Quote of the day

Eric Falkenstein, “You can teach statistics, but unfortunately, you can’t teach people not to overfit data.”  (Falkenblog)

Chart of the day

Stock correlations may be high, but return factor correlations are low.  (Institutional Investor)

Strategy

Ten stocks the “ultimate stock pickers” are buying.  (Morningstar)

REITs and the hunger for yield.  (WSJ)

Corporate bonds are overbought.  (Zero Hedge)

Research shows there is no bad news for stocks mentioned on CNBC.  (Infectious Greed)

Companies

Wal-Mart ($WMT) has been basing for over a decade.  (All Star Charts)

Emerson Electric ($EMR) is sitting pretty.  (YCharts Blog)

How the loss of the NBA season could affect some publicly traded companies.  (footnoted)

Why Amazon ($AMZN) is willing to lose on each Kindle Fire sale.  (Planet Money)

Berkshire Hathaway ($BRKA/$BRKB)

Why does Warren Buffett get to keep his trades secret?  (Dealbook)

Is Berkshire too big to succeed?  (MarketBeat)

IBM ($IBM) is a technology company in name only.  (Bloomberg)

IBM is a quality stock at a reasonable price.  (Turnkey Analyst)

Apple

Why are Apple bulls so anxious?  (Bespoke)

Apple is spending big on capital expenditures.  (Apple. 2.0)

Apple ($AAPL) needs to an iPad price cut.  (SAI)

iPhone sales drive gains in retail sales.  (Money Game)

The Kindle Fire isn’t ready to take on the iPad just yet.  (NYTimes)

Finance

Interloper, “Banking is where the big money comes from to fund equity research.”  (Interloper)

Do corporate managers listen to the stock market?  (Dealbreaker)

Why hedge fund return revisions are worth focusing on.  (Institutional Investor)

Steve Case on the absurdity of “accredited investor” rules.  (TechCrunch)

Congressional insider trading is not a joke.  (The Fly)

Private equity

Ranking the best private equity firms.  (Term Sheet)

KKR ($KKR) is rapidly diversifying away from private equity.  (Pensions & Investments)

The NBA lockout is a black eye for private equity.  (Term Sheet)

Global

Yield for everybody but Germany surge.  (Pragmatic Capitalism, Credit Writedowns)

Europe asked for austerity, now it’s got it.  (Capital Spectator)

The optimistic case for Italy.  (Economist’s View)

Why nobody wants BTPs.  (Money Game)

Why Germany isn’t worried.  (Term Sheet)

European banks are pulling out all the stops to meet capital requirements.  (Finance Addict, FT Alphaville)

Why did anyone ever think Greek bonds should trade in line with German bonds?  (Free exchange, NetNet)

A twist in the Sino-Forest saga.  (Globe and Mail, FT Alphaville, WSJ, Kid Dynamite)

According to the IMF, China’s financial system is “building up vulnerabilities.”  (FT)

Economy

Retail sales continue to surprise on the upside.  (Calculated Risk, Capital Spectator, EconomPic Data)

Q4 GDP is looking up.  (MarketBeat)

Two big differences between Japan and the US.  (Free exchange)

The 1% has been growing throughout the English-speaking world.  (Mankiw Blog)

The long term trend of teens not entering the work force.  (EconomPic Data, Rortybomb)

What US states still have a long way to go for a full recovery. (Real Time Economics)

What US states are at-risk to a Euro recession?  (Wonkblog)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

ETF blocking and tackling.  (Abnormal Returns)

Share buybacks versus dividends.  (Abnormal Returns)

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

Mixed media

A talk with Shawn Carpenter of YCharts.  (Tradestreaming)

A review of Mike Mayo’s Exile on Wall Street: One Analyst’s Fight to Save the Big Banks from Themselves.  (Aleph Blog)

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