Good reads

Lots of good reading material recently. A few good ones:

Is it a Terrible Time to Move? (Kedrosky) The Daily Beast

Anatomy of a Meltdown The New Yorker

Hitched to Someone Else’s Dream (Stonyfield Farms) Inc

The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace Rolling Stone

Thinking Outside the Box (Costco) Fast Company

Obama and Chicago economics

The WSJ ran a short but interesting piece this weekend which focused on how Obama is perceived among Chicago School economists given his background with the University of Chicago. The piece focuses on the thoughts of Richard Thaler, one of the leaders in the school of behavioral economics which has largely examined the efficient markets theorized by the old Chicago School crowd and identified scenarios in which actors systemically fail to make efficient decisions. This line of study is an interesting glimpse into human behavior and is very important in the context of efficient market arguments which all assume decision makers behave in efficient ways (e.g. a person will take $2 in exchange for $1).

Mary Meeker/MS Tech Trend Outlook

Very interesting presentation put together by Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley and presented yesterday at the Web 2.0 Summit.

Expert networks and sell-side research analysts

The recent partnership announcement between the Gerson Lehrman Group and Credit Suisse sparked some commentary from research industry insiders who were surprised that GLG was letting sell-side analysts access the GLG network, even for what is sure to be a hefty fee. I was a bit surprised to learn they weren’t doing this already. GLG and other expert networks have tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of experts in their networks. Sell-side research operations, while they may be on the decline, still control 75% of the $5.7 billion in trading commissions distributed to research providers annually. At KnowledgeBid, our best customers are firms that sell research and services based on primary research.  Contact us if you’d like to learn more about our network and how we can help you meet your customers’ needs.  We’d love to help.

The classified puzzle

It’s a funny coincidence that Microsoft will be pulling the plug on their little known Live Expo classified service just three days after MySpace announced that they will be ramping theirs up with Oodle. These changes are indicative of the larger trend: the classified game remains elusive for large major new entrants. Facebook‘s classified service has been less than stellar (I can’t even find a link to it right now) and Edgeio has been shuttered while Craigslist and eBay continue to dominate the all-in-one classified scene.

Import Genius + the value of information

ImportGenius is an innovating new company organizing the extremely valuable and historically unorganized world of import records. One of the first hedge fund managers I spoke to when researching KnowledgeBid mentioned that he liked to talk to shipping container brokers about utilization rates and import/export trends. I’m sure ImportGenius will have no problem finding customers in the investment community. TechCrunch coverage here (yes, Mac fanboys will like it too). Yet another company taking a unique approach to accessing information value. Good luck!

Investment Research + Massive Industry Shift

I had the opportunity to present KnowledgeBid at the Investorside Alternative Research conference in New York last week (conference agenda), attended by an interesting mix of independent alternative investment research providers and buy-side folks. The investment research industry has undergone massive change in the last 10 years, much of which is a result of the information technology explosion, Regulation FD, and unbundled commissions. The dominant groups at the conference last week primarily fell into three categories: 1) expert networks, 2) data mining, and 3) research management. Very few, if any, new players are producing traditional research reports with buy/sell recommendations or general industry analysis. Even fewer are associated with particular trading desks, something that never would have been seen 10 years ago. The recent explosion of the alternative research space has in large part been at the expense of traditional sell side research.

The sell side and other large financial service players are now actively partnering with, investing, and acquiring alternative research operations. There has been an explosion of activity in the space in the last six months, part of a larger trend that has been emerging since Reg FD was passed eight years ago. I’ve aggregated major announcements and milestones below (let me know if I missed anything interesting).

• 10.23.2000: Regulation FD Ratified by the SEC
• 3.2001 – 11.2001: US Economic Recession
• 10.15.2001: FirstRain $11M Series A
• 4.28.2003: $1.43B Global Analyst Research Settlement
• 7.15.2003: FirstRain $8M Series B
• 7.21.2003: BNY launches Jaywalk initiative
• 2.2004: Bessemer Ventures invests in Gerson Lehrman Group
• 3.4.2005: Standard & Poor’s acquires Vista Research
• 2.6.2006: Goldman Sachs invests in Investars
• 3.2006: UBS announces partnership with ASSET4
• 6.2006: Goldman Sachs launches Hudson Street initiative
  
• 6.29.2006: GS / Hudson Street invests in ASSET4
• 9.7.2006: DFJ invests in Monitor110 $5M Series B
• 10.30.2006: DFJ invests in Monitor110 $11M Series C
• 12.20.2006: Morgan Stanley partnership with Tamale Software
  
