Stephen Fidler at the Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece running today about the annual winter pipeline politics (though the sensible agreement yesterday in Yalta may diminish a lot of fears).  There are some interesting facts and numbers in the piece - for example the estimate that Gazprom's contract prices are sitting around $10 per million BTU, while LNG can be had on the spot market for $4 per million BTU.  In a refreshing change of pace, we see Fidler point more of the blame at the national champions E.ON and ENI if by chance Eastern European households go cold this winter.  From a business perspective, a supply cut-off would really hurt Gazprom and benefit the state-corporate avarice of Western Europe (who have the ability to import from alternative sources).Either way, things are looking bad for everybody ...

TODAY: Youtube policeman faces slander investigation; Omsk students threatened with expulsion; Committee to Protect Journalists urge global attention to threats against media in Russia. Merkel thanks Gorbachev; Medvedev approves new military bill; advocates abolition of death penalty. Delay for Gazprom eyesore?; Nobel Prize winning physicist dies; Kalashnikov goes on; gangsters' idea of cemetery chic. Corruption-highlighting policeman Alexei Dymovsky is now facing three investigations after posting a video address to Putin lamenting the state of the police, including an Investigative Committee examination of whether the policeman's accusations hold any truth; another investigation is against Dymovsky himself, for slander.  Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev has already ordered an investigation into the Novorossiisk police force and suspended Dymovsky ...

Matt may think it’s all about Zecco. I think it’s all about advisers.

Zecco? Really Matt? Honestly, for investors who are holding big accounts at Zecco, Schwab isn’t likely to be an issue in any case. Zecco, for those who don’t know the firm, is a super-low-discount broker, offering everything from bargain basement foreign exchange trading to $5 options. A few ETFs are unlikely to even be on the radar of Zecco customers.

I think the real target for Schwab’s new ETFs is the money Schwab’s existing customers have in ETFs.

Schwab’s huge. They custody $1.3 trillion for their 5.3 million customers, and process over 300,000 trades each and every day. Perhaps most importantly, Schwab acts as the back end for over 6,000 independent advisers in their adviser services business.

It’s a mistake to think that Schwab, as a broker, is in the transaction business. Fundamentally, they’re in the banking business. Schwab makes 35-40

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At the G20 finance summit in St Andrews, the problem of unemployment was raised as well as 'uneven growth'; Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has said that 'exit strategies' will have to be considered.  Kudrin apparently believes that a second wave of crisis is unlikely.  Goldman Sachs will not become the key adviser to Rusal on its intended $30 billion stock-market listing, a decision which is 'mutual'; the Bank of America Merrill Lynch will take its place.  Apparently Goldman Sachs may have been deterred by Rusal owner Oleg Deripaska's problems in the US, fueled by allegations that he is involved with organized crime.  The government has nearly completed the initial development of an agency designed to help provide subsidies for exports loans and regulate export tariffs.  Mitsubishi has acquired a 40% stake in Russia's Rolf Import.  ...

Investors have filed a class action lawsuit against Regions Financial Corporation (RF) on charges that the bank had obtained shareholders’ approval for the 2006 acquisition of AmSouth Bancorp by misleading investors about its own financial condition.  In November 2006, when the bank announced to purchase AmSouth Bancorp for $10 billion, it allegedly made false representations about the benefits of combining the two banks into a single operation. AmSouth Bancorp has a significant presence in residential loans in Florida market, which suffered losses when the housing bubble burst. Thus, the investors had been unaware that the purchase would expose the company to potential losses.  In January 2009, Regions announced a $6 billion write-down of goodwill stemming from the AmSouth acquisition. AmSouth was supposed to bring about $6 billion in goodwill to Regions, besides the prospects of doubling its operations in Florida's real estate market. Regions had overstated ...

The nature of the financial adviser marketplace has changed. And that means that some investors should probably change their financial advisers.

A decade ago, the task of most mainstream financial advisers was relatively simple. They formed relationships with clients, developed a straightforward wealth-building plan, invested their clients’ money in a portfolio of mutual funds and tried to make sure that their clients didn’t do anything stupid while the market did the work.

To me, that last piece was always the most valuable. Having someone or something in between you and your money is often a good idea. A good adviser can dissuade you from acting on impulse, either rushing to buy the “next big thing” or rushing to sell something that has under-performed. In both cases, it usually saves you money in the long run.

For most advisers, however, the task of actually managing money was secondary. The best portfolios are almost always

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Dr Stock Pick HOT News & Alerts!

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FREE Daily Stock Alerts From DrStockPick.com

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Saturday September 26, 2009

DrStockPick.com Stock Report!

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Amkor Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMKR) today announced that Joanne Solomon, chief financial officer, and Jim Fusaro, executive vice president for assembly and test business, will participate in the Deutsche Bank Leveraged Finance Conference in Scottsdale, Ariz. on Wednesday, September 30, 2009. The presentation is scheduled to begin at 5:50 p.m. (EDT).

Insured Municipal Income Fund, Inc. (NYSE: PIF) today announced that the Fund’s Board of Directors (the “Board”) has approved and will seek the approval of shareholders at

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The Harry Dent exchange-traded fund from AdvisorShares is overpriced and doesn’t fit into the way most investors use ETFs, Heather. It’s also one of the more interesting ETFs to come along in a while.

We’ve covered the debut of the Dent Tactical ETF (NYSEArca: DENT) closely on IndexUniverse.com. We wrote about the launch here, and ran an in-depth interview with Harry Dent, one of the fund’s portfolio managers, here.

The idea is simple: Two well-known market forecasters, Harry Dent Jr. and Rodney Johnson, will actively manage a portfolio by “identifying, through proprietary economic and demographic analysis, the overall trend of the U.S. and global economies and how consumer spending patterns may change based on this analysis.”

That sounds like a fairly normal active strategy. What makes DENT interesting is that the two managers will implement their strategy using ETFs. DENT, in other words, is an ETF-of-ETFs.

That’s interesting because it solves one

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With the global economy on the mend, could gold be gearing up for another record-setting run? It sure looks that way. 

After peaking north of the $1,000 per ounce price level last year, gold hit a stumbling block when deflationary fears in the world’s largest economy sucked the air out of commodities prices and sent hoards of investors stampeding into the safe-haven of U.S. Treasuries, and helped spawn a rebound in the U.S. dollar.

Since that time, the global economic outlook - especially beyond U.S. borders - has improved, and gold prices have stabilized.

The next step - many gold bulls say - is for the yellow metal to make a run for new highs.

Whipsaw Trading Patterns

Gold started 2009 at about $870 an ounce - down substantially from early 2008 when prices hit a record-high $1033.90, but significantly higher than the $712.30 an ounce it was trading at in mid-November.

Then, when talk of inflation

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[Editor's Note: If you're new to the commodities-investing arena, and are uncertain about the landscape - or even if you're an "old hand" at natural-resource stocks, but want some insights into the new profit plays and new players - consider hiring a guide: Money Morning Contributing Editor Peter Krauth, a recognized expert in metals, mining and energy stocks, is also the editor of the Global Resource Alert trading service, which ferrets out companies poised to profit from the so-called “Secular Bull Market” in commodities. A former portfolio advisor, Krauth continues to work out of resource-rich Canada, which keeps him close to most of the companies he researches. Against the growing global financial malaise, Krauth says that commodities are among the most-profitable and least-risky investments available, and notes that this may well be the most powerful bull market for commodities we’ll see in our lifetimes. He …