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Quote of the day
“The biggest investment mistakes occur when competency is perceived but it does not actually exist. The Dirty Harry character had a clear view on this issue, “A man’s got to knows his limitations.” – Mark Rzepczynski
Chart of the day

The un-inversion of the yield curve has helped financial stocks. (John Murphy)
Strategy
- Jason Zweig, "Investors should always regard the stock market as sailors regard the sea—a means to an end, usually benign, but potentially lethal. Catastrophic losses are rare, but their risk never goes away." (wsj.com)
- Ian Cassel, "Great investors evolve or go extinct. Don’t spend the next 10 years bragging about the returns you had 20 years ago. Stay in the game. Challenge your convictions. Make your own painting." (microcapclub.com)
- Ben Carlson, "Short of an asteroid discovery that will change humanity and the stock market forever it would seem the most logical path from here would be lower than average returns. Typically, that’s what happens after periods of higher than average returns." (awealthofcommonsense.com)
- Mark Hulbert, "The odds are strongly against us when we think our short-term trading can add value. And those odds remain just as overwhelming even after brokerage commissions are reduced to zero." (marketwatch.com)
Companies
- Softbank didn't exactly knock it out of the park with their Sprint investment. Should you expect different with WeWork? (cnbc.com)
- How did Jamie Dimon get WeWork so wrong? (jeffmatthewsisnotmakingthisup.blogspot.com)
- Managers now can come become billionaires. Are we cool with that? (epsilontheory.com)
Finance
Global
Wildfires
- California is coming to terms with a longer and more intense wildfire season. (washingtonpost.com)
- The incentives around power production, blackouts and wildfires are messed up. (marginalrevolution.com)
- Wealthy Californians are hiring private firefighters. (nytimes.com)
Policy
- One of the great services the government is uniquely positioned to do is collect data. (nytimes.com)
- Workers in their 50s and 60s in nontraditional jobs are at-risk of attaining retirement security. (nber.org)
- Even a small financial buffer ($2000-$3000) can greatly help households avoid financial hardship. (papers.ssrn.com)
- How much money do state-level estate taxes raise? (nytimes.com)
- There is more consensus among economists about how to help the poorest, such as better access to education and healthcare, than extracting wealth from the richest among us. (ftalphaville.ft.com)
- How happiness has changed over time in the UK, US and Germany. (ritholtz.com)
Economy
- The US consumer keeps on spending. (blog.yardeni.com)
- But growth is decelerating. (econbrowser.com)
- How uncertainty can depress investment. (ft.com)
- A succinct summary of the week's economic events. (ritholtz.com)
- The economic schedule for the coming week. (calculatedriskblog.com)
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
- Top clicks last week on the site. (abnormalreturns.com)
- What you missed in our Saturday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)
- Longform links: a political experiment. (abnormalreturns.com)