SHORT INTERESTS: TIPS, TRENDS, OBSERVATIONS

Ode to an urn

Internet stocks don’t get hotter than this. Forget about astronomically priced online retailers like Amazon.com and eBay. A better deal, if a more macabre one, may be on the horizon: DiscountUrns.com.

If you haven’t heard of this online cremation urn seller yet, you will. The Annandale, Va.-based company is the leading retailer of urns on the Internet, following its acquisition of none other than Urnsdirect.com, and it is now inviting investors to participate in a private stock offering.

Hey, at least death — in the words of Ben Franklin — is one of life’s two sure things, so there should be growth potential. Besides, no one ever said the Internet was a means to sell books and CDs alone. Maybe this net stock will even make money the old-fashioned way — it’ll urn it.

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The nation’s two biggest financial planning associations have called off plans to merge due to “irreconcilable differences.” No, we’re not talking about the United States and the long-stalled talks between the International Association for Financial Planning and the Institute of Certified Financial Planners. At least not yet.

The announcement comes from Down Under. Money Management, an Australian fortnightly, reports in a recent issue of a breakdown, after six months, of talks to unite the Association of Financial Advisers and the Financial Planning Association. As is the case with the Atlanta-based IAFP and Denver-based ICFP, the two Aussie groups’ membership rolls are quite different: The AFA represents self-employed financial advisers, a classification that accounts for only about 40% of the FPA’s ranks. The latter has a stronger base “among funds management and life insurance executives,” says the article.

The two say they’re still on good terms and plan to put their heads together on matters of mutual interest — like lobbying, no doubt.

Milken it for all it’s worth

Michael Milken still knows how to find his way into the spotlight. The former junk bond kingpin, who’s since been barred from the securities business, arranged for a flier announcing his think tank’s upcoming confab to be stashed in a special issue of TJFR highlighting the Top 100 Business Journalists. The newsletter’s subscribers are mainly financial journalists and public relations people, just the ones to reach if you want some ink.

But alas, the flier arrived Feb. 5, four days after the Feb. 1 enrollment deadline for the “Milken Institute Global Conference.” Pity. We hear the weather in Beverly Hills is mighty nice around March 10.

By the way, the conference, which expects to draw “some 1,000 attendees,” features a panel called “Michael Milken and the Nobel Laureates” — with economists Merton Miller and Myron Scholes, who are known these days less for academic contributions than for their role in the near-collapse of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management LP. Among the speakers who were “invited but not confirmed” were: Vice President Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, Mikhail Gorbachev and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.