Book notes: Insights from John Pollock’s Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas. (Farnam Street)
Quote of the Day
"Picking market-beating stocks is hard. Picking the people who can pick market-beating stocks is at least as hard. And picking funds that can pick people who can pick market-beating stocks may be the hardest of all."
(Jason Zweig)
Chart of the Day

On the puzzling divergence between stocks and leveraged loans.
Markets
- Value stocks have discounted a slowing economy. (dashofinsight.com)
- Why aren't gold timers more bearish? (marketwatch.com)
- Five charts from the week in markets including a look at recent IPOs. (blogs.wsj.com)
- Behold the breakout in Google ($GOOGL). (blog.afraidtotrade.com)
Strategy
- Brett Steenbarger, "The key to mastery is failing successfully." (traderfeed.blogspot.com)
- Gatis Roze, "Without careful monitoring, you are just a stock market tourist." (stockcharts.com)
- Don't end up like this guy who shorted the wrong stock and ended up in debt. (joshuakennon.com)
Offers
- Sign up for Audible.com and listen to two books for free including "Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas." (amzn.to)
- Get Karma Go from @yourKarma. Take WiFi with you everywhere. Use my code for $10 off yours. (yourkarma.com)
Companies
- Gap ($GPS) is struggling. (bloomberg.com)
- Facebook ($FB) doesn't skimp on Mark Zuckerberg's security. (footnoted.com)
Finance
- Many pension funds still have way too optimistic return assumptions. (economist.com)
- Equity traders are outpacing bond traders on Wall Street, pay-wise. (bloomberg.com)
- The Treasury has not scare off a Pfizer ($PFE)-Allergan ($AGN) deal yet. (bloomberg.com)
Social trading
- Commission-free trading from Robinhood is getting integrated into a number of sites including StockTwits. (fastcompany.com)
- The dream of social trading is finally here. (howardlindzon.com)
Economy
- Just how much farther does the economic recovery have to run? (csen.tumblr.com)
- What CEOs have been saying about the economy on conference calls this week. (blogs.cfainstitute.org)
- A succinct summary of the economic week. (ritholtz.com)
- The economic schedule for the coming week. (calculatedriskblog.com)
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
- Top clicks this week on the site. (abnormalreturns.com)
- What you may have missed in our Saturday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)