Hottest links for Saturday and Sunday, 6th and 7th December, the weekend edition (see Friday’s edition of hottest links). Get our free daily newsletter (which HAS BEEN RECENTLY UPDATED) and never miss a single linkfest. Also, now if you sign up you will get our new e-book on value investing.
Top stories for today are included below. Lots of good stuff to catch up on. A little primer on Europe; On the bullish end (no typo) The former Greek FM warns that the North-South European divide is a ticking time bomb, while the FT says that Spanish stocks could be over-valued; On the bearish side… Investors are running to invest in Greece. Ill stick with valuations, and this is a great chart on the topic via Meb Faber
Hottest Link: Stories
Value Investing
Christmas gifts to buy the (should be) investors in your life
Instead we’ll stick to what we know, with money and investing book ideas plundered from the many I’ve read and featured here in 2013. Some of which include: Smarter Investing, Investing Demystified, How to Make a Million Slowly and The Value Investors. [The Investor, Monevator]
Forbes Interviews Shane Parrish
An especially important excerpt for readers, of which it is hard for me to argue with Shane’s 5 recommendations, and where my list of books that changed my life is also pretty similar to Shane’s. [Joe Koster, Value Investing World]
Losing My Religion
The biggest challenge to my belief system was discovering the existence of momentum–more precisely, it was discovering how certain people reacted to the evidence. Everyone acknowledged it existed. [Samuel Lee, Morningstar]
Funds
Hedge Funds Go Long-Only On Clients’ Demand
Hedge funds are increasingly offering non-traditional products to their clients, according to a survey conducted by Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE:DB) (ETR:DBK). [Tabinda Hussain, Value Walk]
Beating the Market, as a Reachable Goal
Robert A. Olstein finds the arguments for index funds personally insulting. “What do you mean I can’t beat the market?” he says angrily. [Jeff Sommer, The New York Times]
Fast-Trading Tool For Thee, Nutty Investment For Me
The peculiar thing about ETFs, some might say the great thing, is the ease of owning extremely specialized trading tools. Some ETFs work quite well when they’re held for years, even decades. Witness SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY). [Brendan Conway, Focus On Funds]
Spanish stocks are overvalued
Interesting little exercise from Andrew Wilkinson at Miller Tabak & Co. Having seemingly generated a lot of client interest… [Paul Murphy, FT Alphaville]
Investors poised to rush to Greek stocks
Greece may have been the first equity market to be downgraded from developed to emerging by MSCI, but the move generates several paradoxes amid the country’s existential financial crisis. [Nick Skrekas, CNBC]
Ex Greek FinMin Warns “Europe’s North-South Divide Has Become A Time Bomb”
As the eurozone debt crisis has steadily widened the divide between Europe’s stronger northern economies and the weaker, more debt-laden economies in the south (with France a kind of no man’s land economy in between), one question is on everyone’s mind: Can Europe’s monetary union – indeed, the European Union itself – survive? [ZeroHedge]
Keep Emergency Fund in Cash or Invest?
New research published recently in the Journal of Financial Planning suggests that keeping all of your emergency-fund dollars in cash may be a bad idea, at least for more affluent investors. [Andrew Blackman, Wall Street Journal]
Hedge funds clash with banks over securitisation rules
Fund groups and investment banks are at loggerheads over new securitisation rules designed to bring greater stability to.. [Madison Marriage, FT]
Fund focus: GLG Life Tech Corp. (TSE:GLG) (OTCMKTS:GLGLF) caught out by European ‘market paradox’
“In the past year or so, companies surprising on the upside have been rewarded.” [Bradley Gerrard, FT]
Misc
Bob Diamond To Have A Little Chat Re: Libor
Former Barclays PLC (NYSE:BCS) (LON:BARC) boss Bob Diamond and other past executives at the British bank are set to be called as witnesses next year in a court case relating to the alleged manipulation of Libor interest rates. [Bess Levin, DealBreaker]
“Why Bother?” Will investors take the wrong lessons from 2013?
Thinking back on a great year for investing in the US stock market but a hard year on market participants overall. US stocks went wild this year but almost nothing else kept pace – any attempt to hedge or diversify now looks to have been either futile or foolish here at year’s end. [Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker]
Whiskers Unlimited? Not on Wall St.
Beards are very much in fashion now. Here in Manhattan, you can spot them just about everywhere, from well-trimmed, barely-there goatees to lush, furry profusions of hirsuteness. In certain parts of Brooklyn, it’s almost hard to find a man who doesn’t have a beard, especially now that the weather is colder. [Phyllis Korkki, The New York Times]
Ken Fisher Warns: RIA World Gone in 10 Years
Ken Fisher is bullish on next year’s market and economy but decidedly bearish on the future of RIAs. Implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act’s fiduciary features would be the death knell for RIAs, he predicts. [Jane Wollman Rusoff, ThinkAdvisor]
Trouble at Goldman Sachs
Charlie Gasparino’s gut tells him trouble is brewing at Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS), though in fairness that could just be last night’s Chinese.. [Bess Levin,. DealBreaker]
Hottest Links: Not the Onion
Jogger hit by flying deer
Loudoun County Sheriff’s say a car hit a deer on Claiborne Parkway around 6pm on Thursday. The deer went airborne and hit a woman who was jogging on the sidewalk. [My FOXdc.com]
