Cimarex Energy Co. (...

As the second-largest provider of electricity to the United States, Constellation Energy Group Inc. (NYSE: CEG) has a tremendous upside. At least, it would if the economy were growing strongly. 

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. And that means Constellation will have to clear a number of hurdles if it’s going to fulfill its long-term promise. Last year, the company bet big on higher energy prices and paid the price dearly when the economy collapsed.

Constellation’s very high level of debt, with large bond maturities in 2009 and 2012 at that time meant they were flirting with financial disaster.  That forced the company into a deal with Électricité de France SA (EDF), in which the European energy giant agreed to inject $4.5 billion into Constellation in exchange for almost 50% ownership of its nuclear plants.

That includes a brand new plant, Calvert Cliffs 3, that’s still subject

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Stone Energy Corp. (...

O'Reilly Automotive Inc. (...

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – July 28, 2009 – Four free stock picks are being made available today on Zacks.com. The industry’s leading independent research firm highlights one Zacks #1 Rank Strong Buy or a Zacks #2 Rank Buy stock for each of the four main styles of investing: Aggressive Growth, Growth & Income, Momentum, and Value.

The four highlighted picks are: Omnova Solutions Inc. (OMN), Tupperware Brands Corporation (TUP), Spectra Energy Corp. (SE) and JDA Software Group, Inc. (JDAS).      Today, Zacks is promoting its ''Buy'' stock recommendations. Four daily picks are offered free at http://at.zacks.com/?id=5607

Zacks #1 Rank Stocks have nearly tripled the S&P 500 since 1988, producing an average annual return of +26%. Performance has been notable even during volatile and down times. For example, during the last bear market, 2000-2002, the market tumbled -37.6% – but Zacks #1 Rank stocks gained +43.8%.

Here

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TC Pipelines LP's (...

As the bringer of doom, gloom and potential yellow shoots, I eagerly await an economic report for the first time in ages. The last 3 months of reports have been meaningless – all I know is when it’s bad news ignore it (it’s backwards looking anyway), buy stocks. And when it’s better than expected it is no longer backwards looking… and you should buy stocks. As gas prices surge higher, I buy consumer discretionary stocks. When interest rates jump, I buy consumer discretionary stocks. Notice the theme? Just buy stocks.

But today I wave a potential yellow shoot – the weekly MBA mortgage report.

We’ve spoken at length in multiple posts about the Ben Bernanke manipulation… err, assistance to interest rates and summarized late last week in [May 29: Bloomberg – Bernanke Bid to Lift …

Bonds down. Gold up $17. Someone seems to think there is a whiff of inflation in the air. Sniff…sniff….

We’re not so sure. It seems too early to us.

But we’re not even going to think about it. Today, we’ve got to make tracks. We’re traveling.

In light of our voyage we’re turning today’s essay over to guest host Ian Mathias, of Agora Financial’s 5 Min. Forecast. He’ll take over from here…

Your family’s share of the government debt is now over half a million dollars. A record $546,668, to be exact.

That cheery Monday stat comes courtesy of a USA Today study, which claims that each American family’s share rose 12% in 2008. That’s $55,000 in new government debt last year for every US household – thousands more than the median household annual income. Here’s how it breaks down:

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I've been studying various railroads lately, with the idea of picking up some shares on recent and possibly further weakness in the economy. Rails provide us one of the clearest pictures into the health of our broad economy. They haul food, building materials, metals, chemicals, autos, and energy products. The short answer to this is that railroad volumes are continuing to drop across all metrics. No sign of a bottom yet. As someone looking to buy some stock, that's a good thing; better deals are coming. As someone trying to figure out of the economy has recovered, its not so good. br /br /a href="http://railfax.transmatch.com/"This page shows some excellent data /a(railfax report).br /br /After looking at this data, I'm continuing to see Burlington Northern (BNI) as the strongest among the US majors. They actually have gained a little market share during this, and ...

National Bank of Kuwait, one of the Gulf’s largest banks, reported that GDP in Qatar, which has the world’s third largest gas reserves, is estimated to have grown by 18% in real terms in 2008, “an extremely fast pace by any standard.”  The bank continued that in nominal terms, GDP jumped 44% to 372 billion riyals ($102 billion) in 2008 from $70 billion the previous year.

The gas sector was the main contributor to GDP with 32%, overtaking oil (27%) for the first time ever.  In fact, gas nearly doubled in size last year, which the bank attributed both to higher energy prices and also to the continued increase in output volumes.  However, it warned that “if oil prices remain at current levels, that is below their 2008 averages, Qatar could see little, if not negative, nominal growth this year as the price effect drags down GDP.”

In real, inflation-adjusted

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