Should equity investors care what the Baltic Dry Index is doing?  (Bespoke)

If you are going to play the leveraged ETFs is it better to be long or short?  (Daily Options Report)

Is “portable alpha” still the way forward for the investment management industry?  (All About Alpha)

“Unsurprisingly, generating alpha relative to what’ available to everyone as beta is tougher than it looks, as the mediocrity in much of the active management industry suggests.”  (Capital Spectator)

Barclays reportedly puts BGI on the block.  Who wants to buy it?  (WSJ.com, Bloomberg.com, IndexUniverse.com, DealBook, Deal Journal)

Will the IPO market rev up after the DigitalGlobe (DGI) offering?  (peHUB)

James Simons has some explaining to do.  (WSJ.com also Zero Hedge)

Profitable arbitrage profits in dual-class shares.  (Empirical Finance Research)

Is there an opportunity in “rolling up” the major daily newspapers?  (WashingtonPost.com also WSJ.com)

Have private equity firms written down their portfolios far enough?  (Deal Journal)

The “flight to simplicity” in derivatives trading and clearing is a welcome development.  (Rick Bookstaber)

“Will someone please explain to me why we are giving $22 Billion to Insurers?”  (Big Picture)

Is the TARP program “a sham”?  (Zero Hedge, update on previous)

Should we dispense with the “fiction” that Bank of America (BAC) can exist absent the government?  (Dealbreaker)

Insider trading is running amok.  (Clusterstock)

For the moment, mortgage rates are resisting the rise in Treasury yields.  (Bespoke)

“At the first signs of stabilization in housing, it would seem we have yet another wave of inventories set to hit the market from people wanting to sell their home.”  (Value Plays also greenfaucet.com)

Tough times calls for good teeth.  Seven things consumers are still doing.  (Real Time Economics)

While layoffs are a problem, the bigger issue is that firms have stopped hiring.  (Economix)

“Today’s investment slump may have particularly pernicious effects on productivity because, unlike Japan’s, it does not follow a capital-spending binge.”  (Economist.com)

How truthful is the Administration being with their budget assumptions?  (Deal Journal, Clusterstock, finem respice)

Speaking of the budget, health care costs loom over any long-term look at the budget.  (Economist’s View, Economix)

10 questions for Jim Cramer.  (Time.com)

Wolfram Alpha is coming and it looks cool.  (Economist.com, Rortybomb)

10 things to know about coffee.  (LiveScience.com, Skeptical Hypochondriac)

Talk about persistence. A 31 year old ‘rookie’ makes the most of his opportunity with the Chicago Cubs.  (ChicagoTribune.com)

Have we overlooked an interesting post in the investment blogosphere? If so, feel free to drop Abnormal Returns a line.