In light of the holidays why don’t you check out: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell.

Quote of the day

Matt Levine, “No matter how long the anomalies have persisted, if they’re just brute statistical facts they could always go away tomorrow. Your anomalies have no soul.”  (Bloomberg)

Chart of the day

GLD_1213

Gold is on track for its first losing year since 2000.  (Crossing Wall Street)

Markets

Newsletter writers are really bullish.  (The Short Side of Long)

Why investors pay attention to manufacturing data.  (Dr. Ed’s Blog)

Dividends keep growing.  (Crossing Wall Street)

Strategy

Ten buys (and sells) from the ultimate stock pickers.  (Morningstar)

What’s the optimal allocation to foreign equities?  (Rick Ferri)

Is investment experience additive?  (the research puzzle)

Nobody seems to care about plain-vanilla options any more.  (Adam Warner)

Companies

What is Apple ($AAPL) going to do with Topsy Labs?  (WSJ, TechCrunch)

Google ($GOOG) wants to be a cloud computing player.  (NYTimes)

What does Seth Klarman see in Micron ($MU)?  (Turnkey Analyst)

Just how big can Uber get?  (Medium)

The end of tax-free online shopping is nigh.  (Slate)

Finance

Meet the world’s biggest investor in hedge funds.  (Dealbook)

Banks seem to be blind to a wave of technology-based competitors.  (FT)

The case for the return of Glass-Steagall.  (John Authers)

Global

Do we need to start talking about deflation again?  (FT Alphaville)

2014 for the global economy: a return to normalcy.  (Business Insider)

Economy

Americans are eating out again.  (Calculated Risk)

There is a bull market in sand due to fracking.  (WSJ)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

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

Mixed media

Can Silicon Valley ever be replicated?  (Slate, New Geography)

Why isn’t cable pushing gigabit Internet speeds yet?  (ArsTechnica also GigaOM)

Tough times facing business television these days.  (WSJ)

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