The weekend is a great time to catch up on some of the reading you skipped during the week.  We hope you enjoy this set of long-form links.

Finance

What is the ‘limit order effect‘ and how does it change our thinking about behavioral finance?  (The Psy-Fi Blog)

The Energy Report: With Brent Crude trading at about US$110 per barrel (bbl) and natural gas futures trading at 10-year lows, are you leaning more heavily toward oily names than you did in 2011?
Luc Mageau: Absolutely. In fact, although gas prices have been reduced to around the $2.50 level, it still seems like the picture could get worse before it gets better. Current natural gas storage is at ~3.5 trillion cubic feet (Tcf); that’s a full 0.4 Tcf fuller than an average winter. The reason we have such a glut of gas is the winter has not been co-operating.

Can it be?  An initial public offering of an ethanol producer?  Yes, in mid December 2011, Pennsylvania-based Coskata, Inc. filed a registration statement to raise $100 million through the sale of common stock.  Coskata needs capital to build a production facility planned for Boligee, Alabama that is supposed to initially produce 16 million gallons of ethanol per year.  Eventually Coskata hopes to boost capacity to 78 million gallons per year.

There’s no time like the recently-passed 10-year anniversary of the Enron wipeout to revisit some solid pieces of investment wisdom. And one of those nuggets is of such all-encompassing sagacity that it can be easily summarized in a single word.

Diversify.

Portland General Electric (POR:  NYSE) is priced to yield 4.3% on its quarterly dividend.  That is definitely something to like in a world where interest rates are at record low levels.  A low beta of 0.50 makes the risk of equity ownership palatable even for a risk averse investor.  Although POR is trading near its 52-week high, it’s trailing price earnings ratio of 13.2 is slightly below the average for electric utilities.  Nice dividend, low risk, slightly below fair price.