Endorsement: Tim Harford, “Deep Work [by Cal Newport] is a brilliant book and I unreservedly recommend it.” (Tim Harford)
Quote of the Day
"Don’t be surprised if you see a lot of robots in daily life, and in news stories, but not huge productivity gains in the published statistics. That’s exactly the American economy right now."
(Tyler Cowen)
Chart of the Day

Financials have been the best performing sector over the past year.
Howard Marks
- Howard Marks is none to happy with the state of the markets. (oaktreecapital.com)
- Is Howard Marks being too cautious? (thereformedbroker.com)
Strategy
- A true 'money mind' is a rare thing. (monevator.com)
- The opportunity cost of being a trader can be high. (medium.com)
Offers
- Catch up with GOT: sign up for a free trial to HBO on Amazon Channels. (amazon.com)
- Finance professors rarely are protagonists in thrillers like Holly Bell's "Trading Salvos: A Kate Adams Novel." (amazon.com)
- Open a Coinbase account and trade $100 in cryptocurrencies and get $10 in Bitcoin free. (coinbase.com)
- The Bose Soundlink wireless headphones are currently $50 off at Amazon.com. (amazon.com)
Technology
- Jeff Bezos is now the richest person in the world. (nytimes.com)
- Facebook ($FB) is now worth $500 billion. (blogs.wsj.com)
- Twitter ($TWTR) is not a growth company. (bloomberg.com)
- A monopolistic mindset is hard to shake for companies. (stratechery.com)
- Samsung has its fingers in all parts of the technology pie. (wsj.com)
- At great expense to taxpayers Foxconn is building a plant in the US. (bloomberg.com)
Private equity
- There is an orgy of leverage loan repricing. (wsj.com)
- Private equity managers just can't help themselves from trying to boost IRR. (ft.com)
- PE fees are NOT going down. (institutionalinvestor.com)
Funds
- State Street ($STT) Global Advisors is pushing for more female board members to little result. (wsj.com)
- FTSE Russell is going exclude companies like Snap ($SNAP) with limited voting rights. (nytimes.com)
Economy
- Weekly initial unemployment claims are a tad higher but still at low levels. (calculatedriskblog.com)
- How Millennials are changing the housing market. (visualcapitalist.com)
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
- Startup links: the best companies. (abnormalreturns.com)
- What you missed in our Wednesday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)
- Personal finance links: paid off mortgages. (abnormalreturns.com)
- Buy time, they are not making any more of it. (abnormalreturns.com)
- Time spent watching the stock market is time wasted. (abnormalreturns.com)