Archive for December, 2008

• Wednesday links: why buy bonds?
  abnormalreturns, December 31st, 2008 at 11:08 am, Comments: 0

  “If 2008 was the year of systemic risk, particularly in the financial sector, 2009 seems likely to be a year dominated by specific risk.”  (Economist.com) [...]

• Tuesday links: cash on the sidelines
  abnormalreturns, December 30th, 2008 at 2:21 pm, Comments: 0

  There is a lot of cash on the sidelines.  (Bloomberg.com) “Confidence is a fragile commodity.”  (FT.com) “Never invest in something you don’t understand.”  (WSJ.com) “The [...]

• Sunday links: retail reductions
  abnormalreturns, December 28th, 2008 at 4:08 pm, Comments: 0

  “But I do think that we’re seeing the beginning of a secular downshift in the percentage of the US economy accounted for by retail sales.”  [...]

• Friday links: savings, bankruptcy and microgiving
  abnormalreturns, December 26th, 2008 at 12:31 pm, Comments: 0

  The key word for 2009:  savings.  (Real Time Economics, Capital Spectator, Calculated Risk) Or maybe bankruptcies? (Big Picture) Then again, maybe “microgiving” is the word [...]

• Tuesday links: demand destruction
  abnormalreturns, December 23rd, 2008 at 12:31 pm, Comments: 0

  The smart money turned out to be not all that smart.  (Portfolio.com) When Bernie Madoff may have gone off the rails.  (Market Movers) Why did [...]

• Happy holidays
  abnormalreturns, December 23rd, 2008 at 12:30 pm, Comments: 0

  We here at Abnormal Returns wanted to write a quick note to all of our readers before the holiday season begins in earnest. We want [...]

• Monday links: a radical reduction in debt
  abnormalreturns, December 22nd, 2008 at 11:45 am, Comments: 0

  “(W)hat we’ve seen in leverage and credit growth during the past 15 years is NOT normal, nor is it sustainable – neither relative to history [...]

• Sunday links: overcorrection to the downside
  abnormalreturns, December 21st, 2008 at 7:02 pm, Comments: 0

  “Trust itself entered a bear market in 2008, complementing and perhaps surpassing the selloffs in stocks, mortgages and commodities.”  (WSJ.com) Rob Arnott on how to [...]

• Friday links: fragile ecosystems
  abnormalreturns, December 19th, 2008 at 1:00 pm, Comments: 0

  “This was the year the financial system stopped working.”   (NYTimes.com) Kiss that $17 billion goodbye.  (DealBook, FT Alphaville, Real Time Economics, Clusterstock) Everybody likes this [...]

• Thursday links: sticky bonuses
  abnormalreturns, December 18th, 2008 at 1:05 pm, Comments: 0

  Wall Street ran on ever increasing bonuses, to the detriment of the firms and the economy.  (NYTimes.com also naked capitalism, TheDeal.com, Big Picture) An interesting [...]