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Run, don’t walk, to read the related story from the latest issue of Fortune Magazine about how much has changed for investors from 2003 to 2013. Source: A decade of markets, mayhem, and investing (Fortune)  

I showed a lot of initiative, and I stayed late. I was now in Armani suits, Ferragamo shoes, Valentino ties. I would stay all night. I would adjust my hours to call potential customers at home. All you had to do was get past the wife. The guys were more relaxed to talk at home….

Thinking back on a great year for investing in the US stock market but a hard year on market participants overall. US stocks went wild this year but almost nothing else kept pace – any attempt to hedge or diversify now looks to have been either futile or foolish here at year’s end. Consider: The…

From the New Yorker: Next week’s cover, “Madiba,” was drawn by the artist Kadir Nelson. “I’ve recently made a children’s book about Nelson Mandela, but for a New Yorker cover, I settled on a younger image of him during the time that he was on trial with over a hundred of his comrades,” says Nelson…

McDonalds did $27 billion in worldwide sales in 2012, finished the year with $15 billion in shareholder’s equity and over $2 billion in cash. The company had $5.5 billion available to return to shareholders in the form of stock repurchases and dividends last year. But they’d like their US employees to receive financial assistance from taxpayers…

Here were the most read posts on TRB this week, in case you missed them: Ben Bernanke as Today’s Michael Milken Chart o’ the Day: Forward Price / Earnings Ratios by Sector Billionaire Portfolios: They’re Just Like Ours!   The mark of a truly great investor  Wall Street Still Hates Stocks…just not as much Fast…

This is BlackRock’s chart of the week, it shows you how fearful fund investors have become about the potential for rising rates – they’re voting with their mutual fund inflows / outflows: That’s quite a change of pace from this beauty of a contrary indicator, posted weeks before the bond market top in July of…

Merrill’s quant strategy group unveils their favorite ten stocks for 2014, one from each sector… Our favorite stock ideas for 2014 We provide a list of 10 S&P 500 stocks for 2014 — one from each of the 10 GICS sectors. These stocks align with our themes for the year-ahead 2014 and our quantitative work….

The November non-farm payrolls report was a good one, 203,000 jobs were added last month (vs 185k expected), despite the shutdown of the prior month. U6 underemployment dropped big-time and the private sector is done kicking the gravel and staring down at the ground. The headline unemployment rate – while not terribly important despite the…