What happens when the alternative is no longer the alternative but the mainstream?  Bad things happen.  The pigs start dressing like their former human overlords and walking on two feet. Kurt Cobain blows his brains out.  And hedge funds start looking and acting more and more like the mainstream mutual funds and asset managers they…

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The first popular fundamentally-weighted index products that I can remember were mutual funds from Rydex that took mainstream indexes and re-worked them so that they were weighted based on attributes other than simply market cap.  And then ETFs came along and latched on to this idea – as soon as it became apparent that merely…

“Are there still commission-only brokers left?” an incredulous reporter asked me the other day at lunch.

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You’re probably aware that most Apple products are made in a Chinese slave camp called Foxconn, where workers are strongly encouraged to not kill themselves from the stress and strain of their shifts and conditions.  And in case that encouragement doesn’t work, nets have been installed to catch employees who would dare attempt to fling…

As of this writing, police say eight people have been shot in the vicinity of 5th Ave and 34th Street, right outside the Empire State Building.  We have confirmation that the shooter is dead and word that up to two of the shooting victims may also be dead. I am chilled to the bone, I…