Fun read: A letter to Guy Spier author of The Education of a Value Investor: My Transformative Quest for Wealth, Wisdom, and Enlightenment. (BeyondProxy)
Quote of the Day
"To beat the market, you have to be different than the market. And to meaningfully beat the market, you have to be meaningfully different than the market."
(Ben Carlson)
Chart of the Day

Mutual fund expense ratios have been falling for awhile now.
Markets
- Three reasons oil prices haven't bottomed yet. (humblestudentofthemarkets.blogspot.com)
- Utility stocks are expensive. (blog.yardeni.com)
- Negative earnings revisions are a cause for concern. (economist.com)
Strategy
- Why should there be a payoff to size? (ftalphaville.ft.com)
- The danger of passive investing today. (thefelderreport.com)
- Diversified portfolios don’t need to hold a little bit of everything. (awealthofcommonsense.com)
- The thin defense of stock picking. (ftalphaville.ft.com)
- Stop paying high fees. (pragcap.com)
Hedge funds
- The Bet goes to Warren Buffett and the S&P 500. (cfainstitute.tumblr.com)
- A review of the "tortured defense" of hedge funds. (msantoli.tumblr.com)
- The disconnect between hedge fund AUM and performance is alive and well. (bloombergview.com)
- Why 2/20 may not be the right fee structure for all hedge funds. (ladyfohf.tumblr.com)
- Currency volatility in January was good for hedge funds. (wsj.com)
Companies
- It's going to cost a lot of money to take on Amazon ($AMZN). (wsj.com)
- "Google’s ($GOOG) place in the future is less clear." (nytimes.com)
- American Express ($AXP) is losing its cache among the wealthy. (bloomberg.com)
ETFs
- Two simple ETF portfolios. (etf.com)
- The promise of low vol ETFs has been proven to-date. (investmentnews.com)
- A look at the short duration bond ETF landscape. (etf.com)
- The top ETF managed portfolio firms saw outflows in Q4. (blogs.barrons.com)
Global
- Sweden's Riksbank joins the negative interest rate club. (bloomberg.com)
- Is Norway overrated economically? (marginalrevolution.com)
Economy
- Weekly initial unemployment claims jumped last week. (bespokeinvest.com)
- Gasoline is clouding the retail sales picture. (capitalspectator.com)
- What we know about recessions may be wrong. (bloombergview.com)
- Hotels are off to a good start. (calculatedriskblog.com)
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
- Longform links: unreasonable people (abnormalreturns.com)
- What you may have missed in our Wednesday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)