Hottest Links: Bill Ackman Rides A Bike, Best CEO, NSA Angry At Teens

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Hottest links for Wednesday October 23rd, 2013 the late edition again (see Tuesday’s edition of hottest links). Get our free daily newsletter (which is being updated to make it even better) and never miss a single linkfest.

Top stories for today can be found below. Some really great ones today mostly involving funds, asset allocation, also some good behavioral finance and a good article on that new athlete ponzi scheme stock, Also who is the top CEO of them all? Bill Ackman rides a bike, And why is the NSA furious at teenagers, find out belowr

Hottest Links: Stories

Funds

Active Managers Stink?

Smead Capital director of research Tony Scherrer has an allergy to the standard Active management doesn’t work, just buy an ETF. [Brendan Conway, Focus on Funds]

Investor Ader turns to full-time activism

Former Wall Street gaming analyst Jason Ader tried his hand at activism this year, going to battle with a U.S slot-maker International Game Technology in a successful campaign to win a board seat for his firm. Now he appears to be making a deeper commitment to activist investing. [Katya Wachtel, Reuters]

Beta Managers, This is Your New Benchmark

The S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX) never made much sense as a gauge because, as advisors, we’re generally not hardcore stock-pickers – even though clients still consider the S&P’s performance to be of paramount importance (it’s the thing they can look up on their phones). [Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker]

Harvard Endowment’s Private Equity Future

Harvard’s endowment names a new private equity investment chief, amid some signs that it has soured on the asset class. [Dan Primack, MoneyBeat]

Inside Professor Shiller’s CAPE ETN

The Barclays ETN Schiller CAPE (NYSEARCA:CAPE) launched just about a year ago, so it’s a perfect time to revisit what this product is trying to do now that it has a bit of history. [Paul Britt, IndexUniverse]

Investors Demand Better Governance from Hedge Funds and Alternatives

Hedge funds and alternatives are suffering from a lack of experienced and independent directors on their boards, leading to an industry-wide failing on fund governance, investors have complained. [Charlie Thomas, aiCIO]

Fund Focus: Ranger Opportunity Partners

After decades at financial institutions running billions of dollars, Scott Wallace struck out on his own this year with $5 million and a long-biased hedge fund. [Deirdre Brennan, FINalternatives]

Here’s What a Hedge Fund Profit-And-Loss Statement Looks Like

Hedge funds are privately controlled and notoriously secretive investment firms with billions of dollars in assets.  [Hamilton Nolan, Gawker]

 

An Athlete ETF? Maybe Someday

As of today, Fantex, a fledgling exchange and broker-dealer, is taking account applications on their system. It’s not a stock exchange though—you can only buy and sell one type of security in their system. And that security is athletes. [Dave Nadig, IndexUniverse]

Value Investing

Van Lanschot N.V. – High End Private Banking at a Discount Price ?

Van Lanschot NV (AMS:LANS) is one of the oldest names in Dutch Banking and celebrated ist 275th anniversary in 2012. The stock chart mirrors this development. After a peak of around 85 EUR in 2006, the stock traded at around 80 EUR until 2008, but then lost more than 80% and did not really recover until now: [ ValueAndOpputunity]

The Brain’s Reaction to Market Bubbles

In the case of bubbles, there is a correlation between theory of mind abilities and increased blood flow to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). [AAII]

Chinese Shares Look Attractive

According to Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS), 25 of 80 firms listed on both sides of the border are seeing their so-called A shares, or yuan-denominated shares at Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges, trade at a discount to their Hong Kong-dollar denominated counterparts, known as H shares. [Chao Deng, MoneyBeat]

What Can Investors Achieve in the US Stock Market?

We did a fun project that sorts securities into decile portfolios based on the FUTURE 5-year returns and rebalances on a set interval. [Wesley R. Gray, Turnkey Analyst]

About that athlete stock…

Valuing Athlete Earning Potential?

In a week during which both Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) hit all-time highs, you would think I would pick one of these high fliers for special valuation attention. While I still plan to look at these companies, I am going to spend this week on a quirky valuation challenge: valuing tracking stock on a star athlete’s future income. [Aswath Damodaran]

The Age of Bullshit Investments Is Back!

Now, with five years of air between Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc Plan Trust (OTCMKTS:LEHMQ) and the present, the seal has been lifted. Athletes and virtual currencies are being traded alongside Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) and General Electric Company (NYSE:GE). [Kevin Roose, NYMag]

 

 

Books

A Really Great Book: The Outsiders

I’m sure many of you have already read it, but if not, stop what you’re doing right now.  Go to the library and get this, or you can order it here:  The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success (by William M. Thorndike, Jr.)  [The Brooklyn Investors]

Jeff Bezos’s Reading List

The back of Brad Stone’s excellent new book, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, contains a list of a dozen books “widely read by executives and employees that are integral to understanding” Amazon. Here is the reading list: The Remains of the day by Kazuo Ishiguro, Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton, Memos from the Chairman by Alan Greenberg, The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick P. Brooks Jr, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins and more. [Shane Parrish, Farnam Street]

Misc

Moneyball of Economics

The Wall Street consensus for Tuesday’s jobs report was 180,000. Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) predicted 180,000. JPMorgan Chase & CO. (NYSE:JPM) predicted 195,000. Barclays PLC (NYSE:BCS) (LON:BARC) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS) predicted 200,000. [Paul Vigna, MoneyBeat]

Twitter Quietly Doubles Board Compensation

On a day when much of the tech world was focused on Apple’s big Ipad announcement, complete with live-blogging updates like this one from our friends at GigaOm, Twitter quietly filed its latest revised S-1. [Footnoted]

A Chance to End a Billion-Dollar Tax Break for Private Equity

A recent court case has given the federal government a chance to sidestep Congress and eliminate private equity’s billion-dollar tax break. The question is whether the Obama administration takes up the fight. [Steven M. Davidoff, DealBook]

esla CEO Elon Musk Has Lower Employee Approval Rating

Among the findings, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s  Mark Zuckerberg gets the approval of 97% of employee reviewers, Twitter, Inc. (TWTR) ’sDick Costolo gets 96%, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s Larry Page gets 95% and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s Tim Cook gets 92%. Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)CEO Elon Musk, isn’t on Wonkblog’s list, but he does get rated on Glassdoor.com. [Tom Bemis,, Market watch]

Path To One Billion

How billionaires hit it big, here is a look. [edccdn]

Who Does Julian Robertson Have To Screw To Get A Glass Of Wine Around Here?

Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS) had bok choy and purple cauliflower with his wild striped bass last night, and blueberries on toothpicks for dessert. Robertson’s search for wine proved challenging, as greetings kept him from the one area where waiters were serving drinks. [Bess Levin, DealBreaker]

LOL

Caption Contest Tuesday

Bill Ackman taking a Citibike for a spin last week at a Park Avenue Armory gala. [Bess Levin, DealBreaker]

Hottest Links: Bill Ackman Rides A Bike, Best CEO, NSA Angry At Teens

Hottest Links: Not The Onion

‘Teenagers Are Sexting Less’ Complains NSA

The National Security Agency reported yesterday a dramatic drop in teen sexting between 2012 and 2013 , with potentially disastrous national security implications. [GuestPost, ValueWalk]

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