Quote of the day

Felix Salmon, “The euro/dollar exchange rate is just too noisy to be able to tell you much of anything.”  (Reuters)

Chart of the day

A crazy graph of rising cross-country correlations.  (@scottybarber)

Markets

What changes await us in 2012?  (Big Picture)

Treasuries turned out to be a better safe haven than gold in 2011.  (MarketBeat, VIX and More)

Don’t ignore the growth in book value per share as an indicator.  (ValuePlays)

FedEx ($FDX) is not necessarily a bellwether.  (MarketBeat, Pragmatic Capitalism)

Commodities

Forget the 200 day moving average for gold, check out the 300 day moving average.  (Money Game)

Two more stories on the potential farmland bubble.  (WSJ, Business Insider)

At least food commodity prices are coming down.  (Global Macro Monitor, Bonddad Blog)

Companies

Do we really want Amazon ($AMZN) to monopolize e-books?  (FT)

Investors are tired of Microsoft ($MSFT) which makes for an opportunity.  (Institutional Investor)

What if mobile advertising never really take off.  (Eric Jackson)

Retail

Why people trade for reasons other than profits.  (Total Return)

Retail investors are tired.  (I Heart Wall Street)

ETFs

How can four bond ETFs tracking the same index have such different performance?  (IndexUniverse)

ETFs have opened up multi-asset trading for many.  (Traders Magazine)

Global

The Fed has no plans to aid the EU.  (Bloomberg)

The coming fight over Greek debt haircuts.  (Felix Salmon)

China seems to be slowing their purchase of Treasuries.  (EconomPic Data)

Economy

Weekly unemployment claims continue to impress.  (Calculated Risk, Capital Spectator, Bespoke)

This just adds to the list of positive employment data.  (Money Game)

Why hasn’t rapid money growth led to inflation?  (Capital Spectator)

Inside ECRI’s “black box.”  (Bonddad Blog)

What’s the Fed to do in a world of slowing growth?  (Tim Duy)

At least lower interest rates are helping consumer debt service ratios.  (Calculated Risk)

Wages as a share of GDP is at a post-war low.  (FT)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

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

Mixed media

Is this offer going to change the college tuition exchange?  (LATimes)

With its new broadcast deals it is now more clear than ever that the NFL rules the airwaves.  (WSJ)

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