Five for Friday (and the Weekend)

Here are five things you might wish to check out as time permits between now and Monday morning:

• John Heinzl writes in The Globe and Mail about the credit crunch creating bargains for value investors. He names three with their stock picks. Among them is Wade Burton of Mackenzie Cundill, who likes Canfor and Torstar. Canfor is in the forestry sector and Torstar owns the Toronto Star newspaper, but also the Harlequin romance book publisher and a 20% stake in CTVGlobemedia. I don't hold either directly. Readers know I own Fairfax Financial (FFH/NYSE), which has a stake in Torstar.

• Louis Lowenstein's new book, The Investor's Dilemma, stresses something I've been saying on this blog repeatedly. That the mutual fund industry is more about marketing than serving investors. And that's because fund managers are rewarded by assets under management, not portfolio performance. That's scandalous in itself, yet the matter is compounded when you realize most fund manager's do not "eat their own cooking." You can spot the exceptions, such as Longleaf Partners or Third Avenue, when the managers have their own money invested alongside their fund's clients. And when they are willing to close funds when it's in the best interests of current investors. Lowenstein praises two funds, Wintergreen and Fairholme, disclosing his interest in them. Jim Grant devoted a Forbes column to Wintergreen sometime back, in which he also disclosed investing in.

• Michael Sesit's Bloomberg column points out that investors going bottom-fishing after the Bear Stearns debacle haven't done well. He writes, "From May 2 through June 12, US financials and European banks each fell 18 percent, and emerging-market bank shares were off 14 percent. Japan's banks sank 5 percent." I'll repeat something here, actually from Francis Chou, that many of these big bank CEOs don't know themselves how much toxic financial waste is on their balance sheets. After seeing what's happened to the likes of Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS, I'm staying away for now. They might turn out to be bargains at some point. I don't think we're there.

• Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed blog mentions something I've posted about in my previous remarks concerning Lonrho PLC -- that sub-Saharan Africa's GDP is growing 5% or thereabouts annually. Paul names a couple of ETFs, but points out that they are skewed more towards Eastern Europe and the Middle East. I find the idea of an African-wide play compelling, but my two best candidates are not selling at a discount to book value. And I'm not paying more than book to be in Africa, with all the risks, when I can buy Capital Southwest (CSWC/NASDAQ) at a 20% discount right here in the US of A.

• Scanning the three all-news cable channels can be depressing. Not because of the news, but because of the low-brow discussions. (During the evening hours, there's no news, just talk.) And it gets even worse when the subject is gas prices. The lack of education about how prices are set is, well, depressing. And when someone who knows is actually on, they're usually outnumbered by fools who interrupt endlessly. John T. Reed hits on this in a wonderful column about gas prices posted on his site. Check it out and see if you agree. Even if you don't, your intelligence won't be insulted.

That's it for this week. Have a great weekend, ladies and gentlemen.