Things from my Google Reader...

You may have noticed posting has been rather light recently, and there are of course some fine excuses for this.  In part it’s because Our Man has been scouring the market for a job, and hence spending a chunk of his time preparing for and being in interviews.  However, it’s also large because there’s not much to do at the moment – I’m relatively comfortable with the portfolio and while there’s a little bit to do on some of the other themes that are on deck, you know what they are (Energy Storage and Water).  Finally, I’ve also been doing a little bit of pondering on currencies, which I’ve mentioned before but is a new area for me.  In some ways, they (or rather the ETFs related to them, since I can’t actually hold foreign currencies) seem like the best way to play some of the animal spirits and trends that I’m seeing in the market so expect some preliminary thoughts on that.

However, here are some of the things that I’ve been reading recently and have found thought provoking.  Like the “Chartology” series, expect to see “Things from my Google Reader” series to appear irregularly but hopefully serve as something interesting (if nothing else they’ll at least be a good way for me to find links back to these articles in the future).

(Spoiler Alert: I’ve put the finance ones at the top and non-finance ones at the bottom) 

 - A Gold Valuation Model:  Talk about gold is everywhere at the moment, with lots of people saying it’s going up but…how should you value gold?   It has no earnings, and its value comes from people’s belief in its value (kind of like those much derided fiat currencies…).  Here’s a model worth thinking about from Eddy Elfenbein, at Crossing Wall Street. 

- The politics of Chinese Adjustment: As you know, I’m not a China bull (see here and here), in part because of the economic imbalances that I see in their economy.  In this post on his blog Peking University Professor Michael Pettis looks through the sequence of steps on rebalancing those imbalances. 

- Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts: In case you thought that Greek crisis thing was all over, here’s a really good (and easy to read and understand) article on it by Michael Lewis, at Vanity Fair.  It’s right on the Money(ball)! 

- Fractals and the Art of Roughness:  Our Man often makes references to trading time being slow or fast, to fingers of instability and glimmers of hope, etc when talking about the portfolio and markets.  All are related to do with the fractals and roughness, and if you’ve ever wanted to know what the hell that means…here’s a video of a talk by the father of fractal geometry, Benoit Mandelbrot (at TED 2010) that introduces the subject gently.  (For those who're tired of the finance-related links, here's JJ Abrams talking about Lost and other mysteries at TED 2007). 

- Scared of Mathematics (and other educational things):  Learn everything you fail to remember from school at the Khan Academy.  Apparently even Bill Gates likes this former hedge fund guy’s easy to understand bite-size videos on a variety of subjects.  (Fortune) 

 - Nolan and Ichiro:  Is Nolan Ryan the Greatest Pitcher Ever?  Here’s a finely constructed argument saying that though Nolan is great, he’s not the greatest (ditto for Ichiro).  (Joe Posnanski). 

- The Fan Experience at Sports Events: Never Look Down:  Mark Cuban’s thoughts on what it should be like to go to a game.  As a football (aka soccer) loving Brit, it doesn’t quite resonate with me (soccer doesn’t have the non-playing time during the game that US sports have, and by the virtue of being relatively rare goals feel special vs. baskets/runs) but I can certainly see why it makes sense.