Quote of the day

Eddy Elfenbein, “One-year performance marks for a stock or mutual fund are like won-loss records for pitchers — they really don’t tell you much. ”  (Crossing Wall Street)

Chart of the day

Stocks and bonds have disengaged.  (All Star Charts)

Markets

What trade would hurt the most players at present?  (Above the Market)

Everyone is short Treasuries.  (Sober Look)

How important are long term Treasury yield trendlines?  (Minyanville)

Is the $VIX misunderstood?  (Business Insider)

Strategy

Should you bet on a September market decline?  (Mark Hulbert)

What is the best market to start trading?  (SMB Training)

How to use MLPs for estate tax purposes.  (Forbes)

Companies

Microsoft’s ($MSFT) problem “isn’t the present, it’s the future..”  (Slate)

Managing a monopoly is harder than it looks.  (Rational Irrationality)

Should Microsoft hand Bing over to Yahoo ($YHOO)?  (Eric Jackson)

Is Marissa Mayer the right CEO for Yahoo?  (Felix Salmon)

Finance

Executive stock options are getting swapped out for restricted stock.  (WSJ)

CEOs are retiring left and right.  (Quartz)

Bill Ackman is done with JC Penney ($JCP).  (Dealbreaker, Dealbook)

Why T. Rowe Price ($TROW) was right to ban certain 401(k) trades.  (NetNet)

ETFs

Not all low vol ETFs are built alike.  (Random Roger)

How leveraged loan ETFs have become full-fledged members of the shadow banking system.  (FT Alphaville)

The clutter of ETFs is making it difficult to sort among them.  (InvestmentNews)

Euroland

The Eurostock rally.  (Charts etc.)

Eastern Europe has served as a relative safe emerging markets haven.  (WSJ)

Economy

The American economy five years post-financial crisis.  (Bloomberg)

Case-Shiller continues to show increasing home prices.  (Calculated Risk, Pragmatic Capitalism)

20 optimistic charts.  (Calafia Beach Pundit)

Dylan Matthews, “College matters. It causes real, large increases in lifetime earnings, both for average students and those teetering between going and not going to college.”  (Wonkblog)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

What you may have missed in our Monday linkfest.  (Abnormal Returns)

Mixed media

300 days with the iPad Mini.  (SplatF)

Mobile chat is the new e-mail.  (Pando Daily)

Vine is just another example of how technology changes the way we make and consume video.  (GigaOM)

Thanks for checking in with Abnormal Returns. You can follow us on StockTwits and Twitter.