Quote of the day

Ben Carlson, “Diversification is about accepting good enough while missing out on great but avoiding terrible.”  (A Wealth of Common Sense)

Chart of the day

That was fast! International stocks are sitting at 52-week lows.  (Dana Lyons)

Markets

Checking on the sentiment situation.  (Short Side of Long, Humble Student)

Expectations for the US dollar are pretty elevated.  (Market Anthropology)

How low can gold go?  (Barry Ritholtz also Syncubate)

Strategy

Is liquidity a unique factor in stock returns?  (Larry Swedroe)

Activists can make money by agitating companies to buy back undervalued stock.  (Greenbackd)

Are you a performance taker or seeker?  (Rick Ferri)

Companies

Hewlett-Packard ($HPQ) is breaking in two.  (WSJ, Dealbook, David Nelson, Crossing Wall Street, Fortune)

Wal-Mart ($WMT) continues to push into services beyond retail.  (WashingtonPost)

For Corporate America stock buybacks have run their course.  (Bloomberg)

Startups are spending freely on SF rents and compensation.  (WSJ)

Finance

Convertible bond issuance has jumped this year.  (WSJ)

The big banks are trying to create a one-stop shop for corporate bond trading.  (WSJ)

How “marketplace lenders” are taking share from banks.  (TechCrunch)

How Bitcoin could die.  (Philosophical Economics)

Funds

How to hack a lower cost ETF option.  (ETF)

Comparing bond fund performance is no easy task.   (Economic Musings)

Public alternatives

There are more publicly traded alternative assets than ever before.  (All About Alpha)

The performance of “multi-alternative” mutual funds is disappointing.  (SSRN via CXOAG)

Global

Emerging markets are going to have to rally absent a commodities tailwind.  (FT)

Checking in on the UK economic recovery.  (Econbrowser)

Economy

The deficit is shrinking faster than anyone expected.  (Daniel Gross)

Is there a wage growth puzzle?  (Tim Duy)

A stronger dollar is pushing inflation expectations lower.  (Sober Look)

The price of renewable energy is plunging. (Ramez Naan)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

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

Mixed media

There is a glut of postdoc researchers in science.  (Boston Globe)

Are you an Amazon ($AMZN) or Apple ($AAPL) family?  (GigaOM)

This site hopes to debunk Internet rumors in near real-time.  (VentureBeat)

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