We here at Abnormal Returns are starting to ease our way into the three-day weekend with just one post today that includes a number of follow-ups. We hope you enjoy the linkfest.

We noted the Goople news yesterday. Today Roger Ehrenberg at Information Arbitrage and John Markoff in the New York Times add some much needed perspective on the tech giants.

In light of our discussion of hedge fund proxies and the changing world of hedge funds we found a piece by Marc Hogan in the BusinessWeek.com worthy of note. In the article Hogan highlights five hybrid funds that may be worthy of a small portfolio allocation.

Barry Ritholtz at the Big Picture notes the narrowing breadth of corporate earnings.

Ticker Sense has a neat graph with Wall Street strategist’s average recommended equity allocations.

James Picerno at the Capital Spectator looks at the relatively poor performance of commodities in light of a world free of compelling asset classes.

Random Roger notes the “double-edged sword” that is a slew of new narrowly defined commodity ETFs coming to the London market.

Alexei Barrionuevo in the New York Times takes a first-hand look at implications of a world with E85 and its availability in the most logical place – the Midwest.

Speaking of energy, Paul Kedrosky at Infectious Greed points to a piece on the sometimes heated debate on the issue of “peak oil.”

Lawrence Carrel at SmartMoney.com on the difficulty some ETF sponsors are having in tracking their fund’s underlying index.

Accrued Interest thinks this Wall Street Journal story on the potential for insider trading in the CDS (credit-default swap) market is less than meets the eye.

Peter Burrows at BusinessWeek.com on the growing interest in LBO/MBOs of technology stocks in Silicon Valley.

CXO Advisory Group notes a Fama-French paper on “..how migration of firms across categories contributes to the size effect and the value premium.”

David Pauly at Bloomberg.com the uses (and abuses) of “phantom stock” in corporate America.

Mary Beth Markelin in the USA Today on the tricky balancing act that public universities face in managing the in-state/out-of-state mix of students.

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