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Quote of the Day
"Most of all, the theory that passive investing would inevitably blow up and rip a hole in financial markets when the tide recedes seems a little fatuous today."
(Robin Wigglesworth)
Chart of the Day

2020 was unique in that two megacaps, in this case Apple and Amazon, significantly outperformed.
Markets
- A big overview of market trends including the steepening yield curve. (compoundadvisors.com)
- Winning sectors rarely tend to repeat their strong performance. (sentimentrader.com)
- Every asset class was more correlated in 2020. (capitalspectator.com)
Strategy
- Small caps badly underperformed large caps in 2020, until they didn't. (awealthofcommonsense.com)
- Why you shouldn't sweat buying at all-time highs, with one big caveat. (ofdollarsanddata.com)
Crypto
- Tyler Cowen, "The more utopian scenarios for crypto, whether proponents realize it or not, rely on the notion that crypto remains simultaneously fringe and mainstream. That will be a hard trick to pull off." (ca.finance.yahoo.com)
- Can Paypal ($PYPL) accelerate the use of Bitcoin for payments? (wsj.com)
Finance
- Global banks pulled in a record amount of underwriting fees in 2020. (ft.com)
- SAP-owned, Qualtrics has filed for an IPO. (news.crunchbase.com)
- Putting some numbers to the 2020 IPO boom. (barrons.com)
SPACs
- 2020 was the year of the SPAC. (npr.org)
- 2021 is going to be filled with SPACs looking to complete transactions. (barrons.com)
ARK Invest
- In December, ARK Invest was third in ETF inflows behind the big two. (barrons.com)
- Cathie Wood has struck a deal to remain the majority shareholder of ARK Invest. (citywireusa.com)
Global
Vaccinations
- Novavax ($NVAX) is launching a big Phase 3 trial for its vaccine candidate. (wsj.com)
- What is holding up vaccinations in the US? (usnews.com)
- What Canada is doing to speed up vaccinations. (marginalrevolution.com)
- A return to office is dependent on the pace of vaccinations. (wsj.com)
Housing
- The Case-Shiller numbers show accelerating house price gains through October. (housingwire.com)
- What is going to drive house prices in 2021? (calculatedriskblog.com)
Economy
Earlier on Abnormal Returns
- Research links: arbitraged away. (abnormalreturns.com)
- What you missed in our Monday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)
- Adviser links: marketing pitfalls. (abnormalreturns.com)
- Are you a financial adviser looking for some out-of-the-box thinking? Then check out our weekly e-mail newsletter just for advisers. (newsletter.abnormalreturns.com)
Mixed media
- 52 things learned in 2020 including "Blowing out candles on a birthday cake increases the bacteria content on it by up to 1,400 percent." (kenthendricks.com)
- Things we learned in 2020 including "The most important thing we learn from history is huge things constantly happen that nobody predicts or expects." (tonyisola.com)
- Five big, global megatrends that are hard to ignore. (visualcapitalist.com)