Weekly links
2013 Winter edition of “Graham and Doddsvile”
If you like long term investment return statistics, then the 2013 Credit Suisse Investment return yearbook is a MUST READ (via myideafarm)
Charles D. Ellis on why funds underperform (Aggatha Christy style, via Bankers Anonymous)
Very good posts why Wexboy and Mark Carter are blogging
Dan Ariely video on the pain of paying. Very interesting !!
Andrew Lo on why (in his oipnion) stock picking does not make sense any more.
value and opportunity 
Andrew Lo seems like a nice person, but throughout the interview it becomes clear that to him risk and volatility are pretty much the same thing. He even goes on to say that because of the currently low volatility the market can be seen as less risky, while the data on volatility-indexes clearly indicates, that they can snap back very quickly, as stock-markets correct/fall.
Is a dollar that trades for $ 0.5 on one day and for $ 0.4 on the next day riskier than a dollar that trades for $1.05 on both days? Mr Lo seems to be of this opinion.
His recommandation to buy commodity / financial derivatives is also very opaque, to say the least.
I know it´s television, but where have the individual thinkers with original ideas gone….?
Andrew Lo is of course promoting his own funds….
The 2013 Credit Suisse Investment return yearbook is very interesting. I think the most important lesson is, hat there are countries which have negative equity return over more than ten years. My strong equity bias is based on the assumption that equity market never underperform in long time scales.
Now it seems to me that you have to avoid countries with certain characteristics. I didn’t have figured out what these characteristics are. Examples for long term equity negative returns are Japan since 1990, Italy 1960-1980, Austria 1960-1980 and the communistic expropriations in Russia and China.