List: The best tech books of 2017 including Jeff Goodell’s The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World. (MIT Technology Review)
Quote of the Day
"As investors, we crave the controlled, certain, and precise nature of the carpenter’s work, but reality hands us the messy gardener’s circumstances instead."
(Brendan Mullooly)
Chart of the Day

Should we really care that the number of microcap companies has fallen?
Markets
- Coming into the last week of the year, emerging market equities led the asset class performance race. (capitalspectator.com)
- Have investors gotten smarter, or has the economy gotten duller? (beta.morningstar.com)
- Ric Edelman's favorite investment chart. (ritholtz.com)
Contrary thinking
- Knee-jerk contrarianism is a waste. (thereformedbroker.com)
- The magazine cover indicator is not one-size-fits all. (linkedin.com)
Strategy
- The case against bonds. (mrzepczynski.blogspot.com)
- It's difficult to ignore rising yields on money-market type instruments. (financial-planning.com)
- Nick's favorite investment blogs and books from 2017. (ofdollarsanddata.com)
Crypto
- Israel is cracking down on cyptocurrency-related firms. (ft.com)
- US regulators are playing catch-up with Bitcoin. (theatlantic.com)
- We could all use a 'blockchain break.' (marketwatch.com)
- Where is the full-fledged blockchain application we are waiting for? (hackernoon.com)
Tax reform
- How taxes are going to go down for MLP investors. (sl-advisors.com)
- How a reduction in tax rates for MLP funds organized as C-corps. (blogs.wsj.com)
Apple
- The state of Apple ($AAPL) going into 2018.. (barrons.com)
- There's no way Apple ($AAPL) is working on a "single unified OS." (daringfireball.net)
Finance
Fund management
- Is there a single index that can serve as a trend-following benchmark? (mrzepczynski.blogspot.com)
- How has Pimco done in the three years since Bill Gross left? (beta.morningstar.com)
Support
- Want to support Abnormal Returns? Get yourself (or someone you love) an annual membership. (abnormalreturns.com)
- Stay up-to-date with all of our posts: sign-up for our daily e-mail. (abnormalreturns.com)
- Love Abnormal Returns? Then like (and follow) us on Facebook. (facebook.com)
Economy
- Market-derived inflation estimates are on the rise. (blogs.wsj.com)
- Through October national housing prices (Case-Shiller) rose at a 6.2% rate. (calculatedriskblog.com)
- The state of Maine is having a hard time hiring enough snow plow drivers. (wsj.com)
- Two necessary ingredients for a Midwest revival are under attack. (bloomberg.com)
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
- Research links: bubble spotting. (abnormalreturns.com)
- Top clicks last week on the site. (abnormalreturns.com)
- What you missed in Saturday's linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)