With all the talk of stocks being overvalued due to the massive rally we've seen since March, you'd think there'd be almost no dirt cheap stocks. You know what I'm talking about. I mean really cheap. Stocks with single digit P/Es and price-to-book ratios well under 1.0.

But what if I told you that there's one sector where there's not just one dirt cheap stock, but many of them. And as an added bonus, these dirt cheap stocks also have a Zacks Rank of #1 or #2, which means they have rising earnings estimates.

Too good to be true?

Nah. You just have to know where to look.

Dirt Cheap Stocks are Not the Techs

To find the dirt cheap stocks in this market you have to get over your obsession with tech stocks, energy plays and, as hard as it is, even the drybulk shippers.

Because our dirt

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China is Investing Billions in Renewable Energy One firm has already built China’s largest wind turbine manufacturing factory. And it’s working with the Chinese Science Academy to develop new wind, solar, and geothermal technologies… for which it will own 70% of the rights. But this company’s business reaches far beyond the Chinese border, with operations in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe. It’s first quarter net income increased by 294% over a year ago. Click here for the full report.

The financial services industry in the United States and Europe is still reeling from the financial crisis, shedding tens of thousands of jobs each month – even a year after the crisis hit its apex.

However, recent evidence suggests that the financial services industry in Asia – particularly China, which was largely isolated from the toxic assets that caused the crisis – is starting to rebound.

Indeed, many …

The Swan Group, one of the market leaders in the insurance sector in Mauritius, announced last month that its performance during the first quarter of the year “was not affected” despite the global slowdown.  Rather, executives noted that the firm realized a substantial increase in its excess collateral.  And while revenue life insurance premiums predictably slowed, this loss was offset by “good performance of the activities of pension.”  Moreover, citing its short-term investments, the firm stated that its investment income has “behaved fairly well” in the face of lower interest rates.

The first two weeks of 2009's earnings season have the perma-bears calling for earnings disasters in the Q1 results. A "sucker rally" is in progress they proclaim. But so far the profit jitters are unfounded and the only "suckers" to be found are packaged as candy on a stick. The season kicked off last week with Alcoa(AA) missing forecasts, but painting a quite rosy picture for 2009. AA stock has never looked back. Then came the Wells Fargo boom-shell and a string of other positive news on Thursday. And now just days after the Wells Fargo (WFC) surprise we have Goldman Sachs (GS) also crushing the street's expectations. GS also joins a significantly growing list of banks that are now planning to quickly pay back their treasury bailout monies. GS will issue $5 billion in ...

The dollar soared to a three-year high on Monday after a record loss for insurer AIG added to worries that the financial crisis is growing more severe and enhanced the U.S. currency’s safe-haven appeal.

Wall Street sustained heavy losses, extending a global stock market rout as the Dow opened below 7,000 for the first time since 1997, while the dollar hit its highest level against a basket of six major currencies since early 2006.

European Union leaders’ rejection of a mass bailout for Eastern Europe pushed the euro below $1.26, as did a survey showing euro zone manufacturers had their worst month in 12 years.

But the biggest blow came from American International Group , which announced a $61.7 billion fourth-quarter loss, the largest quarterly loss in U.S. corporate history. Earlier, Treasury threw a new $30 billion lifeline to the company.

Analysts said the news reaffirmed

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Legal and General is undergoing some heavy morning trading as the company reported a capital surplus of a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e99cfb6a-fcc3-11dd-a103-000077b07658.html"£1.6bn/a. The FT had earlier reported dicussions with regulators about monies needed for potential defaults in its a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/008daa5e-fa1c-11dd-9daa-000077b07658.html"£22.5bn/a corportate bond portfolio.br /br /blockquote“The reassurance seems to have assuaged concerns for now over LG’s capital position,” said Martin Slaney, head of derivatives at GFT.br /br /“Despite the initial denial of being in talks with the FSA, it appears that meetings in fact have taken place. The FSA wants to avoid a situation where insurers are the new banks. It needs to see sufficient reserves in place and we will continue to see volatility in the insurance sector as question marks over liquidity remain.”/blockquotebr /span class="fullpost"The long term chart appears to have little room for optimism:br /br /a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWGUfU1tOjI/SZqT4onBYXI/AAAAAAAAAww/naE_bV30PyI/s1600-h/LGENFeb17.png"img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 178px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WWGUfU1tOjI/SZqT4onBYXI/AAAAAAAAAww/naE_bV30PyI/s320/LGENFeb17.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303714112365224306" //abr /Even ...

-- The German government is gearing up today to pump cash in the the bank and insurance sector. Talk is that Germans will stump up €470bn as part of the much-hyped 'coordinated bailout' campaign by European governments.

-- The move has set off a rally in European banking stocks.

-- Asian markets were also up this morning. Hong Kong shares shot up over 10%. It was the biggest one-day rise in more than 33 years.

-- Meanwhile, European central banks have promised unlimited dollar funding.

India's inflation held steady in the week to September 13, rising 12.14 percent from a year earlier, thus maintaining the same pace as in the previous week. The rate has now been trending slightly down from the recent peak of 12.63 percent hit on the 9 August. If this trend continues it should give the central bank the necessary room to hold borrowing costs unchanged and thus avoid placing funding pressures on a banking system which is struggling in the wake of the most recent bout of financial turmoil in the United States.

India's financial system is evidently showing signs of strain as the impact of both local policy tightening and the global credit crunch steadily take hold. The rate at which Indian banks lend to each other climbed to an 18-month high of 15.125 percent on Sept. 19, following the

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South Korea's industrial production unexpectedly fell for the second time in three months in February, indicating economic growth may be cooling. Output declined 0.2 percent from January, when it jumped 2.5 percent, the National Statistical Office said today in Gwacheon. According to the National Statistical Office (NSO) Monday, although industrial output fell month on month it still grew by a healthy 10.1 percent year on year rate in February on increasing production of semiconductors and audio and visual equipment. This compared with an 11.3 percent year on year gain in January.Service output also increased at a slower rate of 5.9 percent in February from a year ago, down from a 6.8 percent growth the previous month. The finance and insurance sector saw output increase by 15.4 percent, but those of entertainment and sports-related sectors and educational ...

At Peridot Capital, I tend to ignore insider selling completely. Sure, a lot of sales inside a company can indicate management feels their stock is overpriced, but there are dozens of other reasons top brass sell stock, and they are never required to give the reason for their actions. Investors should be able to tell if a stock is grossly expensive or not on their own, if they indeed manage their own money, so insider selling data really can’t be relied upon.

Insider buying, however, I believe is crucially important. While I can make a laundry list of reasons why someone chooses to sell a stock, the reasons to buy are much fewer in number. In fact, there’s only one (to make money). It’s not surprising that studies have shown much more meaningful correlation to stock performance