Hottest links for Monday, 6th January, the late edition (see the Weekend edition of hottest links). Get our free daily newsletter (the updated version) 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 below. We’ve got some great stories to start off your work week, including a handy guide on how to lose money in 2014, the absence of cheap stocks in the current landscape, and a fascinating look at psychology, trends, and information titled “Memes Are Analytical Weapons Of Mass Destruction.” Great stuff, check it out.
Hottest Links
Value Investing
A Dozen Things I’ve Learned from Mason Hawkins about Investing
Value investing has just four core principles: (1) buy at a discount to intrinsic value (margin of safety); (2) a share of stock is a partial interest in a business; (3) make the market your servant and not your master; and (4) be rational. [Tren Griffin, 25iq]
How to Lose Big Money in 2014
One of the many investing mistakes I made during the early part of my investing career was to be rash with cash. [Vishal Khandelwal, Safal Niveshak]
Memes are Analytical Weapons of Mass Destruction
There is competitive pressure to participate in a security when everyone else is bullish, lest you get left behind. Lagging portfolio performance makes you look bad and threatens your job. [Ron Rimkus, CFA Institute]
Funds
You Are Here
The first thing you need to know is that there are less opportunities in the stock market than there were one year ago and significantly less than there were during the year prior. [Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker]
Hey, Contrarian: Take a Look at Muni CEFs
Checking in on a few big muni funds Friday, Nuveen Municipal Value Fund Inc (NYSE:NUV) is ahead by 0.3%, Nuveen Municipal Opportunity Fund Inc (NYSE:NIO) is flat and the group’s most widely owned ETF, iShares S&P Natnl AMT – Free Munpl Bd Fd (NYSEARCA:MUB) ETF is down by 0.2%. [Brendan Conway, Focus on Funds]
Hedge fund frontier likes new regulation landscape
All together now: regulation is … bad for business. Wall Street honchos have balanced their hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing talents deftly ever since governments began reacting to the 2008 crisis. [Tom Stabile, FT]
Sackler family makes $100M bet on low hedge fund fees
The promise of fast-growing alternative mutual funds is a hedge fund investor’s dream: high returns and loss protection without paying exorbitantly high fees, locking up capital for a year or more, and barely understanding what the manager is buying and selling. [Lawrence Delevingne, CNBC]
Five Hedge Fund Surprises For 2014
Each year, Agecroft Partners predicts the top hedge fund industry trends through their contact with more than 2,000 institutional investors and 300 hedge fund organizations. [Donald A. Steinbrugge, Hedge Fund Insight]
Misc
SIFIs and States
Today an enormous global civilization rests upon a jury-rigged financial frame rife with moral hazards, perverse incentives, and unintended consequences. This article, SIFIs and States, forthcoming in the Texas International Law Journal, addresses one aspect of that fragile structure. [June Rhee, Harvard Law School Forum]
Google poised to become world’s first TREEELLION DOLLAR company?
Now that 2014 is up and running, you might be looking over your stock portfolio and reevaluating your investment options. If so, one analyst has a bit of advice: go long on Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), which he believes may become the world’s first trillion-dollar company. [Climateer Investing]
Xero and the precious petals of New Zealand funds management
Xero Limited (NZE:XRO) is a cloud accounting software company – essentially doing what Intuit or Sage do but entirely in the cloud. Cloud software in this case obviates the need for a server, computer support or any problems with scalability. [John Hempton, Bronte Capital]
Fewer Cheap Stocks: A Warning Sign?
“It’s getting harder to find new names,” says George Sertle, a portfolio manager on the U.S. value team at Artisan Partners. Artisan Partners Asset Management Inc (NYSE:APAM) “Cash is going up as you’re selling more than you’re buying.” [Tom Lauricella, The Wall Street Journal]
Hottest Links: Not The Onion
Canada’s ex-defense minister: Aliens would give us more tech if we’d stop wars
Paul Hellyer, who has long insisted that aliens have visited Earth for many years, says that when aliens saw the atomic bomb they decided that we were a great threat to the cosmos. [Chris Matyszczyk, CNET]