Below are some links of interest (at least to me), just in case you missed them. A few have already been posted to Twitter.

• Economic calendar for Friday, July 24th (Briefing.com Economic).
• Earnings calendar for Friday, July 24th (Briefing.com Earnings).

• Wake up, we are in a depression, whether we want to admit it or not. So says bears Eric Sprott and and David Franklin (Infectious Greed).
• A little moderation in emerging market indexes, or anything for that matter, might be in order (Random Roger).
• As a trader, sometimes you just need time to recover from a loss (TraderPsyches).
• Some questions and answers on using Bollinger Bands (VIX and More).
• Ten myths regarding the subprime crisis (Clusterstock).
  
• America runs on small business (Carpe Diem).
• 229 billion reasons to squeeze the market (Zero Hedge) - there is a big supply of Treasuries coming to market next week.
  
• No business pickup for UPS in July (Clusterstock). Profit fell 49% to $445 million (WSJ). The company then forecast Q3 earnings below analyst's views. It would seem that the transportation companies would have to show some real pickup in demand before the economy can finally begin recovering, but the recent UPS guidance was not too encouraging. More in the "lower declines" and "some stabilizing" camp as opposed to "new demand" camp. Of course, that did not stop the market rally on Thursday. The job of halting the market was left to Microsoft.
• Bill Miller's Leg Mason Value Trust fund (LMVTX) is up 20% this year through July 21, with 55% of the fund in technology and financial services, both of which he sees as leaders in the next bull market (WSJ). Impressed? Actually, some are getting tired of hearing about Miller's comeback (Clusterstock).
  
• Warren Buffett's option to buy shares of Goldman Sachs has earned Berkshire about $2 billion on paper, or about a 40% return (Bloomberg). Maybe Buffett is not washed up just yet.
  
• Even with the rally, the AAII weekly sentiment survey still has the bears outnumbering the bulls (42.4% to 37.6%) (Bespoke Investment Group).
• On Thursday, someone made an options transaction involving 720,000 options contracts on the SPDR Trust Series 1 (SPY). The options transaction is one of the largest, and represents half the volume traded on the SPDR fund on a daily basis. The investor appears to have entered a one-by-two put spread using December options with strikes of $95 (bought) and $82 (sold twice). Wow. See post, and original WSJ article.
• Did Matt Taibbi cost Goldman Shareholders $800 million by making it a PR nightmare if they were to cancel half of their warrants? (Clusterstock)
• Breadth at an extreme as the 10-day advance/decline lines for the S&P 500 is well into overbought territory (Bespoke Investment Group).
• New correlation index being offered - CBOE S&P 500 Implied Correlation Index (VIX and More, Daily Options Report). The index uses a tracking basket of the 50 largest components of the SPX as measured by market cap.
• Does the semiconductor leader / laggard strategy have a flaw in logic? (MarketSci Blog)
• The deflation story/case told in pictures (Traders Narrative).

Below are some links of interest (at least to me), just in case you missed them. Some have already been posted to Twitter. Not sure if I will keep this up daily, or update throughout the day as often.

• Economic calendar for Thursday, July 23rd (Briefing.com Economic).
• Earnings calendar for Thursday, July 23rd (Briefing.com Earnings).

• S&P 1500 most volatile stocks (Bespoke Investment Group).
• President Obama is proposing a new transaction fee for "far-out transactions," also known as derivatives, no doubt (WSJ). Of course, I guess this also includes any other thing that financial engineers can come up with. Less resulting risk, maybe. Less innovation, probably.
  
• Foreclosure activity by region (The Big Picture). California, Florida, and Nevada account for half of all foreclosure activity, with California roughly twice Florida's foreclosure level. And we wonder why the Terminator and his state are having problems.
• Speaking of California, Occidental Petroleum (OXY) discovered 150-250 million barrels of oil and gas in California (WSJ). Lawmakers are already looking for new ways to tax and regulate it - seriously.
  
• The (sorry) state of the M&A Markets (The Pragmatic Capitalist).
• Standard & Poor's adjustments in the way it accounts for certain loss and recovery assumptions is proving unsettling to the Commercial MBS market (WSJ). Some securities were re-rated as AAA days after sharp downgrades (Financial Times). Apparently, the Fed will only finance triple A securities. Whoops.
  
