links for 2011-08-17

At the end of last week’s trading, SPY’s assets had shrunk to about $73.8 billion according to State Street, a result of both sinking asset prices and outflows from the popular equity fund. Interest in gold, meanwhile, was red hot, inflows into GLD accelerated, and the fund hit about $73.9 billion on Wednesday of last week, before sliding back to finish Thursday’s session with about $72 billion.

As regular investors fled the unprecedented stock market volatility this month, purchases by company executives relative to sales hit the highest levels since 1998, according to one of the more widely-watched insider buying newsletters on Wall Street. There was an almost eight-fold increase in buy transactions over two weeks and 16-fold jump during the last three weeks, according to Vickers Weekly Insider, which is published by Argus Research.