Book review: Knowing stuff still matters. Head in the Cloud: Why Knowing Things Still Matters When Facts Are So Easy to Look Up by William Poundstone is a good read. (Reading the Markets)
Quote of the Day
"Smart beta is such a clever name — second only to the clever Scots who changed the name of death insurance to life insurance. The guy who came up with it has already made a large fortune on the name. Portfolio insurance was another clever name until it failed miserably."
(Charlie Ellis)
Markets
- Natural gas is breaking out. (ivanhoff.com)
- CTAs had a rough August. (bloomberg.com)
- Your guide to every Federal Reserve meeting. (fmdcapital.com)
Strategy
- How much should you allocate to alternatives? (alphabaskets.com)
- Momentum beats growth. (systematicrelativestrength.com)
Offers
- You can now get Robert Cialdini's highly anticipated second book "Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade." (amazon.com)
- Try Audible.com and get two free audiobooks including "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen. (amazon.com)
- Amazon is pushing hard into voice powered-computing with the new Dot. (amazon.com)
Companies
- Big stock buybacks are not dead! Microsoft ($MSFT) announces a $40 billion buyback. (wsj.com)
- Comcast ($CMCSK) is getting into the cellphone business. (washingtonpost.com)
- Larry Ellison of Oracle ($ORCL) took a shot at Amazon's ($AMZN) AWS. (businessinsider.com)
Finance
- Why the idea of shareholder maximization is stupid. (blogs.cfainstitute.org)
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren to the CEO of Wells Fargo ($WFC): “Your definition of accountability is to push this on your low-level employees. This is gutless leadership.” (nytimes.com)
Funds
- The danger of turning a target-date fund into an endowment-type fund. (beta.morningstar.com)
- The ETF Deathwatch for September 2016. (investwithanedge.com)
- What's in your MLP ETF? (bloomberg.com)
- The most unpopular ETFs of 2016. (etf.com)
Economy
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
- Personal finance links: cost advantages. (abnormalreturns.com)
- What you missed in our Tuesday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)
- My contribution to the "Most Important Charts in the World" on yield-seeking. (businessinsider.com)