• Is the market exhausted? Check out the Divergence Index, and then you decide (Zero Hedge).
• AIG holds off on planned bonuses ...... for now, avoids pitchforks ...... for now (WSJ).
• That did not stop Morgan Stanley. MS's compensation soars to 72% of revenues (Clusterstock).
• Boeing has found a solution to the technical problem with the Dreamliner that has caused so many delays (WSJ). But you have to wait some more, as the company will provided updates a little later in Q3. Amazing. All kidding aside, the problem may be more serious than originally thought (Seattle Times Newspaper).
• A recent survey finds that investment advisers are predicting that clients will move more assets out of conventional mutual funds into ETFs (WSJ). The moves are being driven by concerns regarding both return performance and transparency. Past revenue-sharing-kick-back concerns probably did not help either.
  
• Edward Jones says no to offering leveraged ETFs (ETF Trends). They must not have been part of the previous survey.
• Some historical returns of the Harvard and Yale endowments, compared to other popular benchmarks, are provided over at World Beta. A bad year for the endowments, but diversification still helped over the long-term.
• Bottom line earnings beat rates are near highs, while top line revenue beat rates not so much (Bespoke Investment Group). How long can you cut costs, and jobs? Eventually the consumer is going to have to step up and buy stuff ... after they get a new job, or feel safe about their current job - may be a long time with a jobless recovery. Unfortunately, we cannot all help out by buying a new Camaro, even if we wanted to (Carpe Diem).
• Is Covestor Investment Management (A VC) the next big thing (Bull Bear Trader)? Basically, the system is designed such that you would have your own account, but could then choose from a number of investment managers that you want to follow. The investment managers could be in the financial industry, or more likely just an average investor like you. If you choose to follow the investment manager, funds in your account are used to mimic the trades of the manager. Check it out (Covestor). It sounds interesting (but there are concerns and questions).
  

There is an interesting article in the WSJ about Bill Miller, and the fall of his once lauded Legg Mason Value Trust fund. After continuing to dip into the value market, buying many beaten down financial companies, the fund has fallen from $4.3 billion AUM from over $16.5 billion just a year ago. The fund that was consistently one of the top performers over the years is now among the worse for one-, three-, five-, and ten-year periods based on Morningstar's rankings.

The IEA is forecasting a contraction in world oil demand, the first in 25 years (see WSJ article). Spare production capacity is at a six year high among OPEC members. Specifically for the US, consumption is expected to fall off 6.3% this year, and another 1.4% in 2009. China is expected to fall 3.5% in 2009 after increasing oil consumption 5.3% in 2008.

Charge-off rates among credit-card issuers are expected to rise more than expected in Q4, after rising more than 6% in Q3 (see WSJ article). Roll rates, which indicate that customers will go from late to not paying, was up 20%. The roll rate for American Express increased to 47% in Q3 from 35% during the same time last year. Capital One increased to 34% from 28% over the last year. Given that unemployment is a leading indicator of credit card defaults, the numbers are not all that surprising.

Defensive stock Proctor and Gamble lowered its sales outlook for the current quarter, stating that organic sales growth will fall short of the previous 4-6% growth targets given just a few months ago (see WSJ article). The stock is down nearly 20% for the year, but still fairing better than the broader market.

Even hedge funds that are doing well are seeing withdraws (see Reuters article). Why sell a good fund? As it turns out, the main sellers could be those that operate fund-of-funds. As a result of other funds (holdings) being down, redemption request at FoF are causing selling across the board, dragging down performing funds as well.

There is an interesting article from Cam Hui at SeekingAlpha discussing the need for hedge funds to return to basics, and for investors to rethink their expectations. Of interest from the article is the quote: "Hedge fund investors found out what they had wasn’t a contract with a hedge fund manager, but a call option on a management contract. When the incentive fees dried up, the manager packed up and went away." This gives me an idea. How about selling an option on ......, never mind.

Rumors of a Goldman / Citi merger have changed to a Goldman / Morgan Stanley merger (see Here Is The City News article). Still waiting for the Goldman / Yahoo / Microsoft rumor to surface.

I was just kidding about the 10 million. I did not want a bonus afterall (see Clusterstock article). Merrill and/or Thain doing damage control.

