Quote of the day

Rick Ferri, “There’s no reason to believe that switching from picking stocks to picking ETFs is going to yield a better result.”  (ETF)

Chart of the day

Bullish investor sentiment is trending higher.  (Short Side of Long also Bespoke)

Strategy

Gary Antonacci, “Momentum can be explained by either risk based or behavioral factors. ”  (Optimal Momentum)

Is investment management a “a science to teach” or “an art to learn“?  (Aleph Blog)

Why you shouldn’t argue with perma-whatevers.  (A Wealth of Common Sense)

Companies

Apple ($AAPL) isn’t a hardware or software company, it is an ecosystem company.  (Eric Jackson)

iOS 8 is what iOS 7 was meant to be.  (The Verge)

The long-rumored Sprint ($S)-TMobile ($TMUS) merger is closer to a reality.  (WSJ, Dealbook)

Finance

How Wall Street is dealing with declining equity volumes.  (WSJ also MoneyBeat)

Bitcoin is seemingly more like an inevitability.  (Business Insider)

Quantitative traders take note: Quantopian has left beta.  (Pando Daily)

Fintech startups are shifting away from payments.  (Zack Miller)

Check writing is in secular decline.  (Quartz)

Funds

You can call just about anything an index fund these days.  (Matt Levine)

ETF statistics for May 2014.  (Invest with an Edge)

Global

Five takeaways from the ECB’s rate move.  (WSJ)

Will negative interest rates boost lending in Europe?  (Economist)

Economy

Weekly initial unemployment claims are tracking expansion levels.  (Calculated Risk)

Ten indicators not pointing towards a recession.  (Business Insider)

Job creation is happening.  (The Reformed Broker)

Where is the wealth effect?  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

The definition of routine jobs is expanding quickly.  (FT Alphaville)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

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

Mixed media

Why is solar growing so fast? (Bloomberg View)

Being overeducated in your first job hurts your career earnings.  (Vox)

Vin Scully on the late Don Zimmer.  (Deadspin)

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