Holiday book alert: What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe of xkcd fame.

Quote of the day

Jeff Miller, “You cannot advise taking chips off the table unless you had some there to start with!”  (A Dash of Insight)

Chart of the day

LTShanghai_1214

A longer term look at the China breakout.  (Bespoke)

China

Chinese traders are leveraging up.  (Free exchange)

Have you been paying attention to the breakout in Chinese stocks?  (Dana Lyons)

Chinese stocks have a tendency to make big moves.  (Short Side of Long)

Strategy

The world is still going to be fighting ‘lowflation‘ in 2015.  (FT)

The six worst trades of 2014.  (Quartz)

Managed futures had a good November (and YTD).  (Attain Capital)

Should you hedge your foreign exchange exposure?  (A Wealth of Common Sense)

Companies

Amazon ($AMZN) is starting to private label products like diapers and wipes.  (Businessweek)

Google ($GOOG) admits that their ads are often unviewed.  (Quartz)

Finance

Vanguard wants corporate boards to interact with (large) shareholders.  (FT)

Why endowments would do well to focus on the basics.  (Larry Swedroe)

Why regulators worry about money managers.  (MoneyBeat)

Oil

The economics of the oil business have changed.  (Economist)

Low oil prices are likely to lead to more M&A.  (WSJ)

The pros and cons of falling oil prices.  (James Stewart)

Why a slow down could ultimately help US drillers.  (Slate)

There is a huge amount of uncertainty as to how much shale gas there is in the US.  (Nature)

Economy

The November non-farm payroll report was a blowout.  (Calculated Risk, Real Time Economics, Bonddad Blog, The Reformed Broker)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

Podcast Friday: Apple’s billion dollar mistake.  (Abnormal Returns)

Uber: too big to ignore for public market investors.  (Abnormal Returns)

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

Mixed media

The top 10 movies you missed in 2014, including We Are the Best!.  (Esquire)

The top 50 albums of 2014 including Spoon’s They Want My Soul.  (Paste)

The best books of 2014 including What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe. (Slate)

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