Fannie Pack

• It's the worst two-day decline in Fannie Mae (FNM) ever, as per Bespoke.
• It has the same EPS now as Altria (MO), but half the price notes Crossing Wall Street.
• Was it really fuzzy math, or fuzzy reporting? Calculated Risk writes a tome here suggesting the latter.

It's All In A Name

• Value Plays writes on some odd "coincidence" in the timing of the Sears Holdings (SHLD) earnings release.
• Uglychart writes on his two best names for the next 9 month's, eHealth (EHTH) and GeoEye (GEOY).
• NDX at 50% retracement, via Shark Report.
• Petroleo Brasileiro (PBR), and the world's new oil superpower, via Trader Mike.
• Check before you buy electronics at Costco (COST) says My 1st Million at 33.
• Full disclosure: I'm long a nice big box of Costco chocolate chip cookies and would note they alone are worth any annual fee Costco charges.

Abnormal ETF World

• Actually, hat tip to Abnormal for finding these next couple.
• Why didn't I think of this? It's an ETF comprised of... other ETFs.
• And Index Universe has eight new ETFs from Ishares.
• Also in the pipeline, long term Commodity and 2 new fixed income ETFs, via ETF Trends.

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• When I was on the AMEX, we used to kid that the Exchange was due to convert to a downtown tennis center any day now.
• Looks like the NYSE may get there first. The Specialists are leaving, replaced by... tumbleweed, says WSJ MarketBeat.
• Or not, says blogging "stallion" Bob Pisani.

NFL Macro Econ. 101

• There's a misleading observation here by some Economy professor named Mark Perry, only noteworthy because it is linked by Greg Mankiw.
• "Interestingly, the pattern of income distribution in the NFL is strikingly similar to the income inequality of the general population, and is actually slightly greater in the NFL (at least for these four teams). For example, the incomes of the top 25% of the players on the four teams above are paid between 71% and 77% of the total payroll (vs. around 67% for the US population)."
• His takeaway? " ...perhaps this pattern of income distribution is a natural and expected outcome of any extremely competitive environment where talent is scare, valuable and highly paid, whether it's the NFL or the overall economy. "
• So I'm sure this professor would agree that the NFL economic model is the way to go for America. Everyone's in the union. Prospective employees (draft picks) have no choice where to play, they are told. The lion's share of revenues are divied up equally between all 32 corporations, regardless of how well they are run (socialism anyone?). There's a minimum wage of $275,000. And there's an inflexible salary cap that effectively provides a ceiling for the top talent.
• To further buttress his cherry-picked point above, he throws this in. "Consider that Baltimore Ravens' Steve McNair's 2006 salary of $12 mln was 106 times the salary of the lowest paid Raven, Ikechuku Ndukwe, who made only $113,325. Isn't that comparison about as meaningless as the comparison between a CEO's salary and the salary of the lowest paid member of the organization?"
• Well, first of all, today's CEO makes something like 400-500 times the lowest paid member. And second of all, the number above is wrong, that $113,325 is only for part of a season. Ikechuku Ndukwe signed on November 15 last year as I was able to Google up in about three seconds here. The league minimum was $260,000 in 2006 as best I can tell, so McNair actually only makes 46 times what the lowest paid player makes.
• Even if Perry's numbers were right, why does it make the CEO comparison meaningless?