What Makes Smart Guys So Dangerous

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- My “it’s August already?” morning plane reads:

• Are Stock Buybacks Starving the Economy? (the Atlantic); see also Buybacks Are Great in Theory, Less So IRL (Bloomberg Opinion)
• An Inverted Yield Curve May Not Portend Doom (Wall Street Journal)
• Smart guys are the most dangerous: prone to overconfidence, and susceptible to overthinking — both deadly sins in money management. (Behavioral Macro)
• Is the Key to Beating the Market Written in the Stars? (Let me save you a click: No.) (Bloomberg Businessweek); see also Online Investors Consult Astrology to Chart Their Financial Courses (Wall Street Journal)
• A light shines on the concentration of power in Silicon Valley (Financial Times)
• The growth delusion: An interview with David Pilling (Washington Post)
• Josef Kates Found Ways to Unsnarl Traffic and Solve Business Problems With Computers (Wall Street Journal)
• Deadly spiral: As an AIDS epidemic runs out of control and deaths rise above 30,000 a year, Russians look for scapegoats (Coda)
• Why We’re Sharing 3 Million Russian Troll Tweets (FiveThirtyEight)
• Ernest Hemingway’s 8 Favorite Bars Around the World (Architectural Digest)

What are you reading?

Apple Drives Stock Market’s Buyback Spree

Source: Wall Street Journal

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Barry Ritholtz is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He founded Ritholtz Wealth Management and was chief executive and director of equity research at FusionIQ, a quantitative research firm. He is the author of “Bailout Nation.”

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