Get Your Free Sperm Here!
The Daily Beast reports on an interesting phenomenon: sperm donors who donate for free. One couple, stymied by the $2,000-and-up cost of acquiring sperm the usual way (sperm bank), started exploring alternative options online… Read More »
Can Google Searches Predict Stock Price Performance?
A recent study in the Journal of Finance by Zhi Da and Paul Gao of the University of Notre Dame shows that data from public Google searches can be used to beat the stock market by up to ten percentage points per year. Similar findings were released last month by researchers at the University of Kansas.
The Notre Dame authors argue that the frequency of Google searches received by a stock (its SVI number) is a better, more direct method of measuring investor attention (a precursor to buying the stock) than traditional, indirect methods of measurement, such as news and advertising expense. Read More »
Paying the Rent After the Pink Slip
A recent national survey indicates that “[o]ne in three Americans would be unable to make their mortgage or rent payment beyond one month if they lost their job.” Even higher-income households would find themselves in trouble quickly: “Ten percent of survey respondents earning $100K or more a year say they would immediately miss a payment.”
Even more Americans — 61 percent — wouldn’t be able to pay the rent or mortgage after five months of unemployment. Given the current state of the economy, it’s perhaps wise to heed Suze Orman‘s 2008 advice on this blog — she recommended an eight-month emergency savings fund. Read More »
FREAK-est Links
This week, the suffering French nobility; adjusting for crime inflation, is New York really safer? Climate concerns: getting closer to that garden hose to the sky? And two signs of the times: Sesame Street debuts an impoverished Muppet, and Friendly’s goes bankrupt. Read More »
and 
. If you haven’t seen it yet, the movie features Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and was made by a dream team of documentary directors. Paste Magazine named it one of the 