Quote of the day
KD, “If you bought TVIX at an 80% premium to NAV, you were playing a Greater Fool Game, a game of hot potato, pass the live grenade, whatever you want to call it.” (Kid Dynamite)
Chart of the day
Don’t trade broken products. (Focus on Funds)
Markets
Burton Malkiel hates bonds, love housing. (WSJ)
Two measures that point towards excessive bullishness. (Mark Hulbert)
Brazil is successfully waging a war on its own currency. (MarketBeat)
Research
A good explanation of risk parity portfolios. (World Beta)
Checking in on the implied equity risk premium. (Aswath Damodaran)
Rethinking the risk-free rate. (Enterprising Investor)
Personal finance
The best smartphone investing app is no app at all. (Forbes)
A look at the new online service FutureAdvisor. (Mike Tarsala)
Checking in on the “troubled” business model of Covestor. (RIABiz)
If you think US mutual fund investors have it bad, check out the UK. (Bloomberg)
What is a fair price for investment management? (Capital Spectator)
Books
More praise for Josh Brown’s Backstage Wall Street. (Attain Capital)
A review of How Markets Really Work by Laurence A. Connors. (Aleph Blog)
Companies
A rough public debut for BATS Global Markets ($BATS). (Bloomberg)
Why even with a single-digit P/E ratio, Hewlett-Packard ($HPQ) may not be cheap. (YCharts Blog)
Fidelity analysts are getting their own Berkshire Hathaway ($BRKB) day. (Fortune)
Finance
TBTF banks are now too big to NOT hire. (Dealbreaker)
A novel financing method: Tesla Motors ($TSLA) is using customer deposits to fund its business. (Dealbook)
Want to be a banker? Play lacrosse. (Businessweek)
Where are all the private equity deals this year? (Deal Journal)
Another take on how SEC rules changes back in 2004 helped cause the financial crisis. (NetNet)
ETFs
Do we need to protect investors from themselves: the VIX ETN question. (Kid Dynamite)
$VXX is doing what it is supposed to do. (Condor Options)
The Merk Hard Currency ETF ($HRD) is coming to market. (IndexUniverse)
Tracking a bond index is tougher than it looks. (IndexUniverse)
Economy
The Architecture Billings Index is the hot new economic indicator. (The Source)
Rail traffic is sluggish due in part due to lower coal tonnage. (Pragmatic Capitalism)
Does weakening GDP growth always lead to a recession? (Bonddad Blog)
Post-financial crisis how various economies recovered (or not). (Economist’s View)
Two sides of the same coin?
The challenge of getting Americans to save more. (Free exchange)
It’s hard to ignore growing student debt levels. (The Atlantic, ibid)
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
What you missed in our Friday morning linkfest. (Abnormal Returns)
Everything can be automated, even money management. (Abnormal Returns)
@abnormalreturns was recently #14 on the PeerIndex’s list of “250+ Finance Tweeters Worth Following.” (MoneyScience)
Mixed media
Don’t equate money with happiness. (Pragmatic Capitalism)
Who knew? Billy Beane is a fan of Premier League football. (Guardian)
The economics of iced coffee. (Grub Street NY)
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