Recommendation: Hitting close to home, a look at John Hodgman’s new memoir Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches. (kottke)
Quote of the Day
"There is an element of reductio ad absurdum about the anti-passive arguments. Yes, if the market was 100% owned by index funds, that would be a problem. And if there were no crime, policemen would be out of work. But we are nowhere near that point. Stop worrying and enjoy the low fees."
(The Economist)
Markets
- Jason Thomas, "There haven’t been 5,000 domestic stocks to include in the index [Wilshire 5000] since 2005." (wsj.com)
- What it would take for the S&P 500 to really be in a bubble. (brooklyninvestor.blogspot.com)
Strategy
- Chart crimes are way too frequent. (theirrelevantinvestor.com)
- Art is an emotional asset, not a financial one. (blogs.wsj.com)
- Ivy League endowments can do better. (mrzepczynski.blogspot.com)
Amazon
- Bose QuietComfort 25 Acoustic Noise Cancelling Headphones are at a huge discount. (amazon.com)
- The classic "The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It" by Scott Patterson is just $1.99 for the Kindle. (amazon.com)
- Amazon Music Unlimited is now just $0.99 for the first three months. (amazon.com)
Financial media
- Congrats to the Mozart of financial blogging, Josh Brown of The Reformed Broker. (thereformedbroker.com)
- The 100 best financial Twitter accounts according to Sentio. (forbes.com)
Cryptocurrencies
- Pre-SegWit2x hard fork, Bitcoin has bounced back. (bloomberg.com)
- Coinbase is opening an institutional custody service to attract hedge funds and the like. (fortune.com)
- The ICO space is like the early PIPEs space before the SEC cracked down. (dealbreaker.com)
- UBS wealth managers won't touch Bitcoin. (bloomberg.com)
- Open a Coinbase account, trade $100 in crytpo and get $10 in Bitcoin free! (coinbase.com)
Companies
Fund management
- Robin Powell, "If there were no costs involved, their average returns of index funds and active funds would be very similar. They key difference is that one is hugely more expensive than the other." (evidenceinvestor.co.uk)
- Vanguard has quadrupled in size over the past eight years and will take in some $350 billion in assets in 2017. (wsj.com)
- Goldman Sachs ($GS) is pushing hard into CLOs. (bloomberg.com)
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Global
- Talk about hard forks, Norway’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund is considering a divestment of holdings in international petroleum companies. (nytimes.com)
- Land in Toronto is simply too darn high. (business.financialpost.com)
Economy
- The Fed needs better tools at its disposal. (bloomberg.com)
- What is going to happen when pension funds accurately calculate future return assumptions? (pitchbook.com)
- Manhattan is filling up with empty storefronts. (macromon.wordpress.com)
- An economist looks at Uber fares. (marginalrevolution.com)
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
- Podcast links: super-listeners. (abnormalreturns.com)
- Take a deep breath and download Oak today. (abnormalreturns.com)
- The future of financial advice is "high tech, high touch." (abnormalreturns.com)
- What you missed in our Thursday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)
- Startup links: only the winners. (abnormalreturns.com)
- Our big, bad book link round-up from November 2017 including looks at Victor Davis Hansen's "The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won." (abnormalreturns.com)