Holiday book alert: Bill Gates recommends Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street by John Brooks.

Quote of the day

Larry Swedroe, “While I have great respect for his [Grantham’s] writings and ideas, I totally ignore his advice when it comes to trying to time the market because I believe that particular advice has no value whatsoever.”  (ETF)

Chart of the day

Traders are extremely bearish on crude oil.  (Short Side of Long)

Markets

Small caps are picking up steam.  (StockCharts, Short Side of Long)

Are things as “good as they can get” for S&P 500 companies?  (The Fat Pitch)

High yield ETFs are sitting at two-year lows.  (Income Investing)

Beware the weakness in the junk bond market.  (The Felder Report)

Strategy

Taxes matter more than alpha.  (Alpha Architect)

One more with feeling: the economy is not the stock market.  (A Wealth of Common Sense)

Five ways to improve your trading today.  (Adam Grimes)

An interview with Tobias Carlisle author of Deep Value: Why Activist Investors and Other Contrarians Battle for Control of Losing Corporations.  (Harvest)

Apple

Games are a huge part of App Store revenue.  (Quartz)

Where Apple ($AAPL) is parking its cash hoard.  (Above Avalon)

What to look for from Apple in 2015.  (Mashable)

Companies

Want unhedged oil exposure? Look at Continental Resources ($CLR).  (WSJ)

Why did it take a blog post to bring down Medallion Financial ($TAXI) stock?  (Noah Smith)

Who is Jim Cramer to TheStreet.com ($TST)?  (Dealbook)

Finance

Want to join a hedge fund? These schools have the best batting average.  (CNBC)

What private equity learned from the last merger frenzy.  (Dealbook)

Josh Brown, “Securities-based lending, also known as non-purpose lending, is Wall Street’s hottest business.”  (Fortune)

ETFs

When mutual funds are cheaper than ETFs.  (Morningstar)

The ETF Deathwatch for December 2014.  (Invest with an Edge)

SRI

Low carbon ETFs are now a thing.  (Focus on Funds)

The fossil fuel divestment movement did not find a taker in Norway.  (Dealbook)

Economy

How should the Fed interpret lower oil prices?   (FT Alphaville)

Markets are concerned the US is going to hike rates prematurely.  (SurlyTrader)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

Undervalued posts from the financial blogosphere: second-order thinking.  (Enterprising Investor)

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

Mixed media

Why you should live in “the middle of ideas.”  (Farnam Street)

Fast shipping is making us more impatient.  (Wonkblog)

Why The Elf on the Shelf is just the worst.  (Vox)

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