On the bookshelf: Timothy F. McCarthy’s The Safe Investor: How to Make Your Money Grow in a Volatile Economy.

Quote of the day

Jeff Miller, “Any experienced model developer has both successes and failures. Sometimes the reasons are technical. On other occasions the market catches up with your approach. The serious modeler goes to work, analyzing and fixing if necessary.”  (A Dash of Insight)

Chart of the day

America loves burritos.  (Business Insider)

Markets

Putting emerging market losses into perspective.  (A Wealth of Common Sense)

Day of the month seasonality for February.  (MarketSci Blog)

Five charts worth a look.  (The Felder Report)

Strategy

Are absolute return funds a rip-off?  (ETF)

Do you understand your fixed income positions?  (The Reformed Broker)

Dispersion vs. correlation: which measure is more important?  (Indexology)

Books

Revisiting Steven Drobny’s Invisible Hands: Top Hedge Fund Traders on Bubbles, Crashes, and Real Money.  (Reading the Markets)

A few notes about Investing with the Trend: A Rules-Based Approach to Money Management by Greg Morris.  (CXO Advisory Group)

Eight insights from Kevin Roose’s Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits.  (eFinancialcareers)

Apple

Have we reached ‘peak Mac‘?  (SplatF)

Should Tim Cook care about the nearly 10% rop in Apple ($AAPL) stock?  (Justin Fox)

Finance

Copycat trading is catching on around the world, especially in forex.  (Business Insider)

The job of the sell-side analyst is changing.  (Businessweek)

The credit default swap market is in decline.  (Businessweek)

Global

Why emerging markets look cheap.  (beyondbrics)

Have emerging market outflows only begun?  (FT Alphaville, MoneyBeat)

Why are investors nervous about central Europe?  (WSJ)

Economy

The US economy is chugging along.  (Econbrowser)

Macro risks for the economy are increasing.  (Capital Spectator)

Labor market churn and the case of online journalists.  (Economist)

Rail traffic shows continued growth.  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

Diversifying emotionally.  (Abnormal Returns)

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

Mixed media

Why governments mistrust Uber.   (Felix Salmon)

Why VCs are buying into a coffee chain.  (Quartz)

Why billion dollar startups are more common now.  (HBR)

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