Quote of the day

Gatis Roze, “Stress is literally kryptonite to traders. Stress disrupts their equilibrium and affects their decision-making. Anything we can do to minimize the “yips” will flow directly to the bottom-line.”  (StockCharts Blog)

Chart of the day

EEM Total Return Price data by YCharts

Emerging markets are trying to pull even on the year.  (Bespoke)

Markets

Cyclical stocks continue to lead the market.  (Crossing Wall Street)

2% real returns for the next decade?  (World Beta)

Troubling analogies for Apple ($AAPL) bulls.  (Market Anthropology)

Strategy

Beating the market isn’t easy. Don’t let any one tell you otherwise.  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

Was Ben Graham skillful or lucky?  (Total Return)

Is gold a core holding or a tactical holding?  (ETF Replay)

Are permabears born that way?  (Cassandra Does Tokyo)

Some important takeaways from Michael Mauboussin’s The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Sports, Business and Investing.  (Buttonwood)

Personal finance

Why don’t more people put money into 529 college savings plans?  (InvestmentNews)

Is 4% still a reasonable rule of thumb for retirement withdrawals?  (Vanguard)

Why your 401(k) match is at-risk.  (Time)

Companies

Google ($GOOG) makes the best iOS apps.  (Pando Daily, Wired, Slate)

How Apple’s playbook has changed under Tim Cook.  (Quartz)

Microsoft ($MSFT) didn’t do itself any favors with its Windows 8 launch.  (Pando Daily)

What should we make of the SolarCity ($SCTY) IPO?  (GigaOM, Businessweek)

How Wal-Mart ($WMT) will be hurt by the fiscal cliff.  (Daniel Gross)

Finance

Financial services jobs are moving away from Wall Street.  (WSJ)

Look for the return of CLOs in 2013.  (Deal Journal)

Why investors don’t care more about hedge fund insider trading.  (NetNet)

Another look at the profitability of the AIG ($AIG) bailout.  (Econbrowser)

Why all the interest in peer-to-peer lending?  (The Daily Beast)

Global

Chinese stocks respond to positive PMI news. (MarketBeat, Sober Look)

An election is unlikely to change the trajectory of Japan’s economy.  (Quartz)

Don’t be surprised if the UK pursues a NGDP-target monetary policy.  (Money Game, AlphaNow)

Economy

Good news on industrial production and consumer inflation.  (Capital Spectator, Crossing Wall Street)

The Fed has done a good job of anchoring inflation expectations.  (Economist’s View)

State tax revenues are on the rise.  (Bloomberg)

Why hasn’t there been a bigger rebound in residential construction employment?  (Sober Look)

How a simple change in car insurance could change the US economy.  (The Atlantic)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

My talk with Michael Covel.  (Trend Following)

Mixed media

How you should read the business press.  (Felix Salmon)

The five most disruptive technologies of 2012.  (Quartz)

What we’ve lost with the rise of the social web.  (Anil Dash also kottke)

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