MEDIA REVIEWS - May 23-31, 2010

Harold Evensky is about to turn his quarterly column over to the academics, which might not be a good thing, since he has been such an effective filter of the noise (and there is SO much of it) in the academic journals. In this issue of the Journal, he summarizes articles which say something similar to what Mohamed El-Erian has said: that we are slouching toward a "new normal" economic and investment world. It would be nice if he'd tell us exactly what returns will be in various asset classes.

Meanwhile, tech consultant Bill Winterberg does a nice job of teaching us about the unfamiliar world of social media, and a former director of risk analytics at Merrill Lynch walks us through the unfamiliar universe of puts and calls, options and futures, trying to help us make sense of it all. (Hint: reduced volatility and equally-reduced long-term returns. The options markets seem to be highly-efficient.)

I was disappointed in the focus of the cover article (are ETFs alternative investments?), but in execution, it is far better than what we've grown used to from the Journal's cover articles. Let's celebrate progress where we can...