[Members, be sure to check in for the weekend portfolio update.]

The Financial Times has a fascinating interactive map of key oil players and movements.

Roger Nusbaum profiles one of several forthcoming frontier ETFs. For when BRICs get too boring, you can own some Poland, Chile, and Egypt.

Greg Feirman wonders whether Lehman really is bankrupt; in Barron’s, Steven Sears notes that the premiums in LEH options “show that investors think the stock is more than twice as risky as the overall financial sector.”

It’s kind of strange that with so many urgent economic and national security issues on the table, McCain is trotting out the old “tax-and-spend liberal!” boilerplate. Even worse, it might not even be true, if you can imagine that:

Economists of various ideological persuasions, however, view Mr. McCain’s assessment as inaccurate or exaggerated. Some question whether Mr. Obama’s tax plan can even be characterized as an increase. Some also argue that contrary to Mr. McCain’s assertions, the Democrat’s proposals, if enacted, would actually reduce taxes for the middle class — the voters both candidates see as the key to victory.

Finally, Felix Salmon endorses an eminently reasonable proposal for saving The New York Times from itself: give subscribers voting shares of stock. It would probably work, although we would be concerned about the potential for a trend to develop whereby customers and stakeholders decided how their companies should be run (rather than, you know, the vultures of high finance). What next, allowing workers to control the means of production? Horrors!

One of the more frustrating aspects of mainstream financial journalism (and journalists) is that, while plenty of time and energy is devoted to coverage of stocks, commodities, and even the more esoteric financial products - counterparty risk on credit default swaps, anyone? - very little attention is paid to the kinds of news that options traders care about.

OptionsNews, as you might guess from the name, aims to change that. They provide daily market updates, coverage of major movements in the options market, educational videos, and trade ideas. They’re a subsidiary of PEAK6, one of the major market making firms in Chicago, and have a staff of experienced traders and hosts who cover a wide variety of topics on the site’s six shows. Among those shows are:

• Options Physics - the educational arm of the site, including articles and videos broken down by skill level (Basic, Advanced, Professional). The pieces are pleasantly concise and yet substantive.
• Sidewinder - a neat daily trading tool that highlights unusual options volume in equities.
• Mad About Options - this show is touted as covering Jim Cramer’s Mad Money picks, but they’re totally underselling it: the real value is that the commentators teach you how to position yourself with or against Cramer’s pick using options, which will be very helpful for novice options traders.

The OptionsNews website is still in beta - either that, or they’re touting the fact that their picks merely track the market (just kidding) - but it already looks great and loads quickly, especially given how video-intensive it is. Other features include forums, a market data page, and a calendar function. Oh, and they’re apparently going to allow users to upload videos going forward.

This site definitely targets an unfilled niche in the world of online financial journalism: nobody else is providing quality video coverage of the options markets, and if they keep adding new educational posts and videos at anything like their current pace, this could become one of the best resources for options education anywhere on the web.

Disclosure: PEAK6 also owns OptionsHouse, which is a fantastic retail broker with whom we have an autotrading relationship. We received no compensation for this review, although we are suckers for single malts from Islay and Skye.

• 1 - Billions of dollars of sales slam muni bonds | Reuters
  A great time to get into munis if you don’t already have some!
  (tags: bonds municipal)
• 2 - THE SHARK REPORT: WEEKEND TIMES
  Now for the good news: Biderman does not expect the recession to last much longer than the end of 2008. “I see this thing lasting longer than the bulls think but not as deep as the bears expect. People will start feeling better later this year.”
  (tags: recession spending consumer)

• 1 - The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors - New York Times
  “Closing a door on an option is experienced as a loss, and people are willing to pay a price to avoid the emotion of loss,” Dr. Ariely says. In the experiment, the price was easy to measure in lost cash. In life, the costs are less obvious — wasted
  (tags: decision economics behavioral)

• 1 - The Perry Bible Fellowship
  hilarious comic - not trading-related, but that’s okay!
  (tags: hilarious comic)
• 2 - MarketBeat Blog - WSJ.com : The Bond Market’s Wild Ride
  The bond market has gotten more volatile in the last several months, and analysts at RT-ICAP finger the disparate views thrust upon investors from the Federal Reserve as one of the key culprits.
  (tags: fed market bond)