Quote of the day

Rob Curran, “High-speed traders already know who has won the horse race when your mutual fund manager lays his bet. You’re guaranteed to come out a loser.”  (Fortune)

Chart of the day

The easy money in the gold bounce trade has been made.  (Dynamic Hedge also StockCharts Blog)

Markets

NYSE margin debt is at new highs.  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

Day of month seasonality for September.  (MarketSci Blog)

How would you invest if the market was going to be closed for five years?  (Chuck Jaffe)

Strategy

A key skill: learning what (not) to read.  (A Dash of Insight)

What are the characteristics of a house as an investment?  (LearnBonds)

What should traders do on vacation?  (StockCharts Blog)

Companies

GE ($GE) is getting out of the consumer lending business.  (WSJ)

What Microsoft ($MSFT) must do to avoid extinction.  (Businessweek)

Checking the comps for the Violin Memory IPO.  (Term Sheet)

Two shorts and one long recommendation among the three finalists for the SumZero/Factset Value Investing Challenge.  (MoneyBeat)

Finance

Some hedge funds are taking succession planning seriously.  (FT)

Exchange glitches are becoming commonplace.  (Economist)

Do individual investors need greater access to IPOs?  (WSJ)

Emerging markets

Some emerging markets, but not Mexico, are being forced to raise benchmark rates.  (WSJ, MoneyBeat)

The reasons for (relative) optimism for the emerging markets.  (FT Alphaville)

Are emerging markets going to drag down the global economy?  (MoneyBeat)

Should investors try to pick individual emerging market ETFs?  (IndexUniverse)

Economy

Coincident economic indicators stalled in July.  (Bonddad Blog)

Consumer confidence doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know.  (The Reformed Broker)

Do we really want a politicized Fed?  (Felix Salmon also Pragmatic Capitalism)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

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

Autos

Why Tesla ($TSLA) is targeting Norway.  (Quartz)

Google ($GOOG) self-driving cards+Uber=Awesome.  (Slate)

Mixed media

Why no one watches business television any more.  (Daily Intel)

The eternal online media debate rages: free vs. paid?  (Bits)

Is your phone the next new fitness tracking device?  (Pando Daily)

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