SHORT INTERESTS: TIPS, TRENDS, OBSERVATIONS

Amazon.com gets a rival

When Vanguard Group investors opened their quarterly reports last month, they found an unanticipated bonus: the chance to buy senior chairman John C. Bogle’s new book at $16, more than a third off the list price of $24.95. Publisher John Wiley & Sons Inc. knows how Vanguard people like to watch their pennies.

The book, by the way, is titled “Common Sense on Mutual Funds: New Imperatives for the Intelligent Investor,” and comes with recommendations not only from Warren Buffett but from Don Phillips, president of Morningstar Inc., which apparently doesn’t award stars to books.

Although Vanguard Marketing Corp.’s logo appears in teeny-tiny type as if that’s who is paying for the brochure, shareholders needn’t worry: Wiley is covering all promotional and marketing fees for Mr. Bogle’s book. Spokesman John Woerth says the company “logo is required to appear on all literature that it distributes to its (fund) shareholders.” That doesn’t mean it (meaning shareholders) is footing the bill. Whew. Our confidence was shaken for a moment.

Pssst. The Wiley warehouse in New Jersey has a toll-free phone number. When you call, mention code 9-4515 if you want the discount.

Three in one, like the oil

Standard & Poor’s is putting all its fund rating units under one umbrella and calling it Fund Services. It’s a good-size umbrella, too: Although it covers only 300 workers, they’re spread over 13 countries.

The three units — Micropal, Fund Research and Managed Funds Group — each do slightly different things.

Micropal collects information on more than 51,000 investment funds from 52 countries with more than $15.5 trillion in managed assets; Fund Research rates offshore, British and emerging markets funds; Managed Funds Group rates bond and money market funds. In fact, a spokesman for the McGraw-Hill Cos. division says modestly that it rates more of them than any other such service.

Sanford Bragg, managing director, will head the unit from New York, with Mark Adorian, managing director of Micropal, overseeing sales, marketing and operations and Peter Jeffreys, managing director of Fund Research, heading research activities. Both hang their bowlers in London.

What about socks?

Teenagers who don’t put much thought into handing over 75 smackers for the latest trend in footwear might change their minds after looking at the Alliance for Investor Education’s savings calculator.

Last week, as part of its Facts on Saving and Investing campaign, the non-profit organization launched the calculator at www.investoreducation — its revamped website. Teenagers can enter their ages and the amount they’re about to squander on soft drinks, the opposite sex and CDs — or any potential purchase — and find out how much the money might be worth if instead it had been invested for 10 to 25 years, or to the age of retirement.

The sneakers, for example, if bought by a 13-year-old, might keep her feet protected, but if she’d talked to even a bad financial planner and invested the money at only an 8% annual rate of growth, she’d have $4,000 in 52 years — and awfully dirty feet.