Friday/Spring Break Link Dump

It's the last day at Unknown University before Spring Break. I have one class to teach at 11, but it's a minimal prep, since it's on Modern Portfolio Theory, a topic that takes little prep (I've taught it many times). In addition, it's snowing outside to beat the band, so the over-and-under bet for attendance in today's class (it's at 11, so the little darlings can sleep in) is about at 50%.

I realized I haven't been doing as many Link Dumps as usual lately, so here's one to keep you busy while I get something productive done:

Private Equity:

Equity Private at Going Private gives a response to the folks who are predicting the imminent demise of the PE party. The link's about a week old, but since the same story keeps popping up, you an just reread it periodically.

And in a somewhat related piece, Business Week highlights some smaller PE shops that don't generate the same publicity as the big boys. They nevertheless make very nice returns for their investors by focusing on smaller deals.

Investing & Markets:

Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture and Davig Gaffen of MarketBeat comment on the role buybacks play in market returns.

CXO Advisory Group highlights three studies by Keith Anderson and Chris Brooks on approaches to adjusting P/E ratios. They find that the value-growth premium ( the amount by which low P/E outperform high P/E stocks) widens when they sort by adjusted P/E ratios rather than by "raw" ones.

10B-1 plans are intended to be essentially "insider stock sales on autopilot." They're a way for insiders to sell shares on a prearranged schedule and thereby avoid the taint of "informed trading". BusinessWeek reports on a recent study by Stanford Accounting Professor Alan Jagolinzer that provides evidence that insiders use these plans to exploit private information after all. It seems the SEC is now investigating these plans.

Brad Setser at REG Monitor links to a primer on some of the CDO and CDS (i.e. collateralized debt securities) products.

Trader Mike provides a list of short/inverse ETF's. For the uninitiated, these are essentially short (and sometime) leveraged bets on common indexes.

Miscellaneous:

It's always great when you can find a freeware program that's useful. But navigating some freeware sites can be a pain. Sound Money Tips links to a couple of helpful and well organized sites.

Craig Newmark found a link that provides origins of the names of rock bands.

Enough bloggery for now. It's back to editing a paper. We hope to get it done and submitted this weekend. Then it's on to newer projects. In particular, I've got loads of analyst forecast data to torture.

It's like Torquemada said: "Give me an hour with a man in a room and I can make him confess to anything".

Update: Unknown University just cancelled classes because of the snow. Woo Hoo!