10 Wednesday AM Reads

April 8, 2015 7:15am by

Welcome to hump day. Need something to do while you await the FOMC Minutes? Start with our morning train reads:

• Star Investors Reveal Their Hits and Misses The hard lessons from Rob Arnott, Jeremy Grantham, Howard Marks and Jeffrey Gundlach (WSJ)
• U.S. Dot-Com Bubble Was Nothing Compared to Today’s China Prices (Bloomberg)
• Macro Last Month Was Better Than You Think (The Fat Pitch)
• But What Will the Market Do? (Irrelevant Investor) see also Is there a Relationship Between the Economy and Stock Market? (EconomPic Data)
• A Multimillion-Dollar Markup on a Modigliani (NYT)

Continues here

 

 

 

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  2. WickedGreen commented on Apr 8

    Sardine population off the U.S. west coast plummeting due to overfishing. Down 90% in a decade.

    Good thing bidness is bidness, and those tree-hugger whackjobs are clueless hippies.

    I’m sure the benevolent hand of the free market will work it out.

    • Crocodile Chuck commented on Apr 8

      The sardine population on the west coast of the Americas is also driven by rainfall, which has been scanty indeed the last few years [‘la Nina’ phase of the ENSO Pacific Oscillation]. As was reported a few weeks back, a weak ‘El Nino’ may be forming in the mid-Pacific, which would imply higher rainfall for this region in the future. [its the exact reverse for people here in SE Australia]

      http://brucekrasting.com/pam-big/

  3. rd commented on Apr 8

    Best financial advice column I have seen for millenials yet.
    http://vanguardblog.com/2015/04/02/my-message-to-millennials/

    My oldest two are on track with this approach. I recommended to them that they just stick with Target Date funds (typically Vanguard and T Rowe Price) for the time being in Roth IRAs and Roth 401ks (when available). Once they have a couple of hundred k in the bank and they have seen a couple of up and down cycles and know how they react to them, then they can start thinking about something more sophisticated if they want to. However, just pounding the savings in and staying invested in a target-date would likely have them reach their goals in their 50s given their current positions.

  4. VennData commented on Apr 8

    Remember these predictions next time these prediction-machines try to sway you.

    SALON: Rahm Emanuel’s Achilles’ heel: 6 reasons he may lose his reelection

    http://www.salon.com/2015/03/16/rahm_emanuels_achilles_heel_6_reasons_he_may_lose_his_reelection/

    REAL CLEAR POLITICS: 5 signs Rahm Emanuel may be doomed in the Chicago mayoral race

    http://www.businessinsider.com/5-signs-rahm-emanuel-may-be-doomed-in-the-chicago-mayoral-race-2015-3

    Kristen McQueary: Why Rahm Emanuel might lose

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-rahm-emanuel-chuy-garcia-chicago-mayor-perspec-0226-20150225-story.html

    • Iamthe50percent commented on Apr 8

      The big lesson from the Chicago Mayoral election? MONEY TALKS! Louder than anything else.

  5. RW commented on Apr 8

    Investors Beware: Today’s $100M+ Late-stage Private Rounds Are Very Different from an IPO

    Over the last few years, the late-stage (pre-IPO) market has become the most competitive, the most crowded, and the frothiest of these financing stages. Investors from all walks of life have decided that “late stage private” is where they want to play. As a result, a “late-stage” financing is no longer reserved for high-revenue, pre-profitability companies getting ready for an IPO; it is simply any large round of financing done at a high price. ….

  6. DeDude commented on Apr 8

    Krugman had a nice piece here:

    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/07/rand-paul-and-the-empty-box/

    pointing out that the right wing is not about freedom but about preserving old hierarchies and power structures. The right has always been about fear (just look at Fox for 5 minutes, if you can handle it), but more than everything else its fear that the old hierarchy will break down or be restructured.

  7. RW commented on Apr 8

    Ignorance and twaddle WRT SS bonds and obligations of the SS trust funds is rampant so deficit scolds, entitlement cutters and other disinformation peddlers can figuratively get away with murder in their arguments. Dean Baker decides to appropriately deride the logic rather than, for the umpteenth time, simply try to set the factual record straight.

    If We Pay Peter Peterson More Money in Interest Than He Pays for Buying New Bonds, Is It Supremely Irrelevant That He Paid for His Bonds?

    That’s the question Megan McArdle raises in her Bloomberg column condemning efforts to raise Social Security benefits. …

    If McArdle wants to declare it “supremely irrelevant” that the payments for Social Security come from bonds held by the trust fund, then with equal validity we can declare it supremely irrelevant that Peterson paid for the bonds he owns. …

    McArdle could contend that we have to pay Peterson his interest because otherwise no one would ever buy U.S. government bonds again …The logic of this assertion is that if we don’t meet obligations to past bondholders, then no one will trust us to meet our obligations to future bondholders.

    Suppose people apply the same logic to the taxes they pay for Social Security benefits. If we don’t follow the law and pay people the benefits they have earned, then they may be more likely to try to avoid paying Social Security taxes in the future. They certainly will be less likely to approve tax increases to fund the program, if they have no reason to believe that the taxes will actually be used for the program, as required under law.

    But McArdle doesn’t want to have this sort of discussion. …

    • howardoark commented on Apr 8

      I missed something there. As I understand what McArdle was saying, it was, “if you increase SS benefits and current payroll SS taxes won’t cover the increase, Congress has to come up with the money somewhere else.” Why is that controversial?

      I guess it’s the unspoken assumption that Congress can’t find the money without cutting spending elsewhere, raising taxes or printing money that upsets people. I don’t understand why though.

      ~~~

      ADMIN: Congress does not print money.

  8. hue commented on Apr 8

    it’s vacay week for a lot of people, i’m going to post my most clicked on links

    1. Why the shooter always a (almost) white guy: The roots of modern, violent rage (salon) http://bit.ly/1e2XqlL

    2. Lost Exile (Vanity Fair) http://vnty.fr/OMbpv8 unfavorable??? profile of the best journalists of this generation

    3. – “Holy Fking Sht. That’s Dzhokhar!” (Esquire) http://bit.ly/11kRY3t a lot of lurkers here, more than 100 clicks in minutes

    clicks are not the be all end all. what i thought were great reads don’t get 5 clicks, like a story about Michael Jordan turning 50 http://es.pn/1bypKG5 BR later ran it on a Sat. and the comment was this story is a year old, BR said maybe so but it’s awesome

    Best BR links, so many, but this is mine favorite, hands down: Amazon: Customer Reviews: Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer http://amzn.to/ZJfzs4

    • reedsch commented on Apr 8

      The “white shooter” article should be required reading for the Powers-That-Be. One my my takeaways from Piketty’s book is that post-WWII wealth distribution was an anomaly and matters are returning to their historical norms…and that the historical norms included a lot of really very nasty things.

  10. VennData commented on Apr 8

    US Cities need video surveillance to protect us from the authorities not only each other.

    “…Authorities in North Charleston, S.C., likely didn’t have much choice but to charge Officer Michael Slager with murder, given the chilling video recording of his firing eight shots at a fleeing Walter Scott…”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/04/08/the-arrest-of-officer-michael-slager-fits-the-profile-of-other-police-arrests-unsurprisingly-well/

    Works in London. It’ll work here.

  12. VennData commented on Apr 8

    VennData’s call on the markets. “Peak Tats”

    In VennData’s 86-page report you’ll see that five-to-one tat ads to tat-removal adds…

    http://www.chicagoreader.com/

    …are the beginning of the decline in that forward looking ratio.

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