Sunday Morning Coffee

As I was reading Barron's I saw a banner ad for the Credit Suisse Merger Arb Liquid Index ETN (CSMA). I wrote about this somewhat favorably (other than the ETN structure) for theStreet.com when it first came out so I was curious to see how it had done versus a couple of contemporaries.

The chart compares CSMA in blue to the long tenured Merger Fund (MERFX) in yellow and the Index IQ Merger Arbitrage ETF (MNA) in red. I grabbed the chart from Morningstar because it accounts for the dividends in the chart but not so with MERFX in this chart. Smoothing out the dividend would have MERFX having a smoother ride to the same result. MNA has been a noticeable laggard.

I believe the lag in MNA is attributable to the fact that it does not short the acquirer it instead shorts broad indexes (either ETFs or futures contracts) in the belief it can capture the effect. The chart goes back to CSMA's inception which may not be enough time but MNA has also lagged MERFX going back to MNA's inception. The democratization of the strategy via retail products is a good thing but it makes sense to give funds that are not plain vanilla, like these, a little time to show what they might do. I expressed a little skepticism about MNA in the TSCM article linked above but should have stressed it a little more.

With the market up 100% from the March 2009 low and everyone feelin' groovy these funds are getting less attention than they probably should at this point in the cycle.

On a different note I stumbled across this link titled Live Every Baseball Fan's Dream Job. Major league baseball is going to hire someone to watch every game for the entire 2011 season, blog about it and do some other things like media appearances.

Basically someone will get paid for watching baseball. While it sounds fun it does not sound easy but I think it speaks to a point I make repeatedly about post retirement careers (or pre retirement careers) and find something you love to do, would do for free and figuring out how to get paid for it.

To this point I got an email, somehow related to my role with the fire department, with results for some sort of fishing competition down south somewhere. Top ten results were posted for two different competitions and of the 20 names posted, 15 of them won more than $2500. The big winner was awarded $32,000. How far do you think $2500 goes for someone with a modest lifestyle? I'm sure there are expenses incurred with this but you get the point.

The only limit here is imagination. I promise you that whatever it is you most like to do in your leisure time, someone has figured out how to make some sort of living at it. Perhaps not a lucrative living, that might be unrealistic, but someone with a modest lifestyle can relieve a decent chunk of their portfolio's burden implementing something like this not to mention the health benefits of staying actively engaged.