The Big Picture |
- Best New TV Show of 2013: Maron
- Succinct Summation of Week’s Events (May 31, 2013)
- Income Growth This Cycle Is Unimpressive
- Risk Aversion Puts Hedge Funds Behind S&P 500
- 10 Friday AM Reads
- Sales Training Versus Mentoring/Industry Knowledge
- Hedge Funds on Sale: Only $1,000 to Join
| Best New TV Show of 2013: Maron Posted: 31 May 2013 04:15 PM PDT
I do a decent amount of flying for work. One of the things that passes the time on flights has been Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast. When I have 45 minutes to kill — too short for a movie but when I am too beat to read a book — its the perfect slice of distracting entertainment. What I really love about the podcast is that it doesn’t try to do comedy, it is instead about the craft of comedy. Maron is a cantankerous self-destructive hyper-mouthed crank who interviews the many comedians he has become acquainted with from over his 30 or so years on the road as a stand up. The results are these odd, funny vignettes, filled with moments of surprising wisdom and brutal honesty. Over the past few years, I found them charming and addictive. Apparently, so have other people. The WTF podcast first developed a cult following, then moved some way into the mainstream — if a self loathing, recovering doper, comedian who lives with too many cats can be considered mainstream. There are now nearly 400 episodes, an app, and a huge fanbase. All of this led to the Independent Film Channel tagging the WTF podcaster to do a series, loosely based on Maron’s own life. If you listen to the podcast the show is instantly recognizable as part garage-based broadcast, part sitcom, and part something else entirely. It has quickly become my favorite show of 2013. It reminds me of Louie, and to a lesser degree Curb Your Enthusiasm. Not as absurd as HBO-based Curb, with a touch less joy (if that’s the right word) than Louie (which is found on FX Network). Maron uses the podcast as a similar device to the stand up routines in Louie (which uses them much more effectively than NBC network-based Seinfeld ever did). Like Louie, there is a raw honesty here that cannot be faked. Unlike that show, it seems that the podcasts Maron is doing is really actually working out his stream of consciousness in front of the viewer. My favorite moments are his genuine insights into himself and the hard earned wisdom he learns. Maron seems to be genuinely surprised by his own occasional self-enlightenment. The shows tagline is “He has issues; sharing is not one of them.” This is one of those rare corporate promotional things where the promo tagline is dead on. Most of the first four episodes of Season 1 are online. Enjoy . . . Previously:  |
| Succinct Summation of Week’s Events (May 31, 2013) Posted: 31 May 2013 12:30 PM PDT Succinct Summations week ending May 31, 2013. Positives:
Negatives:
Thanks, Bat!  |
| Income Growth This Cycle Is Unimpressive Posted: 31 May 2013 11:55 AM PDT
As the chart above shows, this is not an especially impressive recovery in terms of Real Disposable Income. As we have discussed, this is not your typical post-recession recovery — it is a post credit-crisis recovery, and thats why metrics such as GDP, Job creation, wages and even inflation remain sub-par. (Not that this has anything to do with the equity markets!)  |
| Risk Aversion Puts Hedge Funds Behind S&P 500 Posted: 31 May 2013 08:30 AM PDT Click to enlarge Source: Bloomberg
from David Wilson of Bloomberg via the terminal:
Source:
Update: Hey, its now at Bloomberg.com  |
| Posted: 31 May 2013 07:00 AM PDT My morning end of week, end of month reads:
What are you reading?
Swoon in Bonds Puts Eye on Fed  |
| Sales Training Versus Mentoring/Industry Knowledge Posted: 31 May 2013 04:30 AM PDT Its a steamy summer Friday, I got home very late last night, so this morning’s Friday philosophy will be brief: I keep reading about graduates trying to get into Wall Street training programs. I suspect most people do not understand what this means. A brief explanatory: For the new rank and file hires at the major wire houses, this essentially amounts to a major sales training program. Its all about smiling and dialing, networking, becoming a great salesperson. Sure, there is some “product” training, but once we are talking about product the investor is screwed, a field of fees, waiting to be harvested. And so it is with the trainees, many of whom will fail out of the program, after generating reams of leads, prospects and new accounts for the brokers who are ostensibly training them (Wall Street Eats its Young). They are more cannon fodder than a human resource. What I don’t see much of is a mentoring of the next generation of market professionals to become more than cogs in a giant sales organization. That what it is that they are selling are financial services is nearly irrelevant — other than the specific jargon they must learn to become better sales drones. This is not the Street I grew up on. Mentoring seemed to be much bigger organizationally than I see today. Fortunately, it has been replaced by a variety of other sources. Companies have moved much of their best research out from behind firewalls (its now considered “marketing” not sales prduct); Blogs from knowledgeable and experienced pros — hopefully you consider people like me and Josh in that category — as well as communities such as Stocktwits and Minyanville; there are also a countless number of enormously talented and generous people who share their knowledge over Twitter. Still, I fear something is getting lost in the process. Our modern HFT driven financial industry at times seems bloodless. (I guess algos don’t need mentoring). The floor of the Exchange used to be a finishing school, watering holes were once educational seminars, and major conferences weren’t always media events –rather, they were places where people could learn and expand their knowledge base and skill sets and networks as opposed to being mere backdrops for 3 minute media hits. This is on my mind in part due to the spate of articles on Wall Street hiring, recruiting, and training. That plus a rescheduled lunch with a friend who used to be the former head of a training program for one of the biggest Wall St iBanks HQ’d in NYC. My own experiences were very different. I feel like I caught the tail end of a different era. I was mentored by a series of people over the years: First Bill Baker the head trader who trained me as a green newbie (and absorbed all of my initial losses); Guy Ortmann, who introduced me to technical analysis and had me take the TA course with Ralph Acampora; then a long list of people whose advice and counsel and examples helped me learn a great deal: Jeremy Grantham, Robert Shiller, Ned Davis, James Montier, David Kotok, Doug Kass, Art Cashin, Paul Desmond, Don Hays, Bill Black, Ed Easterling, Jim Cramer, Mebane Faber, Herb Greenberg, and on and on the list goes. From these people I learned how to think about thinking, how to write and argue, how to present myself as a person. Some merely set examples; others literally tutored me. All of which leads to me to one question: How are you being trained?
Previously:  |
| Hedge Funds on Sale: Only $1,000 to Join Posted: 31 May 2013 03:00 AM PDT On today’s “Chart Attack,” Fusion IQ CEO and Director of Research Barry Ritholtz and Bloomberg’s Adam Johnson look at hedge fund performance on Bloomberg The Mirage of Hedge Funds ~~~ Fusion IQ’s Barry Ritholz and Bloomberg’s Jason Kelly discuss investing in hedge funds with Trish Regan on Bloomberg Television’s “Street Smart.” Hedge Funds on Sale: Only $1,000 to Join  |
| 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 | |
0 comments:
Post a Comment