I'm a big fan of public radio, especially magazine-style programs that take the listener deep into a topic, yielding an immersive auditory and visual experience. With the radio shows, you are transported, ever so briefly, to another place or time. And so it was that on a recent afternoon, I tuned into NPR's Fresh Air and sat transfixed in my car as retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield vividly described life in space.
With my feet firmly planted on earth, I floated along in space, seeing our planet whizzing by on one side, then gazing at the black, bottomless pit of space on the other — all through Hadfield's eyes. I was so curious to learn more that I bought his book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, and wrote about it for this blog (see: "'Square Astronaut, Round Hole': Chris Hadfield on Risk, Competence, and Leadership”).
Here are some other interesting reads from the past couple of weeks, in case you missed them.
It's hard to keep up with the tweets and articles on Twitter's IPO — and by now, most of you will have read your fair share. But the other Twitter news this week was that New York Times reporter Nick Bilton's book, Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal, went on sale:
- "6 Things We Learned from Hatching Twitter" (Fortune)
- Book Review: "Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton" (The Financial Times)
- "NYT’s Nick Bilton: ‘Twitter is Undervalued’" (Digiday)
https://twitter.com/Bill_George/status/398480065149034496
On the IPO:
- "Twitter Leaves More than $1 Billion on the Table" (Fortune)
- "The Definitive Twitter Play" (Reuters)
- "Twitter Must Metamorphose Carefully as It Goes Public" (MIT Technology Review)
- "Should I Buy Twitter Stock? The Official Flowchart for Every Retail Investor" (The Atlantic)
- @AswathDamodaran weighs in with: "To Buy Or Not To Buy? The Twitter Question" (TechCrunch)
And on the technology behind Twitter:
Investing
- "An Oil Crash Is on Its Way and We Should Be Ready" (New Scientist)
- "Financial Analysis and the Art of Lie and Fraud Detection"(Institutional Investor)
- Charley Ellis's investment advice for his grandchildren. (American Association of Individual Investors)
- From @trengriffin: "A Dozen Investors Talk about the Folly of Macroeconomic Forecasting and the Importance on Focusing on Valuation/Margin of Safety TODAY" (25iq)
- A recent paper by Chi Liao, a PhD student at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, finds there is a connection between casinos and investors taking on more risk in their stock portfolios: "Risk Taking Begets Risk Taking: Evidence from Casino Openings and Investor Portfolios" (University of Toronto, PDF)
FATCA
- "Retired Abroad? Get Ready for FATCA" (MarketWatch)
- "Are People Really Renouncing US Citizenship over FATCA Tax Reporting?" (Tax Consequences)
The Business
- Helping clients change their behavior so they can achieve their goals: @MichaelKitces offers tips from the book Switch (Nerd's Eye View)
- "Different Sizes, Similar Strengths: Common Traits of Successful Investment Practices" (Enterprising Investor)
- "The Advisory Profession's Best Web Sites" (Advisor Perspectives)
Behavioral Finance
- "Memento Mori: The Ancient Roman Cure for Overconfidence"(WealthManagement.com)
Retirement
- "Are Safe Withdrawal Rates Still Relevant in Today’s Low-Return Environment?" (Conference Proceedings Quarterly)
And Now For Something Completely Different
- "Lee Harvey Oswald Was My Friend" (The New York Times)
- Women have a smoother distribution of marathon finish times than men. (The Wall Street Journal)
- "It’s the Golden Age of News" (The New York Times)
- "Keep Telling Yourself, ‘This Workout Feels Good’" (The New York Times)
Please note that the content of this site should not be construed as investment advice, nor do the opinions expressed necessarily reflect the views of CFA Institute.
Photo credit: ©iStockphoto.com/JLGutierrez