Holiday book alert. Walter Isaacson writing at The Atlantic recommends Steve Johnson’s How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World.
Quote of the Day
Human nature conditions us to chase what has performed best. What has performed best feels good. And yet any student of the market knows that’s a dumb way to invest.
(Rob Arnott)
Strategy
- The conventional wisdom on oil is almost always wrong. (fivethirtyeight.com)
- Seasonality often occurs while markets are closed. (overnightedges.com)
- How to use money manager sentiment surveys. (marketwatch.com)
Companies
- Yahoo ($YHOO) sealed its fate when it failed to buy Google back in 2002. (daringfireball.net)
- Twitter ($TWTR) CEO Dick Costolo is coming under fire from investors. (businessinsider.com)
- Cellular immunotherapy stocks like Kite Pharma ($KITE) are hot. (ft.com)
Finance
- Companies can blacklist certain investors from buying their loans. (bloomberg.com)
- KKR ($KKR) is paying the price for diving into the shale oil space. (wsj.com)
- Why active investors should welcome the rise of passive investing. (ai-cio.com)
- The future of Bitcoin isn't Bitcoin. (institutionalinvestor.com)
Emerging markets
- Chinese stocks continue to lead the way. (shortsideoflong.com)
- Emerging market investors need to get used to the boom/bust cycle. (awealthofcommonsense.com)
- Emerging market bond liquidity is ephemeral. (dealbook.nytimes.com)
Economy
- A redacted version of the FOMC's December 2014 statement. (alephblog.com)
- Why the Fed is still on track for a 2015 rate hike. (economistsview.typepad.com)
- Weekly initial unemployment claims continue to trend below 300k. (calculatedriskblog.com)
- If there was ever a time to raise the gas tax... (newgeography.com)
- What the next generation of economists are working on. (fivethirtyeight.com)
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
- A new edition of longform links including a look at antibiotic overload. (abnormalreturns.com)
- What you may have missed in our Wednesday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)
- A new edition of weekly personal finance links including a look at robo-advisor Betterment. (abnormalreturns.com)
Mixed media
- Health reporting is awful. Why so many of the health articles you read are junk. (vox.com)
- Journalists screw up. What is the appropriate reaction? (cardiffgarcia.com)
- Why e-mail newsletters can be so powerful (and profitable). (gigaom.com)
- Why Sony Pictures should release "The Interview" everywhere online. (avc.com)