mSquare

Pet Rocks as a Paradigm for Mark-to-Market Accounting

Excellent article.

As to your comment of 'leaders in Washington really think the general public is dumb enough to believe we can fix this whole mess by changing an accounting rule?' I would say overwhelming YES.

The 'General Public' is fed lies by TV (like CNBC), and they really think the problem is the consumers who took the sub-prime loans rather than the bankers who levered up on the levered up packaged CDOs of them!

AIG Bailout Has Not Yet Eased Money Markets

Ameritrade which uses various Reserve Funds as the 'swwep' vehicle in their brokerage accounts has frozen redemptions on the excuse that Reserve Funds is not allowing ANY redemptions. That includes State Money Market Funds whose NAV is still 1.00 and not supposed to be affected by the toxic Lehman stuff and that broke the buck.

India Looking Good at Start of 2007: Considering Sify

You would be crazy to invest in a small company like SIFY! It keeps portraying itself as THE play on the <i>Indian Internet Infrastructure Play</i> by non-Indian press but hardly anyone in India would agree - they have not managed to grow much in spite of being around for ages and different growth potential stories for years.

Their shares are not listed in India as I guess they do not think they'd be much followed and invested in by Indians - only exchange they are listed on is in US where guillable investors don't know just how popular they are (not)!

Sure, India has potential of 1-billion more potential Internet users but in the next 20 years more than half are unlikely to get anywhere close to a computer as they are more interested in lifting themselves above the poverty-line.

Also, most important, unlike a country like China, almost 99% of the Internet/Computer using users in India are reasonably fluent in English and use sites such as Google and Yahoo much more than any of SIFY's sites...

Consider investing in the Indian outsourcing plays such as INFY &amp; WIT, the new India Index-tracking ETN by Barclays (INP) or even the Indian banks ICICI &amp; HDFC that trade as ADRs in the US.

India ETFs: Why Just Large Cap?

The proposed introduction of these India Index funds/notes will surely end the high premium investors paid for the closed-end fund IFN.

See how poorly IFN has fared compared to the Bombay's SENSEX as it's high premium (as much as 40% in Summer) is down to below 5% now. In the past 6 months, Sensex has risen almost 40% v/s IFN less than 5%! See
finance.yahoo.com/q/bc...;t=6m&amp;l=on&...

It will also hopefully end the manipulations such as Rights Issues, fund buy-backs etc. that IFN has been doing the past few years to keep justifying it's 3-4% fees - good while it lasted, but hopefully these Index funds will give investors a much needed alternative.

Shares of Ameritrade Currently Trading at a Discount

In the short term Ameritrade is making more money by lending and giving a measly interest to it's brokerage clients (almost 30-50% less than Fidelity &amp; Schwab for Money Market), but if this continues, they will start loosing customers.

This is probably why they trade at a cheaper multiple than Schwab &amp; eTrade?

Options Trader: Friday Morning Ideas

&gt;&gt;SNY is going nowhere. I will take the Oct. $45s, currently at $1.70 if they come down or the Dec $50s for .80 if they don't.

Unjustified Backlash Against New ETFs Continues

I really think all (or at least most) mutual funds should convert to an 'ETF-like' structure. Have you seen the myrad of restrictions, front-end/back-end loads, 12-1B fees, short-term holding fee etc. associated with funds from big fund companies like Vanguard, TRowePrice, Fidelity etc.? Making them available as ETFs would make all these stupid restrictions dissappear.

The funds anyway publish their NAVs - most daily and some weekly - let that continue to do so. An ETF sponsor could buy the popular funds and then make that subset available for 'intraday-pricing' with the market forces deciding what buyers &amp; sellers it should be priced at.