Weekend reading: The Bit Short edition

Good reads from around the Web.

Alas I was detained this week by a gentleman from Porlock, as we failed poets say.

Hence this rather late Weekend Reading.

If some of you took matters into your own hands to scavenge for scraps of bloggage or rinds of rant for yourselves, I understand.

I’m hurt. But I understand.

Moving on, I am ridiculously excited about the upcoming cinematic version of The Big Short:

This is our movie!

Well, almost.

If you’ve got no idea why Brad Pitt is dressed as Robert Redford and pontificating about dodgy mortgages, check out The Accumulator’s original review of Michael Lewis’ The Big Short for the skinny. (It includes, as is T.A.’s wont, some advice for everyday investors.)

Right, let’s get into it – we’re running out of weekend! 😉

From the blogs

Making good use of the things that we find…

Passive investing

• Understanding bond duration and volatility – AWOCS
• Just buy low-cost index funds – Rick Ferri
• High-quality bonds are the real diversifiers – Vanguard

Active investing

• Fundamentals are only half the story – The Reformed Broker
• Don’t fret about a cyclical recession just yet – Investing Caffeine
• Investing from a simple premise – Abnormal Returns
• Living off dividends in early retirement – RIT

Other articles

• The myth of the endless more – Simple Living in Suffolk
• When a sprinter hits the wall – Done by Forty
• How much is enough? – SexHealthMoneyDeath

Product of the week: Three of Britain’s so-called Challenger Banks are upping the ante, reports The Telegraph, with each launching new savings bonds within 24 hours of each other. Hampshire Trust Bank has increased its two-year fixed rate to 2.3%. Paragon Bank’s new offerings include a three-year fix paying 2.56%. Finally Charter Savings Bank has launched a table-topping one-year bond paying 2.07%.

Mainstream media money

Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view these enable you to click through to read the piece without being a paid subscriber of that site. ¹

Passive investing

• Blackrock has launched a new retirement income tool – CoRI

Active investing

• Could this be Britain’s worst stockbroker? – Telegraph
• Why bother cooking the books if no-one reads them? [Search result] – FT

A word from a broker

• Should you protect your pension’s Lifetime Allowance? – HL (& Part 1)

Other stuff worth reading

• London house price differential at 20-year peak – ThisIsMoney
• The other Generation Rent: Flatsharers in their 40s – Guardian
• The new Right to Buy solves 1979’s problems – Guardian
• …still, some say buy-to-let may yet have peaked – ThisIsMoney
• Paul Lewis: Premium bonds are a winner [Search result] – FT
• Lessons from a failed interview with a hedge fund  – Medium
• Bali still cheapest for long haul but Tokyo in range – ThisIsMoney

Book of the week: All the excitement about The Big Short movie had me thinking back to how fabulous a Martin Scorsese version of Michael Lewis’ debut Liar’s Poker would be. This tell-all parable about the evils of Wall Street has ironically been one of its best recruiting tools for decades now. However the Wall Street it depicts no longer really exists, replaced instead by the Flash Boys. (After covering all those developments, isn’t it time Michael Lewis sexed up Vanguard’s rise to dominance?)

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1. Note some articles can only be accessed through the search results if you’re using PC/desktop view (from mobile/tablet view they bring up the firewall/subscription page). To circumvent, switch your mobile browser to use the desktop view. On Chrome for Android: press the menu button followed by “Request Desktop Site”.[↩]