Thursday Link Dump- The Wisdom Tooth Edition

Today I get to have a severely impacted wisdom tooth removed - one of the few things I enjoy less than college-wide faculty meetings (at least I can bring hot coffee and papers to grade to the meetings).

On the other hand (What did you expect? I'm trained as an economist, so there's ALWAYS an "other hand"), they do give me some very nice pharmaceuticals to help me cope with the discomfort. So, I will likely not be blogging much today, and if I do, it might not be very lucid (and no comments about my usual level of lucidity).

So, here's the day's Link Dump):

All About Alpha highlights a paper that attempts to “debunk” several myths about active management.

Abnormal Returns discusses how there might be insufficient alpha to go around.

Equity Private is yawning over Amaranth.

Chuck Jaffe of Marketwatch highlights some new actively managed ETF offerings, including one based on insider trading patterns.

On Seeking Alpha, Geoff Considine shows how using P/E ratios to screen ETFs doesn't make much sense. He makes some good points about how P/E ratios capture both growth and risk (and the two dimensions are hard to disentangle).

Dan Melson at Searchlight Crusade brings the 411 on buying real estate with 0% down.

Lastly, there were a couple of good Wall Street Journal Articles (online subscription required). In the first, we get the latest episode of "Where's Kobi?" It turns out that they found Kobi Alexander (Comverse Technologies CEO) in Namibia. And he's facing extradition.

In the second article, "Some ETFs start in Europe" we find out that the lighter lighter regulatory burden in Europe has shifted some ETF originatiooverseasrs (kind of like a play opening in New Haven and only later getting to Broadway).

Finally, in this week's "efficient markets aren't" story, the WSJ brings asks "Does Stock By Any Other Name Smell As Sweet?"-- They discuss recent research in the behaviorafinancece vein that indicates that the ease of remembering a company's ticker symbol is associated with its stock market performance. There's also a pretty good picture I'll have to find a way to use in my class somehow.

Off to the dentist (groan), and time to be thankful for the wonders of modern pharmacology. In the old days I'd have to make do with a scotch and soda (or two), and this is much more efficient.

Update: it wasn't too bad. The actual extraction took about 45 minutes, and I didn't recall a bit once the Verced kicked in. The jaw's sore, but the vicodine seems to be handling that o.k. (except I just failed to enter the verification word 3x to post this).

Anyone like to give odds on whether I make it to my 11:00 lecture tomorrow?