Excerpt: From Bryan Caplan’s book The Case Against Education: Why the Education System is a Waste of Time and Money. (The Atlantic)
Quote of the Day
"You will likely be more fearful when your investments are crashing and more greedy when they’re surging than you anticipate. And most of us won’t believe it until it happens."
(Morgan Housel)
Chart of the Day

It’s been awhile but here is an update of the once ‘scary’ jobs chart.
January performance
- Emerging market equities led the January 2018 performance derby. (capitalspectator.com)
- How various tactical asset allocation strategies performed in January. (allocatesmartly.com)
Markets
- By this measure stock market investors have never been more optimistic. (pragcap.com)
- Momentum has had a pretty good run of late. (capitalspectator.com)
- How trend-following strategies performed last month. (mrzepczynski.blogspot.com)
Strategy
- Flipping the script: think of trend following as the base case vs. buy-and-hold. (econompicdata.blogspot.com)
- Mental models fail: the challenge is recognizing when it happens. (awealthofcommonsense.com)
- There are legitimate arguments for investing in emerging markets, but faster economic growth isn't one of them. (beta.morningstar.com)
Crypto
- Now India is cracking down on Bitcoin. (wsj.com)
- Bitcoin has failed as a payment system but has succeeded on another level. (ftalphaville.ft.com)
Apple
- How Apple ($AAPL) did last year according to a panel of experts. (sixcolors.com)
- Apple ($AAPL)-Netflix ($NFLX) would be a $1 trillion company. (hollywoodreporter.com)
- The HomePod is only for people already in the iOS ecosystem. (cnet.com)
Support
- Stay up-to-date with all of our posts: sign-up for our daily e-mail. (abnormalreturns.com)
- Get yourself (or someone you really like) an annual membership. (abnormalreturns.com)
- Love Abnormal Returns? Then like (and follow) us on Facebook. (facebook.com)
IPOs
- Robin Wigglesworth, "the issue isn’t that companies aren’t going public, it is that smaller companies aren’t, while big ones are being gobbled up by rivals." (ft.com)
- Small firms don't see much benefit in going public. (qz.com)
Hedge funds
- Curious what hedge fund types make? Check out the 2018 SumZero compensation report. (sumzero.com)
- Truly contrarian investors are few and far between. Bienville Capital seem like the real deal. (institutionalinvestor.com)
- Why the Illinois State Board of Investment got out of hedge funds. (wsj.com)
Fund management
- Vanguard's mutual funds crush the competition on a 10-year basis. (investornews.vanguard)
- The February 2018 Mutual Fund Observer commentary is out. (mutualfundobserver.com)
- Putnam's experience with "absolute return funds" has not been good. (beta.morningstar.com)
Economy
- The unemployment rate was unchanged in January at 4.1%. (calculatedriskblog.com)
- US oil production hasn't been this high since 1970. (bloomberg.com)
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
- Podcast links: history of computing. (abnormalreturns.com)
- Startup links: value alignment. (abnormalreturns.com)
- What books Abnormal Returns most purchased in January 2018 including "Tribe of Mentors" by Tim Ferriss. (abnormalreturns.com)
- What you missed in our Wednesday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)
- ESG links: feeling virtuous. (abnormalreturns.com)