Small caps are expensive relative to their big cap cousins.  (ROI)

First half market performance tells us little about the rest of the year.  (Marketwatch)

Share buybacks are back, but nowhere near where they were pre-crisis.  (Market Blog)

The S&P 500 Advance-Decline is mired in oversold territory.  (Trader’s Narrative)

Why did it take so long for the retail sector to crack?  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

Down 10% is a bad month for any one, especially Andrew Hall.  (Dealbreaker)

Maybe index investors didn’t cause in a boom in commodity prices.  (Economist)

How exactly does Renaissance Technologies make money?  (Felix Salmon also AR Screencast)

What does past return consistency tell us about future returns?  (CXO Advisory Group)

Short-sellers are everywhere and always a target.  (Felix Salmon, Kid Dynamite, market folly)

Luck, persistence and fund performance.  Why actively managed ETFs are coming whether you like it or not..  (Abnormal Returns)

The BOE scrutinizes ETFs for “complexity and lack of transparency.”  (FT Alphaville)

Glimmers of hope in the IPO market.  (NYTimes)

Was the flash crash caused by “quote stuffing“?  (Trader’s Narrative, Nanex)

A  financial reform bill emerges from conference.  (Politico, NYTimes, Bloomberg, WSJ, FT)

What’s in (and out) of the finreg bill.  (CNNMoney, Reuters)

How much bite does finreg really have?  (The Reformed Broker, 24/7 Wall St., Jeff Matthews, Planet Money, DJ Market Talk, Slate)

Giving a grade to financial reform.  (Big Picture)

Big hedge funds are going to pay for finreg.  (FT Alphaville also CNBC)

Your broker now has a higher standard to live up to.  (The Reformed Broker)

Are central clearing houses ground zero in the next financial crisis?  (FT Alphaville)

Using Gannett (GCI) as an economic bellwether.  (MarketBeat)

Where this economic recovery stands.  (VIX and More)

Rail traffic continues to rise.  (Pragmatic Capitalism)

Low mortgage rates are not inducing much new lending.  (WashingtonPost)

The housing market could go nowhere for a couple of more years.  (The Money Game)

Housing=Jobs.  (MarketBeat)

Why doesn’t the Fed care more about unemployment?  (Slate)

The BDI is falling, but how worried should we be?  (FT)

The austerity vs. growth debate is a false one according to Mohamed El-Erian.  (FT)

Is some ECB liquidity flowing back into the capital markets?  (Data Diary)

The European debt crisis is going to play out over years.  (China Financial Markets)

The Russian economy is at a fork in the road.  (beyondbrics)

The upshot of renminbi rate flexibility.  (FT, naked capitalism, beyondbrics)

Just how big is the Gulf (of Mexico) oil economy?  (Fortune, The Money Game)

BP (BP) project partners are re-thinking their deals.  (FT)

Natural gas is expected to take market share over the next several decades.  (NYTimes)

The state of venture capital in Chicago.  (peHUB)

The downside of share buybacks.  (A VC)

A talk from a Berkshire Hathaway CIO candidate.  (Street Capitalist)

What does the rise of Apple (AAPL) tell us about the economy of the future?  (Howard Lindzon)

iPhone 4 sales continue to surprise to the upside.  (Apple 2.0 also GigaOM)

Box office derivatives are dead.  (THR)

What soccer tells us about the new world economy.  (Infectious Greed)

There are now a number of ways to follow Abnormal Returns including:  @ARupdates, free e-mails:  AR Classic,  AR Energy, AR Options, the Abnormal Returns widget, our daily screencasts.