The November edition of Donald Coxe’s Basic Points research report (subtitled “The Power of Zero”) has just been published. His investment recommendations, as summarized in this document, are listed in the paragraphs below, but I do recommend you also read the full report at the bottom of the post. (Also note that Donald’s weekly webcasts can be accessed from the sidebar of the Investment Postcards site.)

1. Remain underweighted in US equities-as a percentage of total equities within global portfolios, and as a percentage of assets in US balanced portfolios. Underweight US bonds in global portfolios.

The Obama long-term financial projections for the US are high risk and unsustainable. Forthcoming elections-or a currency crisis-could induce some discipline, but within the OECD, the US should probably no longer be accorded top ranking for bonds and stocks.

2. Within the US market, underweight US economy-related

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Companies featured in this edition of the newsletter: ACTC, CHIP, CVM, DKAM, ENZ, IWEB, MBCI, MFGD, PHC

Markets rebounded last week, on the strength of upbeat productivity and manufacturing reports that led to solid gains in all of the major indices. Despite news that the unemployment rate had hit its highest levels in 25 years, the Dow managed to end the week up 310 points, gaining 3.2% on the week to close at 10,023, up 14.2% on the year. The Nasdaq posted a gain of 3.3%, closing at 2112 and extending its yearly gains to 34%, while the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 advanced 3.2% and 3.1% respectively on the week to bring their YTD performance to 18.4% and 16.2%.

Several better than expected economic reports provided buying incentive throughout much of the week, as investors managed to shake off the previous week’s negative bias to send indices into positive territory

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – November 4, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Marathon Oil Corporation (MRO), Exxon (XOM), ConocoPhillips (COP), Chevron (CVX) and Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (EPD).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=5513

Here are highlights from Tuesday’s AnalystBlog:

Marathon Beats, Production Up

Marathon Oil Corporation’s (MRO) third-quarter 2009 results came in better-than-expected, helped by the contribution from increased oil and natural gas production. Earnings per share, excluding mark-to-market and divestment losses, came in at 61 cents, above the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 56 cents.

However, as

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Marathon Oil Corporation’s (MRO) third-quarter 2009 results came in better-than-expected, helped by the contribution from increased oil and natural gas production. Earnings per share, excluding mark-to-market and divestment losses, came in at 61 cents, above the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 56 cents. However, as has been the case with the other oil majors that have already reported -- Exxon (XOM), ConocoPhillips (COP) and Chevron (CVX) -- earnings and revenue comparisons with the year-earlier period were quite ugly, severely hampered by lower realized commodity prices and weak refining margins. Marathon’s adjusted earnings per share plunged 77.9%, while sales declined 37.9% to $14.5 billion. Lower Prices More Than Offset Increased Upstream Volumes Income from the upstream segment totaled $491 million during the quarter, down 43.5% from the year-ago level. The company reported production (available for sale) of 393,000 oil-equivalent barrels per day (BOE/d), ...

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – October 30, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Moody’s (MCO), Microsoft (MSFT), Fannie Mae (FNM), Freddie Mac (FRE) and ExxonMobil Corporation (XOM).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=5513

Here are highlights from Thursday’s AnalystBlog:

GDP Notes – In Depth

With massive amounts of space sitting idle in offices and empty strip malls littering the landscape, look for new investment in commercial real estate to continue to decline in coming quarters. Moody’s (MCO) has estimated that the value of commercial real estate has plunged by

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ExxonMobil Corporation (XOM) reported third quarter 2009 earnings of 98 cents per share, below the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.04 and year-earlier earnings of $2.58. Though the earnings came in below expectations, the company maintained its quarterly dividend of 42 cents per share and repurchased $4 billion worth of XOM common stock. With a sound cash position, solid credit profile and diversity of its asset base, both in terms of business mix as well as geographical footprint, Exxon remains better positioned than any of its peers. The steep fall in oil prices and weak product margins caused a 65% drop in earnings from the year-earlier quarter to $4.7 billion. The production of oil and natural gas averaged 3.69 million oil-equivalent barrels per day, up approximately 3% year over year. When adjusted for the impact of entitlement volumes and OPEC quota restrictions, production was up about 5%. ...

ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) Has the Eye of the Tiger

Tony Daltorio, Investment U Research

ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) is one of those companies people love to hate.

The firm racks up billions in profits each year, yet it’s been sluggish to develop green technologies (although that’s slowly changing now), despite a $600 million investment into an algae-based biofuels project.

Some critics, including major shareholders, also criticize the company’s overly conservative management. They say that Exxon has a poor strategy for future growth and is too slow to replace its reserves.

With limited investment into finding new sources of oil and gas, ExxonMobil has instead spent $109 million to buy back shares and increase dividends by 58% over the past five years.

Last year alone, Exxon returned $40.1 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends, amounting to 154% of its capital

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In 1996, Frederic Scheer had a vision when he began to market the concept of compostable plastics. This vision led Cereplast from a pioneer to a leader in the bioplastics industry. Yesterday, the vision of Mr. Scheer and the team at Cereplast provided a breakthrough announcement that will change the face of their industry forever with the transformation of algae into bioplastics.

Cereplast has developed breakthrough technology to transform algae into bioplastics with the intention to launch a new family of algae-based resins that will complement the company’s existing line of Compostables and Hybrid resins.

If successful, Cereplast algae-based resins could replace over 50% of the petroleum content used in plastic resins, possibly having a profound effect on the oil industry. Such companies as Exxon and BP have started to invest money in the algae production business because of the potential in their industry.

Mr. Scheer, who is not only

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U.S. stocks dropped moderately, reversing earlier gains in the final hour of trading as concern grew that efforts to lift the economy out of stagnation will be withdrawn prematurely.  Stocks got some boost following the central bank’s widely-expected decision to hold interest rates steady but the rally faded soon after as traders found few surprising revelations in the Fed statement.

Although the Fed, in its policy statement, contended that it would continue to employ a wide range of tools to stimulate the economy, investors saw little reason to rejoice, wondering if the stocks were too expensive at current levels.  The Fed reiterated that it will slow its purchase of mortgage-backed securities, signaling its confidence that an economic recovery is indeed underway.  However, there was no talk of exit strategy methods and timetables.  Nevertheless, the FOMC minutes, released at 2:15 ET, maintained the Fed's intentions to keep "exceptionally low levels

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A post from a href="http://www.thestockadvisors.com/content/view/4067/33/"TheStockAdvisors/a last Friday suggested seven stocks which have paying dividends for over 100 years, raised their dividend on an annual basis for the last 25 years and can be directly purchased. Given their potential for accumulative returns how have the stocks performed from a price perspective? Quotes directly from the articlebr /br /[1] a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/quicknav/MenuCharts.aspx?param=VlcxODYz?end"Coca-Cola (KO)/abr /br /blockquote...its strong overseas business should get a lift from the weak dollar and presence in emerging markets. The yield of well over 3% enhances total-return appeal. /blockquotebr /a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWGUfU1tOjI/SqfPONQ7pmI/AAAAAAAAA_w/OxebMXGEOuc/s1600-h/Stock+Chart+a15.png"img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 176px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WWGUfU1tOjI/SqfPONQ7pmI/AAAAAAAAA_w/OxebMXGEOuc/s320/Stock+Chart+a15.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5379496122903144034" //abr /span class="fullpost"[2] a href="http://www.zignals.com/main/quicknav/MenuCharts.aspx?param=VlcxODY0?end"Colgate-Palmolive (CL)/abr /br /blockquote...takes a back seat to no company when it comes to consistency and growth of its dividend. The firm has been paying a dividend since 1895, with the dividend increased annually for the last 46 years. /blockquotebr /a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WWGUfU1tOjI/SqfRFeg7NpI/AAAAAAAAA_4/SNAEzK4B4Xc/s1600-h/Stock+Chart+CL.png"img style="display:block; margin:0px ...