Succinct Summations of Week’s Events 12.18.15 (+ weekend reading)

It's the time of the week again for the much valued 1/2 page summation.  This Sunday's reading also looks very interesting.  The second article on "Avoiding Forced Irrationality" looks like some pretty good advice.  Hope everyone had a great final weekend before the final holiday rush.

Succinct Summations of Week’s Events 12.18.15

by Barry Ritholtz - December 18th, 2015, 4:30pm

Succinct Summations for the week ending December 18th, 2015

Positives:

1. Liftoff! They raised the Federal Funds rate, ending six plus years of ZIRP.
2. Housing starts rose 11% in November to 1.173mm SAAR, up from 1.06mm previously.
3. Bloomberg’s consumer comfort index rose for the second straight week.
4. Jobless claims came in at 271k, down from 282k previously.
5. Housing permits rose 1.289k, above the 1.146k expected.

Negatives:

1. CPI came in unchanged m/o/m and is down from the 0.2% rise previously.
2. Industrial production fell 0.6% m/o/m, down from the 0.2% fall previously.
3. MBA mortgage application composite index fell 1.1% w/o/w.
4. Empire state manufacturing came in at -4.59, up from -10.7 previously.
5. The housing market index came in at 61, below the 63 expected and down from 62 previously.

10 Sunday Reads

by Barry Ritholtz - December 20th, 2015, 8:30am

My easy like Sunday morning reads:

• Amazon’s War to the Door (Bloomberg)
• Swedroe: Beware The Recency Pitfall (ETF.com) see also Avoiding Forced Irrationality (A Wealth of Common Sense)
• What If You Only Invested In Stocks When They Were Cheap? (Irrelevant Investor)
• Lumpy, uneven recovery revisited: Some States Have All the Jobs (Bloomberg View)
• Desire to Buy a Home Still Strong Despite Affordability, Economic Concerns (World Property Journal)
• What are prime numbers, and why are they so vital to modern life? (ExtremeTech)
• In Conversation With Brian Eno: Steven Johnson sits down for a discussion about music, imagination, and art (Medium)
• How climate change ate conservatism’s smartest thinkers (The Week) see also This Is How Climate Change Deniers Are Tricking You (Huffington Post)
• The Inventor of Auto-Tune (Priceonomics)
• Professor Fired over Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theory (NeuroLogica)