Friday, December 30, 2011

What a Year it Was!!!

So... what happened to asset classes in 2011?

Bonds crushed equities. Real assets were mixed.



More important (to me)... what happened to me in 2011?

1) I retired from blogging
2) I un-retired from blogging
3) I moved across the country
4) I found out my wife was pregnant (with our first child) the first night in our new place post-move
5) I quit my job (it involved commuting away from where I moved to each week... a kid [see point #4] made that a non-viable option for us)
6) I called everyone I knew who may have known someone in the city I moved to, met 100's (literally) of people for coffee, lunch, dinner, and drinks, then interviewed... then interviewed... then interviewed. Did I mention, I interviewed?
7) Had an amazing kid (though he is still in "blob" phase [i.e. he can't do much except eat, sleep, and sh@t, but he does them very well])
8) In the past month I have received three job offers! (I understand how lucky I am as, amazingly, two of them sound ideal. It will be a tough decision)

So a new job, a new city, and a new kid. I can only hope that 2012 is as great, but MUCH slower.

EconomPic in Review

There are now 2520 subscribers to EconomPic (wow!)

The Top 5 Most Read Posts of 2011 were...

1) Emerging Market Rotation Strategy
2) Unsustainable: Transfer Payments
3) Secret Sauce Continues to Grip It and Rip It
4) Gold Model Still Rocking
5) China Owns Lots of Paper

Not a surprise that 4 of 5 were asset class (rather than economic data point) related. Asset class posts tend to get linked to by financial blogs / forwarded more, which drives traffic whereas most of my readers that are interested in economic data view the blog via an RSS feed.

Videos of 2011

Reader GYSC says I have good taste in music, so that is all the encouragement I needed to list all the live performance music videos posted at EconomPic during 2011 (quite an eclectic mix I must say, which I hadn't realized started in January and ended in December with The Black Keys)

The Black Keys - Gold on the Ceiling



Fugazi - Waiting Room



AWOLNATION - Sail



Sublime - Badfish



Broken Bells - The Ghost Inside



The Decemberists - The Wanting Comes in Waves



Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros - Home



Jay-Z + Toto = Girlfriend in Africa



ThePETEBOX (cover of The Pixies) - Where is My Mind?

  • Iron and Wine (cover of the Postal Service) - Such Great Heights

  • The Strokes - Under the Cover of Darkness

    Passion Pit - Little Secrets




    The Black Keys - Tighten Up



    Happy New Year!!!!

    6 comments:

    1. Happy New Year Jake! That's a ton of exciting things to happen all at once. Glad everything worked out for you. Very glad you came back like Sugar Ray Leonard!

      ReplyDelete
    2. The markets may have gone nowhere in 2011, but you definitely had a great year!

      ...and made the year easier to comprehend and digest for all the rest of us. I appreciate all your hard work on the blog and wish you the best of luck (parenting, career, blogging, etc.) in 2012!

      -Bill

      ReplyDelete
    3. Have a great new year! Love the blog - it helps me a lot. It is quite clear that blogging will get scarcer, but what you have done is great!

      ReplyDelete
    4. Happy new year!!!

      Guess Talebs' 2010 comment re: Treasuries can clearly be called wrong at this point.

      http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-02-04/markets/30061092_1_precious-metals-bet-s-p

      Glad your back on point!

      ReplyDelete
    5. Thanks for you many graphic insights--literally and figuratively.

      And best of the New Year to you, your wife, and your child.

      ReplyDelete