Good morning. ‘The weakest earnings cycle in 55 years’. Sure. But if you had drawn this from the trough it probably has been the best earnings cycle…

http://www.businessinsider.com/historical-earnings-cycles-2014-4

Interesting chart showing that, so far, the sell-off in bonds has not materialised this year (red=positive for bonds)

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-16/ritholtz-s-10-wednesday-reads-the-selling-of-science

It’s them snakes!! I always knew it…

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2014/04/wall-street-animals/

Somehow, this red line does not match my idea of ‘financial sector fluctuations’. 1997-2000 was a negative?

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/bild-964757-684700.html

I am not sure whether this data is correct, but with an expected negative earnings outlook, there might even be room for a positive surprise…

http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2014/04/15/the-first-down-quarter-for-earnings-since-2012/

Interesting chart (and some more information) on dividends in Emerging Markets

http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2014/04/16/em-share-dividends-come-of-age/

Arm sales. Comes with no comment.

http://www.vox.com/2014/4/15/5613870/the-global-arms-trade-in-four-charts

Brad Delong presents some economic background on the 2007-2009 crisis

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/04/what-was-i-thinking-as-2008-turned-into-2009-wednesday-focus-april-16-2014.html

Epic chart on the ups and downs of Russia since 1860. Take it with a grain of salt though…

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-16/annotated-history-russian-empire

And this must be the chart of the week: statistics on Bob Ross paintings!

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-statistical-analysis-of-the-work-of-bob-ross/

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