01 May 2013

Top Five Articles from April: Bloomberg’s Twitter List, Currency Wars, and Bitcoin

Posted In: Best Of

1. Inside Bloomberg’s Twitter A-List (Well, At Least a Fraction of It)

Bloomberg recently announced that it had become the first financial information platform to integrate real-time Twitter feeds “directly into the investment workflows of market professionals.” A network analysis of a partial list of Twitter accounts included in the terminal service yields some interesting insights.

2. Currency Wars: “The Fed is Playing with a Nuclear Reactor”

The United States is at war, but not in the conventional sense. There are no troops on the ground. There are no drone strikes. Instead, the weapon of choice is the US dollar and the “enemy” is America’s trading partners. Welcome to Currency War III. That, at any rate, is James G. Rickards’s view of the world.

3. Bitcoins: New Gold or Fool’s Gold?

Currencies must be trusted by large numbers of people. However, in light of the recent history of fiat money (and the gross indebtedness of many nations), trust is rapidly eroding. So is Bitcoin a natural step in the evolution of money?

4. Did the Gold Standard Work? Economics Before and After Fiat Money

How is a classical gold standard supposed to work? How did it actually work out in the past? Why did previous versions of the international reserve currency lose their mantle?

5. How to Choose a Good Hedge Fund for Your Portfolio: Mark Anson’s Secret Formula

The chief investment officer at the Bass Family Office says that the expected quality of a hedge fund manager is a function of additional return, minimal volatility, a bias toward positive returns, and less big blow ups.

Please note that the content of this site should not be construed as investment advice, nor do the opinions expressed necessarily reflect the views of CFA Institute.

Photo credit: CASASCIUS

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About the Author(s)

Jennifer Curry

Jennifer Curry formerly served as managing editor of the Enterprising Investor. Previously, she was the social media manager at the New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA). Prior to her work at NYSSA, Curry worked as the senior project editor for a nonfiction imprint at Barnes & Noble Publishing and as an assistant editor at the H.W. Wilson Company. She is the editor of several volumes in the Reference Shelf series, and her writing has appeared in Smithsonian, IndustryWeek, Barnes & Noble Review, and other publications. Curry holds a BS in journalism and a BA in anthropology from the University of Kansas, and an MA in anthropology from Hunter College, City University of New York.