Quote of the day

Aswath Damodaran, “The more comfortable you are in valuing a company, the less point there is to doing that valuation.”  (Musings on Markets)

Chart of the day

The rough year for TIPS.  (WSJ also CBP)

Markets

Energy stocks have disengaged from the price of crude oil.  (Charts etc.)

We may have already seen the bottom in gasoline prices.  (Time)

Is there a Friday the 13th effect in the stock market?  (Priceonomics Blog)

Strategy

On finding investment ideas.  (Aleph Blog)

On the appeal of autopilot investment programs.  (Unexpected Returns)

Portfolio rebalancing is not a one-size-fits-all deal.  (Capital Spectator)

Companies

Why Black Friday sales have leaked into the middle of November.  (Daniel Gross)

To say that Brookfield Asset Management’s ($BAM) financials are complicated would be an understatement.  (SIRF)

The battle over Odyssey Marine Exploration ($OMEX).  (Business Insider)

Finance

Some alternative takes on AngelList Syndicates.  (Hunter Walk)

It’s time for a re-think of accreditation rules.  (InvestmentNews)

Goldman Sachs ($GS) had a bad quarter trading currencies.  (Reuters, WSJ)

Reduced traffic is hurting privately owned toll roads.  (WSJ)

ETFs

Why ‘guru ETFs‘ beat human gurus.  (Felix Salmon)

What the worst performing ETFs of 2013 have in common.  (Attain Capital)

Just how much of the equity world is indexed?  (Focus on Funds)

Global

France’s economy continues to lag Germany’s.  (FT)

Canada has an oil export problem.  (FT)

Economy

Weekly initial unemployment claims continue to trend lower.  (Calculated Risk, Bespoke)

The Fed is really trying to come up with a plan to exit QE.  (Tim Duy, WSJ, FT)

Is the monetary transmission mechanism broken?  (Rajiv Sethi)

Has behavioral economics been overhyped?  (Reuters)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

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

Bitcoin

Is China the only way to understand Bitcoin’s price rise?  (Marginal Revolution, FT Alphaville)

Some unanswered questions about Bitcoin.  (MacroBusiness)

The world’s most powerful computer network is being wasted on Bitcoin.  (Gizmodo)

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