Editor's Note: The following is a roundup of articles about ETFs, index funds and indexes from other sources than IndexUniverse.com. Comments and suggestions are welcome through email at: mcoleman@indexuniverse.com or  mhougan@indexuniverse.com. 

Has Buffet Lost His Touch?

This catchy title no doubt will get a lot of attention. And the author, Simon Maierhofer, makes some pointed short-term observations about Warren Buffett's advice as viewed from his latest press clippings.

Maierhofer then leaps into a discussion of how most ETFs are selling at significant discounts from their high points. Not a startling revelation, but if you've got some time to kill, this piece from the ETFguide.com might be of interest.

Note, however, this isn't an ad-free article. The piece is laced with references and links to its newsletters. You can view it here.

John Spence II?

In Wednesday's Fund Track column in the Wall Street Journal,  an earlier story by MarketWatch's John Spence on Barclays Global Investor's move into the target-date retirement market appears. You might prefer the original, which usually gets a fuller airing at its original point of creation. (The MarketWatch site is also free, whereas WSJ still charges.)

It's your pick ... the link to the WSJ version is here. The original, which we discussed in Monday's roundup, is here.

Shorting The Ruble With XRU

The new Rydex Russian Ruble ETF (NYSE: XRU) has been getting lots of attention. A professional derivatives trader, Rakesh Saxena, discusses shorting the ETF.

Rather than using inverse funds, he likes such an approach and explains in detail his reasons for making such a move. He also suggests not making any short-term bets, rather looking at now through next year as a proper time horizon for timing such emerging markets currencies.

One caveat here, though. With Seeking Alpha pieces, most anything goes. We always read the bios of authors not readily familiar to us. In the bio supplied, he's identified as a "risk pricing specialist" at Quote Platform Syndicate and an active derivatives player. In this case, you'll notice that Saxena provides some transparency by explaining at the end what he's currently shorting. But please use some common sense here, folks.  

The piece can be found here.

Waiting For A Breakout In Energy

Another professional trader, Jim Farrish, takes a look at the technical aspects of energy ETFs and what signals to look for in order to make a play in various subsectors.

As in keeping with most pieces on Greenfaucet.com, it's rather short. But it has a graph and gives some general pointers to those inclined to trading.  (We're not familiar with Farrish other than the fact he's apparently an advisor and that Greenfaucet.com is run by Chip Hanlon and his Delta Global Advisors group. The Web site features pieces from the professional advisement community. )

You can catch the article here.

Lazy Asset Allocation Portfolio

One of those Greenfaucet.com contributors is Roger Nusbaum. Of course, he also has his own blog site and regularly pens columns for TheStreet.com.

In this piece written for the latter, he puts together a portfolio using asset allocation funds with different set levels. Nusbaum adds other ETFs and ETNs to the mix to fill out a more diversified portfolio.

You can find the column here.