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!!!!

Happy 2011!

A repost from New Years 2009, tweaked (I'm feeling lazy) for the most recent year that was.

As 2008 2010 comes to an end, it is hopefully easyier for many of you to curse appreciate the year that was, but I urge you all to remember that the greatest things in life are not your personal finances. For me this includes:

• My family remained healthy and happy
• The birth of my first nephew niece
• Living in one of the greatest city on earth (in my opinion), New York City and getting set to move to another one of the greatest cities on earth (more to come)
• The ability to reach out to thousands (still shocking) of readers via EconomPic Data
• And most important to me... getting engaged being married for the past year and a half to an unbelievably caring (and gorgeous) woman.

Rather then just put this year in the past, I urge you all to look forward to an even brighter 200911. Best wishes to all and a happy New Year.

-Jake