It may be the end of summer, the slowest trading days of the year, but deals continued at a near-frenzied pace this week, even as the broad market slump continued. Sadly, I own none of the targets of any of these bids, most of which carry substantial premiums and represent a windfall for the target’s shareholders. I do own shares in two of the bidders: Intel (INTC: 18.12, -0.31, -1.68%) and BHP Billiton (BHP: 69.72, -1.08, -1.52%).

I wish I could say that was good news. But as readers of the Common Sense m&a playbook know, share prices of the acquiring companies almost always drop in the short term, which is what’s been happening.

Unless you’re a specialist in merger arbitrage, an investor who speculates in takeovers, it’s too late to cash in by buying shares of the companies being acquired. Profit margins are slim, costs high, and except in rare instances, the odds don’t make sense for most individual investors. True, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan (POT: 149.49, +0.99, +0.66%) is resisting BHP’s all-cash offer while evidently shopping for a higher bid. There could be a bidding war, like the one Hewlett-Packard (HPQ: 39.92, -0.42, -1.04%) is in with Dell (DELL: 12.32, -0.27, -2.14%) over data storage concern 3PAR (PAR: 32.90, +0.01, +0.03%). But Potash shares are already trading above the offered price.

That leaves the downtrodden bidders. The market is often indiscriminate in punishing all bidders, which sometimes creates opportunities. Are there any lurking in the current round of deals?

As an investor, my favorite deal is the so-called horizontal merger or acquisition, in which one company buys a direct competitor. They often reduce competition, boosting margins and profits. That’s also why I may not like them as a consumer, and they often come under close antitrust scrutiny. My favorite merger of this type was Whirlpool’s (WHR: 75.98, -3.22, -4.06%) acquisition of Maytag (and I subsequently bought Whirlpool shares.) But not even these mergers are foolproof: After Whole Foods Market (WFMI: 35.68, -0.98, -2.67%) bought its direct competitor Wild Oats Markets, which was challenged on antitrust grounds, the stock struggled, despite the synergies.

None of the recent high-profile deals meet this standard. BHP has rights to land containing potash and owns a company that simply explores and develops potash mines–so its move to acquire Potash is simply diversifying. Similarly, Intel, which is acquiring the wireless unit of Infineon Technologies (IFX), has been trying to beef up its presence in chips for mobile devices, where its internal efforts have come up short. It’s basically decided to buy this line of business rather than build it. So, too, is H-P, which already has a data storage division and is seeking to expand into cloud storage.

The strongest bidder for Potash, one that could easily pay more than BHP because of greater economies of scale, would be another potash or fertilizer company. Brazilian mining giant Vale SA (VALE: 27.56, -0.60, -2.13%) is aggressively expanding its potash production, and aims to be the one of the world’s largest producers by 2017. Mosaic (MOS: 57.86, -0.24, -0.41%) is a close rival to Potash Corp. Or perhaps MOS could be a target itself. Its share price jumped after the Potash bid, but at a recent $57, it still looks reasonable compared to Potash Corp.

The bidding for 3PAR has probably gotten too rich for anyone else, but the logical buyers would have been other data storage companies like NetApp (NTAP: 44.78, +0.73, +1.65%, which I own) or EMC (EMC: 19.73, -0.18, -0.90%). NTAP supposedly looked at 3PAR but declined to bid. With a market cap of $37.4 billion, EMC is probably too big to be easily acquired, but NTAP is a more manageable $14.3 billion. Although NTAP shares rallied briefly on the 3PAR news, both stocks are well off their highs for the year.

So I’m not inclined to spend the Labor Day weekend as a risk arbitrager, worrying about the latest twists in either the Potash or 3PAR deals. But for long term investors who believe that potash production and data storage have promise, Mosaic and NetApp look attractive.