Easy Street is our daily roundup of the most interesting news stories and commentary about Wall Street, Washington and the curious world of finance. You can see more of what we think are the biggest stories of the day on our News in Brief page. Every day, you can download Marketplace’s daily show on iTunes and follow us for more headlines at twitter.com/mktplaceradio. If you want to listen to Marketplace on the radio, find your local station and time here.
Markets & Traders
What’s the disconnect between stock prices and housing prices? Felix Salmon explores.
The death of bond trading. (RIP)
U.S. commodities are facing high demand overseas.
Fund Managers & Investing
An investor in SAC Capital wants his money back. This is so rare a phenomenon that Institutional Investor Magazine wrote it up.
Elite investors – like hedge-fund managers – tend to do worse when their emotions get involved. Will this Curse of the Hobby plague new Mets minority owner David Einhorn?
Pension funds – the kind that manage retirees’ money – often get better returns by putting those funds into risky investments, like hedge funds. But pension funds, ultimately, are not terribly comfortable with risk. So now the pension funds are going a step further: they want to get a say in how the hedge funds invest. Good luck with that.
Related: Phil Duff, the founder of FrontPoint partners, is creating a new firm to advise institutional investors like pension funds on the terrors of the market.
Inside the world of sassy investment manager Martin Sass.
Hedge-fund thrillers are a new literary genre.
Politicians & Regulation
The Federal Reserve’s top economist will step down. Now? When things are going so well? What’s the hurry?
Corporate America
Sprint to AT&T: pants on fire.
Credit-card companies are limiting what you can buy. Put down the medical marijuana.
Perhaps our difficulty in matching the nation’s tax revenues with our spending has to do with the lowest corporate taxes in 50 years? Bruce Bartlett thinks out loud.
Recreational Reading
“I single-handedly stopped the bear market with chocolate.” Some of James Altucher’s trademark business advice with soul.
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