Quote of the day

TR “If you’re relying on the whims of politicians to rescue your investments you’re not investing, you’re gambling.”
(The Psy-Fi Blog)

Chart of the day

The entire precious metals sector is taking it on the chin of late.  (Finance Trends Matter, SurlyTrader)

Markets

It’s all macro, all the time.  (Zero Hedge)

Is all the good news in muni bond prices?  (WSJ)

Stocks are not supposed to fall in the third year of the Presidential election cycle.  (Fund My Mutual Fund)

On the merits, as they are, in buying the dips.  (WSJ)

Gold

Apparently gold can down asa well as up.  (NYTimes, FT Alphaville, WSJ, TRB)

David Berman, “Gold has been a valuable investment over the past number of years. But as a haven, it has been worthless.” (Market Blog)

If you think margin hikes caused gold to fall you are not paying attention.  (Mish, Big Picture)

Strategy

On the disappointing performance of alternative investment mutual funds.  (WSJ)

How do institutional investors around the world spread their money around?  (FT Alphvaville)

What does the “Anxious Index” tell us about stock market returns.  (CXO Advisory Group)

Companies

Is Pepsi ($PEP) a “value trap” as long as the beverages business is floundering?  (Deal Journal)

Netflix ($NFLX) no longer scares Hollywood.  (Economist)

Groupon:  back to square one.  (The Tech Trade)

ETFs

Are individual investors the suckers in the big ETF game?  (FT also ETF Trends)

Direxion keeps pushing 3x leveraged ETFs.  (IndexUniverse)

Investors continue to favor high dividend ETFs.  (FT)

Finance

Why can’t investment banking and sales and trading just get along?  (The Epicurean Dealmaker)

There are no rogue traders only rogue banks.  (WashingtonPost)

Pension funds have problems that hedge funds can’t solve.  (FT)

Josh is not a fan of UBS ($UBS).  (The Reformed Broker)

Global

The EU is trying to build a “fire break” around Greece, Ireland and Portugal.  (Telegraph)

The famous flexibility of Hong Kong prices.  (Economist)

Brazil was asking for a sell off in the Real and they got it.  (Breakingviews)

Economy

The Constanza Effect:  why savers have become more risk-averse as rates have fallen.  (Jeff Matthews)

The Fed has helped bring interest rates down.  Now what?  (Economix)

There’s no reason to worry about inflation at the moment.  (Mankiw Blog)

What labor inflation actually looks like.  (Free exchange)

Household deleveraging continues unabated.  (Bonddad Blog)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

What everyone else was clicking on this week on Abnormal Returns.  (Abnormal Returns)

What you missed in our Saturday long form linkfest.  (Abnormal Returns)

Mixed media

In defense of Business Insider.  (The Reformed Broker, NetNet)

Applying Moneyball to startups.  (SplatF)

A bull market in Ponzi schemes.  (Tim Harford)

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