Quote of the day

Adam Davidson, “Instead of rolling our eyes at self-conscious Brooklyn hipsters pickling everything in sight, we might look to them as guides to the future of the American economy.”  (NYTimes)

Chart of the day

New home builder sentiment is at a five-year high.  (Calculated Risk also Real Time Economics, Bespoke)

Markets

A look at some previous occasions when the world’s largest market cap company went parabolic.  (Market Anthropology)

The market is doubting the Fed.  (Crossing Wall Street)

Investors are still loving ETFs with big inflows in January.  (Ticker Sense)

Euro spreads are back on the rise.  (Bespoke)

Research

Norway is the new Yale. What can we learn from the world’s largest fund?  (SSRN via World Beta)

Equity anomalies around the world.  (SSRN via @quantivity)

Should long-term investors in international equities use currency hedges?  Probably not…  (The Source)

Companies

Kellogg’s ($K) buys Pringles from Procter & Gamble ($PG).  (Dealbook, ibid)

In addition to be over over-retailed the country may also be over-hoteled.  (Sober Look)

Finance

How shareholder activism is changing its stripes.  (Dealbook)

Private equity investors put money at risk buy “share” half of the gains with managers.  (FT)

Independent brokerage firms are dropping like flies.  (Bloomberg, Dealbreaker)

More on the shrinking capacity of corporate bond dealers.  (Sober Look)

Global

Greece is broken and it can’t be fixed.  (Felix Salmon)

Five lessons to learn from the rise of the BRICs.  (The Atlantic)

On the link between perceived corruption and FDI.  (beyondbrics)

The continued case for the Aussie dollar.  (MarketBeat)

Gasoline

What is going on with miles driven and gas consumption?  (Big Picture)

This is now a thing.  How higher gasoline prices may affect consumers.  (Free exchange, Real Time Economics, Wonkblog)

Economy

Industrial production continued to expand in January.  (Calculated Risk, Bloomberg, Capital Spectator)

US factories are still operating below capacity.  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

Why are companies adding jobs now?  (Bonddad Blog)

Temp staffing points towards continued economic growth.  (ValuePlays)

Like it or not the US economy is picking up.  (Calafia Beach Pundit)

Relatively speaking, how much more can exports do for the US economy?  (FT Alphaville)

Thinking differently about the US dollar in an age of fracking.  (FT)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

Quit your bellyaching, there has simply never been a better time to be an individual investor.  (Abnormal Returns)

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

Mixed media

Why today’s stars like Jeremy Lin are worth more in an online, globalized age.  (The Atlantic)

Mobile phones are growing increasingly gargantuan.  (Slate)

NPR gets it.  The new NPR Music app sounds cool.  (Fast Company)

On the power of interval training.  (Well)

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