One of the more interesting calls today comes from FBR Capital:br /div style="text-align: justify;"br /FBR is raising their tgt on span style="font-weight: bold;"Freeport-McMoRan Copper amp; Gold, Inc. (NYSE:FCX)/span to $87 from $69 and reiterating their Outperform rating on the stock.br /br /According to the firm the higher price target primarily reflects their view that FCX would raise its overall 2010 copper sales guidance by about 12% (or, approximately, a 45% increase in North America) after recent improvement in leading economic indicators for the developed economies, such as the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Furthermore, FBR believes the economics of increased production are also justified at current copper prices and with the strong outlook in 2010. Based on their revised commodity price deck and increased production estimates (2010 only), they also increase their 2009 and 2010 EPS/EBITDA estimates by about 24%/16% and 26.5%/12%. Firm recommends that investors take advantage of market volatilty ...

Mining will keep economy growing Need to increase production Prices may fall but demand will be strong

 

THE mining boom will help keep Australia’s economy from falling into a hole until at least 2013, a report suggests.

Economic forecaster BIS Shrapnel said record levels of mining investment together with a ramp-up in production will insulate the economy from recession for the next five years - even with commodity prices tipped to fall.

“We didn’t really do enough investment, with the benefit of hindsight, through the 1990s to gear ourselves up for maintaining strong growth in mineral output and what we’re trying to do now is catch up,” said Adrian Hart, senior manager of BIS Shrapnel’s mining unit.

“The next five years will all be about increasing production to meet demand from China and other emerging economies . . . and once that production comes on stream that will drive weaker prices for a lot of commodities.”

The

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The talking heads on CNBC are wondering why oil prices keep going higher. Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's why ...Source: Netoilexports.blogspot.comYou can see exports are down year over year while demand keeps rising. And that's why the Saudi agreement to pump more oil isn't calming the markets -- it's too little too late. Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Kuwait, Iraq and Qatar curbed their output by 544,000 barrels a day last year. At the same time, their domestic demand increased by 318,000 barrels a day. So, their net exports dropped by 862,000 barrels.

It would seem that the proposed rise in Saudi production of 200,000 barrels from June to July, on top of the 300,000 bpd rise in May, is not enough to even make up for last year's cut in OPEC exports.

Here is some other news you can use ...

Analyst: Air fares

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On this week's earnings preview I wrote this in regards to Deere (DE):Major ag equipment player Deere (DE) - I don't own the equipment stocks anymore; at some point the rising cost of steel, petrol products and the like will be hurting the bottom line unless they can pass all the costs along to farmers - over the next year if inflation does not abate this is the type of company who could see profit margins squeezed simply from the constant increase in input costs.Here are the results - looks like a good call with the stock down 8%. Sometimes a rising tide (agriculture boom) does lift all boats. But sometimes you need to think farther ahead than that - as Wayne Gretzky says - don't be where the puck is, be where it's going to be. ("I ...