• 2.9.2007: GS / Hudson Street invests in Connotate Technologies
• 3.29.2007: BNY / Jaywalk announces alliance with Code Red
• 4.5.2007: GS / Hudson Street invests in iSuppli
• 5.2.2007: Evalueserve acquires Nitron Advisors
• 5.8.2007: GS / Hudson Street invests in Medley Global Advisors
• 9.10.2007: GS / Hudson Street invests in Lusight
• 9.27.2007: Merrill Lynch announces partnership with ASSET4
• 12.19.2007: Silver Lake invests +$200M in Gerson Lehrman Group
• 1.14.2008: Oak Partners invest in $13.6M FirstRain Round (Series C ?)
• 1.25.2008: RiskMetrics $245M IPO
• 2.11.2008: GS / Hudson Street invests in TrimTabs
• 2.27.2008: BNY / Jaywalk announces alliance with Tamale Software
• 3.6.2008: UBS invests in Integrity Research Associates
• 3.21.2008: GS / Hudson Street invests in QSG
  
• 3.27.2008: Morgan Stanley partnership with Gerson Lehrman Group
• 4.7.2008: Standard & Poors / CapIQ announces alliance with FirstRain
• 4.9.2008: Merrill Lynch launches Open Minds with Asset 4; Audit Integrity; Cypress Group; Decision Resources; Global Media Intelligence; HPDI and Primary Source
• 4.17.2008: Instinet exclusive relationship with Norbury Financial

My picks: The best content on the web

My buddy Will recently asked me what feeds I subscribe too, so I thought I would post what I pulled together for him here in case anyone else is looking for the good stuff. I subscribe to tons more feeds, but these are the ones I find myself consistently reading. I’ve found myself helping people set up NetVibes accounts recently, and this is generally what I put together, with each header being a separate tab within the same account. I’ve linked to the sites when possible and included the feed addresses below them. If you want to subscribe to one, copy the feed address and paste it into your aggregator (“Add content” >> “Add feed” in NetVibes). I’ve included feeds from my sites because I read that stuff too.

Tech/VC News
Venture Beat

http://venturebeat.com/?feed=rss2

Barron’s Tech Trader Daily
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/feed/
TechCrunch

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Techcrunch

ValleyWag

http://www.valleywag.com/index.xml

The Alarm Clock

http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/atom.xml

Digg.com: Technology

http://www.digg.com/rss/containertechnology.xml

Analyst’s Edge: Venture Capital News

http://feeds.feedburner.com/AnalystsEdge-VentureCapitalFirmNews

Entrepreneurs
Marc Andressen: Ning

http://blog.pmarca.com/atom.xml

Roger Ehrenberg: Monitor110

http://www.informationarbitrage.com/atom.xml

Keith Schacht: JobCoin/Freshwaterventure

http://www.chicagobeta.com/feed/

Noah Kagan: Mint.com

http://feeds.feedburner.com/okdork/tZRC

Steve Newcomb: Powerset

http://feeds.feedburner.com/SteveNewcombBlog

VC Blogs
Jeremy Liew: Lightspeed Venture Partners

http://feeds.feedburner.com/lightspeedblog

Ask the VC (Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson: Mobius Venture Capital/Foundry Group)

http://feeds.feedburner.com/askthevc

Venture Hacks

http://feeds.venturehacks.com/venturehacks

Econ
The Big Picture: Barry Rithholtz

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/index.rdf

Freakonomics Blog: Levitt & Dubner

http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/feed/

Private Equity/M&A
NYTimes: Dealbook

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/?feed=rss2

Seeking Alpha: M&A

http://usmarket.seekingalpha.com/by/type/mergers-acquisitions/feed

Analyst’s Edge: Private Equity News

http://feeds.feedburner.com/AnalystsEdge-PrivateEquityFirmNews

Hedge Funds/Public Equities
Infectious Greed: Paul Kedrosky

http://paul.kedrosky.com/index.rdf

Wall Street Folly

http://wallstfolly.typepad.com/wallstfolly/atom.xml

Controlled Greed: John Bethel

http://www.controlledgreed.com/atom.xml

Analyst’s Edge: Hedge Fund News

http://feeds.feedburner.com/AnalystsEdge-HedgeFundNews

Traditional News
WSJ

http://feeds.wsjonline.com/wsj/xml/rss/3_7011.xml

Economist
http://www.economist.com/rss/printedition/economist_printedition.xml
NYTimes
http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml

Legal
WSJ: Law Blog

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/feed/

Above The Law

http://www.abovethelaw.com/index.xml

Sports
Townie News

http://feeds.feedburner.com/fitzy

Boston.com Red Sox (no direct link because of their stupid registration crap)

http://syndication.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/red_sox_rss/?mode=rss_10

Boston.com Patriots (no direct link because of their stupid registration crap)

http://syndication.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/patriots_rss?mode=rss_10

ESPN

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/rss/news

Enjoy! Also, let me know if you think I missed anything…

US state/GDP comparison map

This map, referred to me by my big brother Al, has been kicked around the web a bit. It definitely puts international GDPs in context…and illustrates the power and size of the US economy (click it for a larger view).