Marathon

I posted all I can say publicly at Skippy. And even that wouldn’t work at a family blog like this one.

The rest are jokes that I am told–undoubtedly correctly, but lapsed traders are difficult to retrain*–are “too soon.”

The Phantom Scribbler came out of her retirement (first post in more than eleven months), though, so you should Go Read Her.

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As for the other Issue of the Day, I repeat what I said chez Duy (whose summary here is concise and informative):

If I told you just those three “Stylized Facts”:
1. Average of -0.1
2. Median of 1.0
3. Positive:Negative ratio is 5:2
would you (a) immediately start talking about the “clear lack of growth”? or (b) even more immediately say, “There must be an outlier in the data. What’s the kurtosis?
I don’t believe I know anyone who would do (a).

If I were teaching Econ 301 and someone presented R&R’s data–see the Konczal link above–and came to their conclusion, they would be lucky to be told to do the assignment over.

*What’s the difference between a bond and a bond trader?  A bond matures.