Quote of the day

James Surowiecki, “You might suppose that entrepreneurs would be better off curbing their optimism. But we’ve built a whole system on unrealistic expectations.”  (New Yorker)

Chart of the day

It is hard to be too bearish when the Dow is at all-time highs.  (The Fly)

Markets

Are the high flyers still overvalued?  (WSJ)

The case for the US dollar.  (All Star Charts)

On the tick up in bearish sentiment.  (Humble Student)

Strategy

John Authers, “Stocks show momentum, and it is possible in the real world to design a momentum trading strategy that will show positive returns, even after taxes and trading costs.”  (FT)

Why fixed income investors are once again turning to leverage.  (Income Investing)

Why most investors should avoid longer dated bond funds.  (A Wealth of Common Sense)

Americans are expecting a lot from their retirement investments.  (Chuck Jaffe also Barry Ritholtz)

Books

The greatest market call in history: an excerpt from Joshua Brown and Jeff Macke’s Clash of the Financial Pundits: How the Media Influences Your Investment Decisions for Better or Worse  (NYPost)

Tim Richards’ author of Investing Psychology: The Effects of Behavioral Finance on Investment Choice and Bias on why the vast majority of financial commentary is “bullsh*t.”  (The Psy-Fi Blog)

A look at Jerome Booth’s Emerging Markets in an Upside Down World: Challenging Perceptions in Asset Allocation and Investment.  (Reading the Markets)

Apple

How can you say the Apple ($AAPL)-Beats deal isn’t interesting?  (Joe Weisenthal, Medium, Dealbook)

A Beats deal is a sign of the decline of Apple.  (Bob Lefsetz)

Why growth in the tablet market has stalled.  (Henry Blodget)

Companies

How should we value a company like SolarCity ($SCTY)?  (WSJ)

When is IBM’s ($IBM) investment in Watson going to take off?  (WashingtonPost)

Pfizer ($PFE) is still hot to buy AstraZeneca ($AZN).  (Dealbook, WSJ)

Finance

Pension funds are awash in private equity cash.  (WSJ)

Activist investors are going global.  (FT Alphaville)

On the decline of British investment banking.  (FT)

ETFs

ETNs make sense for certain strategies.  (ETF)

Institutions love the iShares “core” funds.  (Focus on Funds)

The differences between the five basic ETP structures.  (Rick Ferri)

Economy

The housing market is stalling.  (Sober Look)

Lumber prices are down 25% from their 2013 highs.  (Calculated Risk)

American labor mobility is waning.  (Bloomberg)

We need to see wage growth pick up.  (Bonddad Blog)

Why the housing bubble tanked the economy and the dotcom bubble didn’t.  (FiveThirtyEight)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

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

Mixed media

How smartphones are changing the live television experience.  (Wired)

Have we reached peak TV advertising?  (Recode)

Quartz is launching a site to cover the changing television scene.  (NPR)

You can support Abnormal Returns by shopping at Amazon. Don’t forget to follow us on StockTwits and Twitter.