This could be the greatest show on earth and you should really give traders a hand. Markets opened strongly on the back of oversold conditions, a stronger dollar, weaker gold, oil and commodities. But later with FNM, FRE crushed and others in the financial sector, stocks fell off a cliff.

It looked mighty grim for awhile this afternoon, but Da Boyz and their allies were there to save, if only temporarily, what was turning out to be horrible day. At the stroke of 3 PM 12K contracts, mostly on the buy side, hit the NASDAQ eMini contract and the short squeeze began. While prices faded into the close the action was spectacular all day.

Volume was again heavy and breadth horrible. Yahoo/Finance has trouble with numbers and maybe that’s a reason they can’t figure out MSFT’s bid….

Countries that require less energy per unit of GDP may fare better during a period of high energy prices.

This table shows the Kg of oil equivalent consumed per unit of GDP on a purchasing power parity basis for 32 countries, as reported by the United Nations.

This data is not a measure of energy use efficiency, because it does not distinguish between countries with high energy intensity industries (such as steel making) versus those with low energy intensity industries (such as software).

The data also does not indicate how much margin exists to be more efficient if necessary.

Interesting observations, include that the United States and China have similar energy consumption per unit of GDP, although the US figures probably include a much higher personal energy use component as part of the overall energy use.

Also, India uses only about 82% as much energy per unit …

We are sometimes asked why emerging markets are so much more volatile than developed markets. The answer is that, due to their relative size, money flows between them cause most of the volatility effect.

Consider a real world situation that most of us have seen — a stream emptying in to a pond and another stream at the the other end of the pond draining the overflow.

Think of the streams as the emerging markets and the pond as the developed markets. Think of the water as money.

The water in the stream feeding the pond moves quickly. When the water enters the pond, it slows as it spreads out in the breadth and depth of the pond. When the water enters the stream draining the pond overflow, it moves quickly again.

The streams are narrow and shallow by comparison to the …

Recently I posted how international ETF stand in relation P/E to GDP (link to post). The most undervalued seemed to be emerging markets of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China).World markets had turned to negative on October and have started bear market which lasts already 6 months. But major fall happened at the beginning of year 2008. I run my screen for ETF to see the leaders and laggards on YTD basis. Her you have result. ...

One indicator, PEG, of fundamental analysis measures P/E relative to growth (EPS growth). It is especially helpful to compare stocks, indexes. Low P/E not necessary means under valuated price. It's always needed to compare with potential growth. PEG indicator uses EPS growth as a denominator.I made following analysis for world stock markets. Assets are regional ETF underlying international stocks. It's not problem to find P/E ratio for ETF in question but it's always difficult to find EPS respectively EPS growth data. Therefore I used expected GDP growth (2008) for world economies (based on IMF prediction). Which means as a PEG denominator is GDP growth instead of EPS growth. ...

There are 67 countries between the United States, Canada, EAFE, emerging market and frontier market countries. It may be helpful to you if you visualize the geographic relationship between those countries when you think about making country, region or development stage country investments.

The pie chart shows the relative market cap size of the US, Canada, the 21 EAFE (Europe, Australasia, Far East) countries, and the 25 emerging market countries. The stock market capitalization of the 19 frontier market countries is essentially negligible in comparison to the other market categories.

The map color codes the location of Canada, EAFE countries, and the emerging and frontier market countries. The US in not color coded.

It is interesting to note that the square area of the emerging markets is quite …