Fuel Your Portfolio With BHP Billiton (NYSE: BHP): The Best-Run Commodities Company In The World

by Tony Daltorio, Investment U Research

Some companies just stand out – both in their own sectors and in the larger market.

Australian firm BHP Billiton (NYSE: BHP) is one of them.

As the largest and most diversified commodities producer in the world, BHP has leading positions in most key, low-cost, metal and mineral deposits in the world.

And as if that weren’t enough, it also has a solid position in oil, thanks to its petroleum division, which had operating profits of $4 billion last year.

Impressively, that total only made the petroleum division BHP’s third-best performer in 2008. Its iron ore segment scooped up $6.23 billion, while base metals enjoyed a $4.62 billion operating profit.

Crucially, that sets BHP’s oil division apart from its competitors. Not only

Euro Telecom Giants Swap Numbers, Agree Mega Merger

by Martin Denholm, Senior Editor

It’s Friday night…

French telecom firm Orange is standing at one corner of the bar, sipping a fine Bordeaux. Its German rival T-Mobile is propped up at the other, slugging down a hearty Hefeweizen.

Their eyes lock. The deal is on.

Before you know it, the two have swapped numbers and arranged to get together.

That’s the deal that has the European telecom sector buzzing at the moment, as Deutsche Telecom’s T-Mobile and France Telecom’s Orange have agreed to merge their British operations.

The result is a veritable cellular beast, boasting 24.8 million customers, vaulting it to the top of the pile in the U.K. and knocking Telefonica’s O2 into second place. The T-Mobile-Orange partnership would own almost 40% of the British mobile market and bring together two firms with combined annual sales

Peak Oil and Petrobras

Tony Daltorio, Investment U Research

Back on Wednesday, September 9, I wrote on how to profit from British Petroleum ADR (NYSE: BP)’s huge discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, and how to profit from peak oil.

And while I stand by the profitability of both that find and stock, I think I should clarify that “peak oil” really doesn’t exist anymore. So instead, let’s call it peak-cheap-and-easily-recoverable-oil instead, since that seems much more appropriate.

The days of cheap and accessible oil are long gone, but that very fact opens up rich opportunities for investors who face up to the realities of today’s oil market.

Possibly the biggest reality comes down to this: Giant oil fields are the industry’s lifeblood. Out of the world’s 70,000 oil fields, the largest twenty account for a quarter of global production.

That’s

It’s official: You can reduce your investment risk simply by chucking darts at a list of stocks, then buying them.

That’s if you believe a Nobel economist, of course. His crude “experiment” was the start of “modern portfolio theory” decades ago. The downside, however, was that with a reduction of risk came a dampening of profits. So scratch that idea.

How about this? A startling study in the late 1970s showed that owning a portfolio of large U.S. companies with international divisions drops your risk 10% below a domestic stock portfolio. Much better. But that wasn’t the eye-popper…

The study also found that owning stocks in international companies cuts your risk in half…

Take that, “efficiency” theorists! Yet the stuffy professors still tried to refute these results. It was a losing battle, though, as more studies emerged, laden with more evidence that international stocks reduce risk.

But the

Emerging Market for Pharma

Tony Daltorio, The Investment U Research Team

The shape of the global market for pharmaceuticals is undergoing a rapid change.

As recently as 2006, more than half of the market growth was in the United States. This data comes from IMS Health, a consultancy that is a leading provider of pharmaceutical trends.

However, the necessity for the pharmaceutical industry to develop new markets is urgent. The latest forecasts from IMS Health suggests that global sales in the industry will grow by just 2.5 – 3.5 percent this year, the smallest expansion it has ever recorded. The United States – which still accounts for two-fifths of all revenues – will decline by 1-2 percent.

Many large pharma companies are now realizing that a lot of future growth is likely to occur outside of what used to be