Quote of the day

Darren Miller, “If you’ve found a way to trade multiple markets in a variety of ways all while managing risk and being profitable for several years, congratulations. You, however, are not the norm.”  (Attitrade)

Chart of the day

Gold ends its long streak above its 200 day moving average.  (Bloomberg also The Technical Take, Bespoke)

Markets

The ten biggest market moments of 2011.  (The Reformed Broker)

Gold timer sentiment is poor.  (Mark Hulbert)

The TED spread keeps on percolating.  (Business Insider)

Buy an Internet/social media IPO at your own-risk.  (MarketBeat)

Strategy

A list of the top ten stocks for 2012 lists.  (Big Picture)

Will reading fiction make you a better investor?  (Interloper)

An examination of the profitability of currency momentum strategies.  (BIS via Alea)

Companies

Why Amazon ($AMZN) stock is so weak of late.  (MercenaryTrader)

What Apple ($AAPL) could do to attract value investors.  (Tech Trader daily)

Dan Loeb’s letter to the Yahoo! ($YHOO) board.  (Deal Journal)

The Martin Marietta Materials ($MLM)–Vulcan Materials ($VMC) fight could get ugly.  (Deal Journal, Dealbook, Dealbreaker)

Finance

Why banks hate exchanges.  (Points and Figures)

Public pension funds are cozying up with the big private equity firms.  (Dealbook)

Steve Cohen isn’t so sure about those insider trading laws.  (Reuters)

The ignoble history of the Blackberry on Wall Street.  (Marketplace)

Retail investing

Retail investors are wondering “why bother?”  (The Reformed Broker)

What it takes to become one of the “most dependable wealth managers” in America.  (I Heart Wall Street)

The trouble with increasingly niche ETFs.  (IndexUniverse earlier Abnormal Returns)

Global

More “China is slowing” stories are coming.  (Humble Student of the Markets)

The implications of the coming Euro recession.  (Crackerjack Finance)

Mars Earth needs equity.  (Economist)

Italian bond yields are soaring once again.  (MarketBeat)

Economy

Why the Fed isn’t breaking out the “bazookas.”   (Econbrowser)

US home prices seem to be tracking Japanese home prices to a tee.  (Big Picture)

Breaking down rail traffic by category.  (research puzzle pix)

Some indication of traction in the jobs market.  (Global Economic Intersection)

What is the “real” unemployment rate anyway?  (Rortybomb)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

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

Books

Eric Falkenstein, “Willpower is a great book that reaffirms the power within us to become better people.”  (Falkenblog)

Burton Malkiel reviews Emanuel Derman’s Models.Behaving.Badly.  (WSJ)

Support Amazon!  Seriously, the case for buying books from the Internet giant vs. local bookstores.  (Slate)

Mixed media

What countries spend the most on Christmas giving?  (Freakonomics)

The Louis C.K. model in self-publishing seems to be working.  (SplatF)

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