10 Friday AM Reads

October 23, 2015 7:42am by

Markets rally to ~flat for the year. And, our end of week morning train reads:

• The $3 Trillion ETF ‘Boom’ (CIO)
• Goals-Based Institutional Investing (Wealth of Common Sense)
• A Timeline of Some of The Best Investment Books (Irrelevant Investor)
• Most Earth-like planets have yet to be born, study suggests (Washington Post)
• Driving the 1990 Porsche 911 Reimagined by Singer Vehicle Design (Automobile) see also How Emory Porsche Customizes Incredible Vintage Porsche 356s (Bloomberg)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Paul Desmond of Lowry’s Research.

Continues here

 

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What's been said:

Discussions found on the web:
  1. Concerned Neighbour commented on Oct 23

    I can’t believe this hasn’t been widely reported yet:

    “Bank of Concerned Neighbourstan cuts key lending rate 25 basis points, hints at further easing”

    With this news, I am now seeing the SPOOs at 2500 to end the year. 3000 if we enter recession, and 3500 if we enter a depression.

    • VennData commented on Oct 23

      One thing that helps is links to data and facts that support your POV.

      Try it, you’ll like it.

    • Concerned Neighbour commented on Oct 23

      I do, regularly.

      It’s satire. As seemingly the only person left on Earth who hasn’t recognized that central banks have totally destroyed the price discovery mechanism, you don’t seem to appreciate it. These “markets” are central bank policy instruments at this point, nothing more. It couldn’t be any more obvious.

    • intlacct commented on Oct 24

      I will probably visit Concerned Neighborstan (sorry, can’t bring myself to use ‘silent u’). I like the exchange rate!

  2. rd commented on Oct 23

    The humbling of financial engineering leaves out the very important fact that the financial engineer’s success breeds its own ultimate demise. Once the model is shown to work in its initial microcosm, it spreads to widespread use. We saw this in the financial crisis and housing crisis where the use of the CDOs etc. created more demand for mortgage backed products which led to issuance of lots of mortgages in the housing market, many of poor quality. The influx of money into the housing system helped push up the house prices. So this became a Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle problem where the application of the model was now artificially helping to raise house prices, so that the fundamental underlying assumption of the model became undermined by the outcomes of the usage of the model. There is generally not enough attention paid on the details of the data set used to come up with a model, so the robustness of a model is often poorly understood. Once the sales people get hold of it, then the original model is probably doomed in fairly short order.

    • mitchn commented on Oct 23

      What Soros calls reflexivity.

  3. VennData commented on Oct 23

    Have you stopped follow Carl Icahn yet? Or do you still believe?

  4. RW commented on Oct 23

    Unlike the U.S. the E.U. will act against powerful players in enforcing its laws.

    EU slams Starbucks and Fiat advance tax rulings as state aid; Is Apple next?
    The European Commission decided two of its major tax subsidy cases on Wednesday, October 21, and the rulings could not have been worse for Starbucks and Fiat …. These cases can be seen as a barometer of what is to come in the legally similar but much larger case of Apple, where potentially billions of euros could be at stake.

    The gist of the three cases is that tax haven subsidiaries of each company (Starbucks in the Netherlands, Fiat in Luxembourg, and Apple in Ireland) were given advance tax rulings by each country that were so removed from economic reality as to constitute illegal subsidies (“state aid” in Euro-speak) under EU competition law. ….

    • rd commented on Oct 23

      It will apply to somebody else other than them, after all their Medicare is a private sector plan, and not government funded.

    • mitchn commented on Oct 23

      Always a mistake to overestimate the intelligence of the typical Republican voter.

    • VennData commented on Oct 23

      They can take the re-purposed McCain bus to work everyday like regular Americans.

    • VennData commented on Oct 23

      Hey, early Bush donors! Where are you putting your money in the markets.

      (I want to do the opposite.)

  15. VennData commented on Oct 23

    Fallout from Hastert Speakership

    ​”…​The so-called “Hastert Rule” is inextricably linked to the chaos currently engulfing the House Republican caucus and the blind eye he turned toward ethical abuses continues to dog his fellow Representatives.​…”

    “…This hyper-partisan approach harms our democracy and continues to play a detrimental role in polarizing the House and should be jettisoned by the new Speaker.”
    ​
    http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/lawmaker-news/257786-fallout-from-hastert-speakership

    At least Hastert went on to live a productive, fulfilling life.

  18. VennData commented on Oct 23

    A Wall Street ‘Master of the Universe’ nailed the millennial mindset with one simple story

    “..​But nowadays if the banker — who is in his 50s and runs one of the biggest businesses on Wall Street — asks a young analyst to jump, they might respond with something like: “Well, I don’t know if that’s the right move for me. I’m not sure jumping is the right thing to do on this occasion. How is jumping going to help me? I think I would rather skip. I think skipping might be better than jumping. Let me take some time to think about that. I am going to get back to you on that.”​

    http://www.businessinsider.com/wall-street-for-junior-bankers-2015-10

    This is why the GOP is losing mindshare. People are no longer going to listen to bull.

    • rd commented on Oct 24

      For business, that’s a feature of free trade, not a bug.

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