Wednesday links: humble investors

Markets

• Are zero-day options helping drive intraday volatility? (cnbc.com)
• Live by the Iron Condor, die by the Iron Condor. (wsj.com)

Strategy

• What has happened after the stock market declines 15%. (awealthofcommonsense.com)
• Should you even try to beat the market? (investmenttalk.co)
• Great investors are humble. (bigthink.com)

Finance

• Private equity firms have paused deals with economic uncertainty so high. (on.ft.com)
• Figma has filed for an IPO. (reuters.com)
• Companies really don’t like to pull their IPOs. (news.crunchbase.com)

Tariffs

• Even a flat 10% tariff would have knock-on effects. (nytimes.com)
• What the administration is getting wrong about China and tariffs. (paulkrugman.substack.com)
• Why China can’t have a truly weakened America. (marginalrevolution.com)
• Bilateral trade numbers can be misleading. (econofact.org)

Taxes

• Who wins if the IRS is kneecapped? (paulkrugman.substack.com)
• It’s pretty depressing inside the IRS these days. (newyorker.com)
• Modernization efforts at the IRS have ground to a halt. (theatlantic.com)

Law

• The law firms who made deals with Trump are already seeing the goalposts moved. (nytimes.com)
• Law firms that have acquiesced to Trump’s demands are irretrievably compromised. (theatlantic.com)
• These law students that are focusing on firms that are resisting the administration. (politico.com)

Economy

• Consumers front ran the tariffs. (bonddad.blogspot.com)
• The cultural indicators that hint at recession. (newyorker.com)
• National homebuilder confidence remains muted. (calculatedriskblog.com)
• Recessions help increase the budget deficit, despite lower rates. (apolloacademy.com)

Earlier on Abnormal Returns

• Personal finance links: a team sport. (abnormalreturns.com)
• What you missed in our Tuesday linkfest. (abnormalreturns.com)
• Research links: expected value. (abnormalreturns.com)
• You can now follow us on Bluesky. (bsky.app)
• Are you signed up for daily e-mail newsletter? Well, you should be. (abnormalreturns.com)

Mixed media

• Martin Wolf, “Unpredictable despots generate waste, fear and pervasive uncertainty.” (on.ft.com)
• One of the charges in the Declaration of Independence was about the transportation of people by sea to stand on charges. (noahpinion.blog)
• Speaking truth to power gets you censored these days. (theverge.com)