Quote of the day
Daniel Gross, “In fact, the lows of March 2009 marked the beginning of an unexpected recovery—not the beginning of an era of irreversible stagnation.” (Daily Beast)
Chart of the day
Does Microsoft make it a three-way race in the e-book wars? (Felix Salmon)
Video of the day
Kathleen Gaffney talks with Consuelo Mack on the upside-down world of income investing these days. (Wealthtrack)
Markets
The case for a better May-September this year. (Minyanville)
Small speculators are once again long S&P 500 futures. (Peter L. Brandt)
Rydex traders are still pretty bullish. (The Technical Take)
Markets are never as clear cut as bull/bear. (Interloper)
Like it or not information often leaks early. (Phil Pearlman)
More views of Sell in May. (Big Picture)
Strategy
Does your worldview affect your portfolio or vice versa? (Big Picture)
If you think the market is rigged, then just give up now. (TraderHabits)
If you’ve taken care of the downside you can let luck play out on the upside. (Above the Market)
How to enhance bond returns by “rolling down the yield curve.” (BondSquawk)
Not every fund can ignore its benchmark. (research puzzle pix)
Asset allocation
Target volatility asset allocation is the hot new strategy. (InvestmentNews)
What strategies generate “crisis alpha” given the risks they take? (CME Group)
A very real way in which concentrated portfolios differ from a market portfolio: skew and kurtosis. (Portfolio Probe)
The Silicon Valley real estate market is “going bonkers.” (Fortune)
Beware some one trying to pitch you pre-IPO Facebook shares. (I Heart Wall Street)
Companies
Barnes & Noble ($BKS) makes a Nook-related deal with Microsoft ($MSFT). Shorts get burned. (Dealbook also Clusterstock)
Can you have a tech bubble if publicly traded companies are not grossly overvalued? (GigaOM)
Ten companies that might actually make money off of the “robopocalypse.” (The Reformed Broker)
Finance
Hedge funds are a very different beast than they were twenty years ago. (FT)
Mortgage funds are the new, new thing. (Reuters)
Is Black-Scholes formula to blame for everything that has gone wrong since its inception? (FT Alphaville, BBC)
Where have all the oil hedgers gone? (FT Alphaville)
Layoffs are not done on Wall Street. (Term Sheet)
Personal finance
Change is hard, especially when it comes to your finances. (Bucks Blog)
The personal financial advisory business is facing a crisis: a lack of talented candidates. (InvestmentNews)
Global
Why another ECB rate cut is in the cards. (Sober Look)
Hong Kong had an IPO party, now the hangover. (WSJ)
A tale of two recoveries: emerging and developed. (FT Alphaville)
This Chinese company can only account for 1% of its past sales. (FT Alphaville)
Is India really worthy of a downgrade? (beyondbrics)
Economy
The Chicago PMI disappoints. (Calculated Risk, MarketBeat)
Consumer spending on the rise. (Capital Spectator, Bloomberg)
The Fed has changed their reaction function. The big question is why? (Gavyn Davies)
The US economy still has a way to go to get to a real recovery. (Calculated Risk)
We need to see some wage growth…soon. (Bonddad Blog)
Home ownership keeps dropping. (The Atlantic)
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
The Abnormal Returns book should be “a core holding in an investing library.” (Reading the Markets)
What you missed in our Monday morning linkfest. (Abnormal Returns)
Mixed media
Happy fourth blogiversary! (Market Folly)
Three lessons for budding entrepreneurs. (New Scientist)
There are not five positions in basketball, there are actually thirteen. (Wired)
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