The Big Picture

---

• Risk Aversion at the Country Level
• Intention: Designed By Apple
• 10 Tuesday PM Reads
• Housing Market’s Wild Ride: Boom Bust & Recovery
• Longest and Strongest Bull Markets
• Economic Indicators Dashboard
• 10 Tuesday AM Reads
• The Collective Delusion that is Bitcoin (and All Currencies)
• Painted Asteroids in Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Risk Aversion at the Country Level Posted: 26 Feb 2014 02:00 AM PST

Intention: Designed By Apple Posted: 25 Feb 2014 05:30 PM PST Here, simple phrases paired with elegant visuals describe the thoughts and emotions that go into creating each Apple product. Lovely and well done.   Turn up sound, go to full screen

10 Tuesday PM Reads Posted: 25 Feb 2014 02:00 PM PST My afternoon train reading: • What a bond bear market really looks like (MarketWatch) • Closer to the Top than the Bottom (Reformed Broker) • The Best Way to Learn As an Investor (Motley Fool) • Rolls-Royce Drone Ships Challenge $375 Billion Industry (Bloomberg) • America's Hottest Housing Market Has Suddenly Cooled Down (Real Time Economics) see also America’s Weird, Enduring Love Affair With Cars and Houses (The Atlantic) • Six Economic Initiatives the White House Will Push in Its Next Budget (Real Time Economics) • Red-Light Cameras Click Less as Cities Get Orwell Off Road (Bloomberg) • Can an Audacious Plan to Create a New Energy Resource Help Save the Planet? (New Yorker) see also Climate Boomerang: Small Volcanoes Restraining A Much Faster Warming Planet, For Now (Think Progress) • Trolls just want to have fun (Science Direct) • Ebert’s Groundhog Day Review (1993) (Roger Ebert) What are you reading?     Money Is Pouring Into Continental Shares as U.S. Funds See Outflows Source: WSJ

Housing Market’s Wild Ride: Boom Bust & Recovery Posted: 25 Feb 2014 10:23 AM PST Another monstrous infographic from Matthew Klein — this one on the Boom and Bust and Recovery in America’s residential real estate market. Enjoy!   Click to see “Bubble to Bust Recovery”     See also The Housing Market’s Wild Ride

Longest and Strongest Bull Markets Posted: 25 Feb 2014 09:30 AM PST ~~~     A pair of informative tables via Bespoke shows prior bull markets in terms of their length and strength. The bull market which followed the 1987 crash is the grand winner of all markets, lasting an incredible  4494 calendar days and rising 582%. Thats nearly double the 1949-56 rally, its next closest in both length (2607 days) and strength (267%).   Continues here

Economic Indicators Dashboard Posted: 25 Feb 2014 08:15 AM PST Source: Russell Investments

10 Tuesday AM Reads Posted: 25 Feb 2014 07:15 AM PST My morning reads: • @GSElevator "We are pleased to report that official ban on talking in elevators will be lifted immediately." (Dealbook) • What Kind of Investor Are You? (Washington Post) see also People who cannot accurately forecast markets (Reformed Broker) • Biotech: Popping the Allegations of a Bubble (Compounding My Interests) • Geithner Among Fed Losers in 2008, Dudley Among Winners (Real Time Economics) Continues here

The Collective Delusion that is Bitcoin (and All Currencies) Posted: 25 Feb 2014 05:30 AM PST When I first stated traveling for work, I was surprised and amused by the various currencies I saw. Pre-euro, one would encounter a multitude of paper bills of different sizes and colors, each imprinted with a famous man or woman I probably hadn’t heard of. Imagine that: The locals actually believed these silly pieces of colored paper had value. Sure, paper currency worked as a medium of exchange, and it allowed you to buy goods and services within that society. But how far off was it to observe that this shared belief system was little more than a collective delusion? Take the paper to another land that didn’t share that belief system — they had their own, different delusion — and the paper seemed to be worthless. That is the simplified version of paper currencies. The real world is obviously more complex. Banks exist, and foreign delusions (currencies if you will) can be exchanged for a fee for the local paper delusion. There is also a nation behind the "worthless" paper, with a standing army, the power to tax and an enormous enforcement mechanism. Perhaps that is the authority that makes our collective delusion seem to be somewhat less deluded. This brings me to the digital currency, Bitcoin. continues here

Painted Asteroids in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Posted: 25 Feb 2014 03:00 AM PST Painted Stone: Asteroids in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey from Alex Parker on Vimeo. Over 100,000 asteroids and their colors, as seen by a single remarkable survey telescope. This animation shows the orbital motions of over 100,000 of the asteroids observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), with colors illustrating the compositional diversity measured by the SDSS five-color camera. The relative sizes of each asteroid are also illustrated. All main-belt asteroids and Trojan asteroids with orbits known to high precision are shown. The animation is rendered with a timestep of 3 days. The compositional gradient of the asteroid belt is clearly visible, with green Vesta-family members in the inner belt fading through the blue C-class asteroids in the outer belt, and the deep red Trojan swarms beyond that. Occasional diagonal slashes that appear in the animation are the SDSS survey beams; these appear because the animation is rendered at near the survey epoch. The average orbital distances of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter are illustrated with rings. Colors represented with the same scheme as Parker et al. (2008): adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/bib_query?arXiv:0807.3762 Concept and rendering by Alex H. Parker: alexharrisonparker.com/

You are subscribed to email updates from The Big Picture To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

.