Our blog received a nice recommendation from Michael Santoli in his May 3rd Barron’s article, The Provisional Pullback:
MOST OF US, IN THIS ONLINE AGE, are hummingbirds of media consumption, flitting from flower to flower for the promise of a little nourishment, expending much energy to travel not very far. So it’s no surprise that the requests come constantly for recommendations for sites worth reading on market-relevant matters. The quick and easy answer is that everything is worth reading if one approaches it in the proper context, but time constraints require shortcuts and edited research itineraries.
An excellent gateway to the daily bounty (or burden) of economic and financial writing is www.RealClearMarkets.com. There’s a barely perceptible pessimistic bias in the arrayed daily links, but on the whole it’s a fine way to get current on the chatter animating the market.
Passionate, cogent and opinionated periodic commentary on financial and related policy matters can be found at www.StumblingOnTruth.com, a blog by Cliff Asness, who runs the quantitative asset manager AQR Capital Management. If there is a cleverer phrasemaker or clearer thinker among finance Ph.D.s than Asness, he or she is a stranger to my Web browser. Be sure to check out his latest riff on the Goldman/credit crisis inquest, “Keep the Casinos Open.”
For worthwhile color commentary on the day-to-day market action, featuring links to more eclectic research as well, close market watchers should check out http://systematicrelativestrength.com, run by the folks at the technical-analysis firm Dorsey Wright & Associates, and www.tradersnarrative.com.
Finally, the quarterly letters of Jeremy Grantham of asset manager GMO are a fun and thought-provoking read. The latest, at www.gmo.com, is noteworthy mainly for a non-consensus view of what would be the gravest long-term risk to markets and the economy. Grantham makes the case that a halting, uncertain economic recovery that would embolden the Federal Reserve to keep monetary policy hyper-easy could produce another bubble in risk assets, driving stocks toward the old highs and then ultimately collapsing, at a time when governments would lack the wherewithal to mute the effects.
For balance, note that Laszlo Birinyi of Birinyi Associates offers a dismissive take on Grantham’s thinking in his own highly readable and caustically contrary monthly newsletter (offered by subscription only, but alluded to on his firm’s blog, www.tickersense.typepad.com).
(Emphasis Added)
