New Century filed a form 12b-25 with the SEC explaining why it could not file form 10-K on time. The grimmest part of this filing was:

The old FVL fund tracked the VL100 stocks in real time and they were updated every week. This lead to massive turnover (roughly 400% per year) and eyewatering short term capital gains distributions. The new ETF should be much more tax efficient.

GlobeSt.com: REITs will also figure in your strategy. What structures are you looking for?

• iShares FTSE NAREIT Residential Index Fund
• iShares FTSE NAREIT Industrial/Office Index Fund
• iShares FTSE NAREIT Retail Index Fund
• iShares FTSE NAREIT Mortgage REITs Index Fund
• iShares FTSE NAREIT Real Estate 50 Index Fund

The current set of REIT ETFs [iShares Cohen & Steers Realty Majors ETF (ICF), streetTRACKS Wilshire REIT Index Fund (RWR), Vanguard REIT VIPERs (VNQ)] all own only real estate investment trusts that own real properties, so-called equity REITs. These new ETFs chop up the REIT universe into finer sectors. To me, the most interesting ETF is the iShares FTSE NAREIT Mortgage REITs Index Fund.

My take is that PowerShares is letting people choose their alpha. You can get it from the Intellidex black box, or from the fundamental weighting hypothesis.

First prediction: "Mild national housing recession with regional hard landings in overbuilt areas." As this greatly depends on your definition of mild, I put this in the "too soon to tell" category. So far it seems the bubble is unwinding slowly.

Ocean Tomo's index aims to quantify the value of intellectual property owned by companies and then create an index of companies with large intellectual property assets. The index is then further stratified by investment style and company size to create a representative index of universe of companies that rely on intellectual property to create value.

This could be a very interesting tool for people like myself who tend to be hard asset investors. Hard asset investors focus on tangible assets; we tend to be driven by balance sheet value. But it is clear that many companies have "capital intangibles" that are valuable, and at times undervalued.

Proceedings concerning our founder and largest shareholder, Dimitris Melisanidis, could generate negative publicity for us, harm our reputation and adversely affect our business and our stock price.

A brief introduction to the Credit Default Swap [CDX] market: CDX are contracts for insurance on bonds. In exchange for a fixed premium you can purchase protection against default on a notional $10 million of bonds. A CDX is a put option on a corporate bond that can be exercised upon a credit event. The person who sells the CDX gains exposure to default risk, and the person who buys the CDX loses exposure.

"There’s an overriding sense of impermanence. This is a fashion choice. No one will buy one of these gloomy spaces and say, ‘I want to have kids here. I want to grow old and die here.’ This is simply an investment opportunity with sleepover possibilities."

SL Green's plan for Reckson Associates was to keep Reckson's Manhattan portfolio while selling off the remainder of Reckson to a team lead by the former management of Reckson Associates.

Carl Icahn/Harry Macklowe are not stupid, and they understand what SL Green is doing. Assuming the Manhattan real estate markets stays strong, Reckson's assets have organic growth from rent roll-ups estimated at 5%-8% per year for the next seven years. If you net-out the cash received from the management buyout of residual properties against SL Green's cash payment for Reckson's shares, this deal is almost wholly financed with SL Green common stock at 2%.

The underwriters increased the size of Douglas Emmett's IPO from 55 million shares to 66 million shares, and priced them at $21 per share. Substantial money was left on the table, as DEI shares opened trading at $23.50. This IPO set a record for the largest REIT IPO ever, raising $1.4 billion dollars.

"There's a large group of people who are really stretched out," DeKaser said. "They should be in a home that's half as expensive as the one the have. They are finding themselves with a reset mortgage where all of their spendable income is going to the house and they can't afford to go out to dinner."

The core motivation for investing in steel is capturing the global macro infrastructure theme. Currently there is huge global investment in new infrastructure and industrialization. All of that growth needs steel. If this is your motivation for investing in steel, then it makes sense to think about certain factors related to industrial metals investing:

iShares Lehman 1-3 Year (SHY), iShares Lehman 7-10 Year (IEF), and iShares Lehman 20+ Year (TLT) cover the short, intermediate and long portions respectively of the treasury yield curve. Unlike bonds themselves, ETFs are perpetual instruments, so you can't ignore market price risk. Because of the ability to dynamically position themselves and hedge exposure, active bond funds may be less volatile than the benchmark.

The main asset class that the fast money crowd ignores is bonds. This is only to their loss. I don't think I can say it better than PIMCO, on the role of bonds in an asset allocation strategy:

Big drivers for the sudden jump metal stocks include bullish comments about United States Steel Corp. (X) and talk of a takeover of Corus Group (CGA) by Tata Steel. Excitement about steel spread to Nucor Corp. (NUE), AK Steel Holding Corp. (AKS) which may successfully deunionize once of its plants, and Reliance Steel & Aluminum (RS) all going up about 5.5% each. Bullish comments about copper demand (staying high) and future prices (not getting cheaper) from Morgan Stanley pushed Phelps Dodge Corp. (PD) and other copper miners up.

The rally wasn't just limited to the big famous names either. Fairly obscure names such as Carpenter Technology Corp. (CRS) as well as Platinum/Palladium miner Stillwater Mining Company (SWC) were also up strongly. Pretty much every single name in the SPDR Metals and Mining ETF was up 5% today. The metals rally even spread to the gold miners with the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX) up 2.19% for the day.

This nifty chart shows the performance of XME over the past three months. XME has followed the path of iShares Goldman Sachs Natural Resource ETF (IGE) even though IGE has very little exposure to metals and mining. 60% of IGE is Oil Stocks and 18% Oil & Gas Services, with only a 13.41% weighting to base metals and mining. Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX) are only a small percent of XME, and so XME is not very sensitive to the price of gold and precious metals.

The main question about investing in XME is the relationship between energy prices and demand for metals. Fundamentally lower energy prices make it cheaper to refine metals while freeing up income to be spent on metal and metal objects. It seems that this point has been forgotten during the current natural resources relaxation. If core energy prices go down, mining and refining metals is more profitable.

The underlying Zacks Yield Hog Index replicates the strategy of an aggressive equity income investor. 50% or more of the portfolio is made up of classical dividend stocks. The remaining 50% is allocated between various other high yielding equities such as Master Limited Partnerships [MLPs], REITs, preferred stock and closed end funds. The funds benchmark index is the Dow Jones Select Dividend Index, which underlies the iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend ETF (DVY). Based on Zacks-commissioned backtesting, the Yield Hog index has the same risk profile as (DVY), but with a higher return. Claymore has prepared a small briefing book, and the index components are available from the AMEX.

Well maybe, but probably not. Compared to bubbly specimens such as SL Green (SLG) or Alexandria Real Estate Equities (ARE) yielding 2.10% and 2.90% respectively, SPG at 3.5% is undervalued.

A long term perspective about the price and yield of REITs gives us no comfort, since we have no historical basis for talking about REIT investment at such frothy valuations.