It is estimated that China will spend $42 billion to host the Olympics. To put that into perspective, that is almost three times what Greece spent on the Athens Olympics and roughly the cost of Hurricane Katrina reconstruction. That infrastructure build out has certainly been a major boost to the Chinese economy, but China plans on spending even more on the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai and the Sichuan earthquake reconstruction is expect to cost $140 billion. The Chinese building boom is going to last for a lot longer.

A reader left a question that I think is pretty damn good. He asked "what are the variables that I use that allow you to do a forward analysis of an asset with any meaningful probability of being right." As someone who believes in top down management I focus on big picture issues and then try to figure the best way to invest toward the big picture while at the same time building in some sort of counter strategy in case my assessment is wrong. So instead of looking at a stock from the bottom up and saying ok, here is a stock with such and such valuations that will make more widgets next year for a slightly smaller cost and buying it, top down looks at the world for things like supply and demand issues, turning points in cycles or big long-lasting themes as examples. The world ...

After a large run up in Q1 of this year Agriculture related commodities pulled significantly. Its not uncommon for futures to take a dive after such a large run up. However, a few short months later agriculture commodities are at it again. Check out the chart of DBA: Right side of this chart is quite compelling has buying interest has shown up in recent weeks. With talk increasing about inflation and what the FOMC will do to combat it will certainly bring attention, once again to agriculture related commodities. Speaking of inflation and FOMC the dollar has been on a tear as of late. Ben Bernanke has recently been taking a stand regarding the stance the FOMC is taking. This certainly helps the dampen the fear that the market will continue to have an oversupply of dollars. The next ...