Wednesday Link Dump - The Wall Street Journal Edition

One of the things I like about the winter semester break is that I have a little more time to keep up on what's happening in the "outside" world.

I'm still trying to get used to the smaller size of the Wall Street Journal, but at least the quality of the stories in it haven't changed. In fact, since I've got a little more time to read it, I've found a lot more good stories in the last few days than usual. So, just call this the "Wall Street Journal" edition of the Link Dump. Note: you need a subscription to read these online, but if you don't have one, you can still buy the paper:

First off, there were a number of good articles on the Private Equity world. In today's paper, the article Inside the minds of Kravis & Roberts is worth reading if for no other reason than because Kravis and Roberts were two of the three principals of KKR, which started the whole PE thing off, and still has the record for the largest PE deal ever.

A related piece (Caveat Investor: IPOs Of Hedge, Equity Funds) discusses how PE & hedge funds firms are starting to issue stock to gain access to "permanent capital".

Finally, in the third piece (from yesterday's Journal), Conglomerate Comparisons compares and contrasts today's PE firms to the conglomerates of the 1960's (like ITT)

A New Way To Rate Stock Tips reports on the increasing popularity of web sites that let investors share ideas online. The latest twist is that some of these sites rate the quality of participants contributions.

In yesterday's Journal, the article titled Investors Riding the Cash Rapids talks about some of the effects that increases in global liquidity is having on stock and bond markets.

And finally, Jonathan Clemens (in his Getting Started column) peels back the curtain on the tricks advisors (both the legitimate and shady) use to get you to sign on the dotted line in Don't Get Hit by the Pitch: How Advisers Manipulate You. A few years back, I read a great book titled The Big Con: The Story of The Confidence Man. It was written by a professor of linguistics that got inside the world of con men in the 1920's and 30's, and it does a fantastic job of detailing the strategies con men use. The same tricks are used today, just with different products and with different delivery methods, like the Internet. So buy it and read it - it's worth the price.

That's enough for now - time to do some research.