Quote of the day

Gary Becker, “So while goods and services have expanded enormously in rich countries…the total time available to consume has not. Thus wants remain unsatisfied in rich countries as well as in poor ones.”  (NYTimes)

Chart of the day

HYGTLT_0514

On a divergence in risk appetites.  (Charts etc.)

Markets

S&P 500 sectors are a ‘crazy quilt.’   (A Wealth of Common Sense)

Sector analysis shows us to be in a late cycle phase.  (Humble Student)

An alternative to selling in May.  (Horan Capital)

Strategy

Nicolas Darvas on stop-loss orders in How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market.  (Finance Trends Matter)

John Authers, “The presence of indexers as a competitor means that active managers can no longer crowd around an index, as this way lies commercial death.”  (FT)

Has the stock market been overgrazed?  (SSRN)

Companies

Wrap ups of the largely uneventful Berkshire Hathaway ($BRKB) annual shareholder meeting.  (Dealbook, Reuters, FT)

Can Amazon ($AMZN) really make a go of it with smartphones?  (Minyanville)

How is the Tumblr deal working out for Yahoo ($YHOO)?  (NYTimes, BI)

Twitter ($TWTR) is still a game-changer.  (TechCrunch)

Finance

The tech IPO market turned from hot to not in a month.  (Quartz)

Why individual investors need not worry about HFT.  (Chuck Jaffe)

P2P

Kabbage now has more capital to try and disrupt small business lending.  (TechCrunch, )

Peer-to-peer lending Prosper also raised another round of venture capital.  (Dealbook)

Institutional investors have barged into P2P lending.  (NYTimes)

China

Five signs of weakness in the Chinese economy.  (Sober Look also BCA Research)

What is Alibaba?  (WSJ)

Economy

The ISM non-manufacturing index jumped in April.  (Calculated Risk, BI)

Why isn’t the Treasury issuing more 30-year bonds?  (Barry Ritholtz)

Just how close is the Fed to its targets?  (Econbrowser)

Wage inflation is still not there yet.  (Tim Duy, NYTimes)

On the difference between nominal and real interest rates.  (Mark Thoma)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

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

Mixed media

The top 20 North American MBA programs ranked.  (Economist)

RIP, Gary Becker.  (WSJ, Cafe Hayek, New Yorker)

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