Hottest links for Wednesday October 9th, 2013 the — late edition (see Tuesday’s edition of hottest links). Get our free daily newsletter (which is being updated to make it superb) and never miss a single linkfest.
Top stories for today can be found below. We are in the very very late edition today so check them out for yourself!
Hottest Links: Stories
Dear SEC: Show Us The Data
For the first time, the SEC’s new multi-million dollar market data analysis tool, “Midas”, allows the regulator to measure a stock exchange’s compliance with a core rule that lies at the heart of regulations governing how our stock markets work. [Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge]
Performance Update Of Real Money ETF Assets
What has been the performance of the 100 largest 100 ETFs year-to-date? [ETFreplay.com]
Has The Small-Cap Premium Disappeared?
A close look at the data provides us with some interesting insights. The table below presents the data for the period covered by the Fama-French study (1963-1990), as well as the prior and succeeding periods, and the full period 1927-2012. [Larry Swedroe, IndexUniverse]
Do publicly traded fund managers do a better job?
T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:TROW) missed the indexing boom, including the exchange-traded fund market, its shares have gained more than 400% cumulatively over the trailing 10 years. Just a shade behind, at 370% for the trailing 10 years through Aug. 31, 2013, was Franklin Resources, Inc. (NYSE:BEN), which not only bypassed indexing and ETFs but also the surging 401(k) marketplace. Both companies succeeded at their core task of investing–more on that shortly–but the point remains: The mutual fund industry is a generous master. Over the past five years, 4 times as many Eaton Vance Corp (NYSE:EV) funds have …..[John Rekenthaler, Morningstar]
Finance People You Have To Follow On Twitter
Folks have been using Twitter to talk about finance for a long time, of course, but what’s changed since the last time we did this is there’s been a surge of no-nonsense industry practitioners using the service. [Linette Lopez, Julia La Roche and Steven Perlberg, Business Insider] Dont miss yours truly.
New Zealand’s Sovereign Wealth Fund Gained 26% Last Year
The New Zealand Superannuation Fund, the country’s sovereign-wealth fund, has averaged a solid 8.8% annual return since it was founded in September 2003. But it gained 19.2% in 2012 and 25.8% in the fiscal year ending in June 2013. How come? CEO Adrian Orr told Institutional Investor in an interview that the financial crisis forced it to think differently about how it invests money. [Simone Foxman, Quartz]
Should Retirement Savings Be Mandatory?
Earlier this year, Larry Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK), called for “a comprehensive solution to retirement savings that includes some form of mandatory retirement savings, similar to Australia’s successful superannuation system or the new pension requirements in the UK.” Could this be the way forward for the United States? Other countries? [Lauren Foster, CFA Institute]
Area Man Chooses Homelessness Over Hedge Fund Manager
John Taylor nurtured FX Concepts, the currency hedge fund he founded in 1981, into a strapping $14.2 billion powerhouse in 2007. [Jon Shazarm DealBreaker]
A stock-picking cat? Don’t LOL
There was nothing terrifying about the cat—named Millie Schembechler for the wife of the legendary University of Michigan football coach—but she had an annoying habit of finishing her breakfast and wandering over to where I had the newspaper spread out on the coffee table, and an uncanny knack for arriving just as I turned to the stock pages. [Chuck Jaffe, MarketWatch]
Up To 45% On Disability Insurance Are Frauds
I’ve known about the “disability” scam for many years now, but I had never read a report that details the racket until I checked out the following from CBS’ 60 Minutes. As usual, the real money being made in the whole scheme is not centered around the people collecting the checks, but rather attorneys, doctors and even judges who grease the wheels of the $135 billion “disability-industrial-complex.” [Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge]
Portugal Telecom & OI Merger
It seems like that many PIIGS companies with significant international business operations try to transform their companies in some way or another in order to get rid of the “PIIGS” discount. Now, a few days ago, Portugal Telecom, SGPS (ADR) (NYSE:PT) (ELI:PTC), the Portuguese TelCo with a large Brazilian subsidiary, came up with a potential new way: [ValueAndOppurtunity]
The Worst Investment in the World
The iPath S&P 500 VIX Short Term Futures TM ETN (NYSEARCA:VXX) is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from Barclays PLC (NYSE:BCS) (LON:BARC) that supposedly tracks VOLATILITY S&P 500 (INDEXCBOE:VIX) futures. This makes it possible for traders to get simple exposure to the frequently traded VIX futures without having to trade futures. [Sverre Rørvik Nilsen, CFA Institute]
Europe: Saved By The Genius Of Spanish Bankers
As Dan Davies has noted, the bailout antics of the last few years have “always been about Spain”. Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Cyprus and Slovenia seem small and/or ringfenced enough to really damage the core banks. Pawel Morski]
Hottest Links: Not The Onion
IRS Official Says She Never Consorted With Devil
For the record, the Internal Revenue Service official in charge of implementing a big part of the new health care law tells Congress she has never knowingly consorted with the devil. And she cannot fly. [Stephen Ohlemacher, The Denver Post]