Fleckenstein, a regular guest on Fast Money, is calling it quits, or at least closing his short-only portfolio (see FINalternatives article). He is planning to open a new fund (not a hedge fund) that would be available to retail investors (ie., everyone). In a blog post, Fleckenstein states "I now (sic) longer want to run a short-only hedge fund, as it is very stressful, nerve-wracking and generally not very much fund (sic)." Then again, the money was nice .........

There is an interesting New York Magazine article on Jim Chanos. Even though he seems to be on CNBC just about every time you turn around, the article provides a little more detail on his background, and provides some insight into his approach. Interesting read.

Private equity investors are starting to ban together to renegotiate terms of previous commitments (see Financial Times article). In particular, endowments and foundations, which have recently increase exposure to alternative investments, are looking for ways to scale back commitments after losing money and finding it difficult to meet their operating budget without dipping too deep into existing endowment funds.

The Lehman bankruptcy has apparently went better in the US (see Financial Times article). The UK FSA is even traveling to New York to see why the US insolvency regime has worked better than in Britain in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Problem have caused many hedge funds to move assets to the US to avoid similar problems, causing London to worry about it status as a major financial center.

Surprise, surprise. A GAO audit found that more oversight is needed for the $700 billion TARP bailout package (see CNN Money article). Apparently, as a result of lack of oversight, those receiving billions in funds have not been using the money as originally intended. Not only is it amazing that this is a surprise, but it is interesting how as the amount of money increases, the level of monitoring seems to go down.

Time to bailout alternative energy (see Spiegel Online article). Cheaper crude oil is decreasing the demand for clean and efficient energy. The credit crisis is also making it difficult for new renewable energy companies to get the capital they need to expand and continue daily operations. Spain and Germany are already offering incentives, and the European Commission announced a $252 billion recovery plan that included targeted investments for carbon reduction. President-elect Obama is also expected to use some of the $700 billion stimulus package on eco-businesses.

In an effort to survive the current credit crisis, hedge funds are lengthening lockup times in order to reduce the number of redemption requests (see Bloomberg article). In return, and in an attempt to raise more capital, some of the very same hedge funds are lowering management fees from 2 to 1 percent, and further lowering performance fees from 20 to 15 percent, or even as low as 10 percent in some instances.

Goldman Sachs, still adjusting to its new role as a bank holding company, is considering online banking (see WSJ article). The move in being done in part to help increase its deposit base. While a lower-margin business, the increased deposit base will allow Goldman to have a more stable capital base during difficult market conditions, one of the main reasons for changing its status to a bank-holding company.

Interesting article about John Paulson and some other hedge fund winners this year (see Bloomberg article). The article is long, but worth the read. There is some variety in the strategies and approaches, but funds betting against subprime and housing did the best, not surprisingly. Even a quant fund did well.

It looks like the commodity crash is taking its toll on salaries and bonuses. The top paid metal and energy traders may "only" earn $1-1.5 million in salary and bonus this year, down from $5-8 million in 2007 (see Bloomberg article). Difficult times indeed. I guess there will be no more $1,000 ice cream sundaes and pizza for a while (see blog post).

According to Treasury Secretary Paulson, there is a need for a new regulatory system that will look "at the entire financial system." See Financial Week article. "Entire" in this case applies to countries, in addition to asset classes. So the plan is to have each country overseeing the regulation of another country's financial system - this should produce some interest debate.

Man Group says that banks, and not hedge funds, are more levered, and as a result are the main cause of asset price declines (see Reuters article). Man also puts hedge fund leverage at about one-third its levels in 2007. Expect future returns to also show similar trends.

Portable alpha strategies are providing pain for various state pension funds (see WSJ article). Even the PIMCO portable alpha fund is taking a hit. You can find additional details on portable alpha strategies here.

While hedge fund redemption requests have been strong in the US, the next wave of redemption requests may come from Asia, where many hedge funds have suffered worse performance than similar funds in the west (see The Standard, Hong Kong article). In comparison, Asian hedge funds are down 22.2 percent on average, compared to an average loss of 12.2 percent for all hedge funds. As a result, more pain could be felt for international investments.

Should Treasury go back to its original plan of buying MBS in a reverse auction? Some economist believe so (see NY Post article). Having the government receive common, instead of preferred shares, would also go a long way towards further instilling confidence in private investors - who currently see the government being unwilling to take the same risk they are being asked to take.