Felix Zulauf. (Credit Writedowns)
Economy
The MIT BPP is signalling diminished inflation pressures. (Carpe Diem)
The recovery to-date has been driven more by capital than consumption. (Modeled Behavior)
The downside of deadlines. (Infectious Greed)
Measuring the effects of the Fed’s asset purchases. (Econbrowser)
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
Top clicks this week on Abnormal Returns. (Abnormal Returns)
What you missed in our Saturday longform linkfest. (Abnormal Returns)
Mixed media
Sometime you just need to put yourself first. (Pension Pulse)
Podcasting as a medium flies below the radar screen. (BBC)
A positive review for Liaquat Ahamed’s The Lords of Finance. (Aleph Blog)
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