One great thing about my position here as Director of Marketing is my extensive contact list. I say that because I have access to thousands of excellent traders, investors, and economists at my finger tips! So when things around the world catch my attention, I can quickly find someone who can give me the skinny on what’s really going down. One of my contacts is Nicholas Vardy, Editor, The Global Guru, and he’s got a MUCH better pulse on the world aboard then I do. That’s why I asked him to give us his reasons why the markets outside the US are doing so well and WHY!

He told me he’d love to get feedback from the Trader’s Blog readers, so let’s not let him down! You can also visit The Global Guru to get his new report on his favorite global picks.

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Make Your Fortune from the

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• Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) reported a higher-than-estimated third-quarter loss, with a loss of 26 cents as revenue of $26.04 billion missed Zacks estimates of $27.61 billion.  The firm added $2.1 billion to credit loss reserves

• General Electric (NYSE:GE) reported third-quarter earnings of 27 cents a share ex-items, 7 cents above Zacks estimates, on revenues of $37.8 billion, a 20% drop which missed estimates of $39.78 billion. CEO Jeff Immelt noted, "While it remains a tough environment for GE Capital, we are seeing signs of stabilization. Every segment at GE Capital was profitable with the exception of Real Estate, which is experiencing a tough environment but where we believe the risks are well understood and manageable"

• First Horizon National (NYSE:FHN) reported a third-quarter loss of 24 cents a share, versus Zacks estimates of a 34 cent loss, on revenues of $495 million

• Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) reported a third-quarter profit of

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This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days (while touring through Europe) that you may also enjoy.

Lawrence Strauss (SmartMoney): An interview with Burton Malkiel, July 7, 2009.

Robert Samuelson (The Washington Post): Economists out to lunch, July 6, 2009. One intriguing subplot of the economic crisis is the failure of most economists to predict it. Here we have the most spectacular economic and financial crisis in decades - possibly since the Great Depression - and the one group that spends most of its waking hours analyzing the economy basically missed it.

Willem Buiter (Financial Times): Quantitative easing, credit easing and enhanced credit support aren’t working, July 3, 2009. In a nutshell: quantitative easing (QE), credit easing (CE), and enhanced credit support (ECS) are useful when the problem facing the economy is funding

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The holiday-shortened week saw investors pondering the depth of the economic rabbit-hole. As investors vacillated, most financial markets were characterized by a roller-coaster ride. Friday’s worse-than-expected jobs data left no doubt that the economy was in recession.

The highlights of the week’s discussions were captured on video and are included in this video-o-rama compilation. Strutting their stuff was a star-studded cast including the likes of George Soros, Hugh Hendry, Dan Greenhaus, Paul Krugman, Bill Gross, Nassim Taleb, Jeff Immelt, Stephen Roach, Bob Prechter and Marc Faber.

As an aside, the weather in Europe - where I am spending two weeks with my family in Slovenia and Switzerland - has been characterized of late by endless thunderstorms. Strikingly, the economic mood is no less despondent than that of the holiday-makers trying to escape the ominous dark clouds. But wait, is that a forecast for better days ahead?

Elsewhere, the jail

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Bernie Madoff and his Finacial Crime.

Let the punishment fit the crime!

Poor Bernie. The man has been ordered to spend 150 years in the hoosegow. What for? Who did he kill? A century-and-a-half seems a little excessive for a financial crime. You could hold up three liquor stores and rape a whole convent and still not get 150 years. With a little good lawyering, a history of child abuse in the family and good behavior in the big house, you’d be back on the street in 18 months.

But all the papers seem delighted. “Locked up for Life!” says one of today’s headlines. The judge “threw the book at him,” says another. His victims wanted him to get no mercy. The judge gave him none, imposing the maximum sentence. He is “extraordinarily evil,” said the man on the bench.

Justice has been done. Right?

Here in the building with the gold balls, we’re not

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Last week was a very important one. The U.S. Treasury placed a record level of debt, the Federal Reserve announced it would not expand its monetary easing, and we got many top players opining about the economy.  In addition, we are facing the uncertainties about ‘Cap and Trade’ legislation and the healthcare reform.

And to cap it all, we are about to close the first half of 2009, with all the consequences in terms of portfolio adjustments that need to take place.

The Treasury debt placement was well received by the markets.   We saw these issues amply oversubscribed and trading well after their placement.  This was very encouraging.  End of the half adjustments also saw a bid coming back into the U.S. dollar.  And, with the Federal Reserve issuing a statement in which they are not expanding quantitative easing further, the ghost of hyperinflation is delayed for the time

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GE Looking Better and Better

by The Investment U Research Team

As the details of yesterday’s shareholder meeting at General Electric (NYSE: GE) hit newsstands, we are left with the impression that GE is looking better and better as an investment.

Yes, shareholders were pretty livid about the dividend cut and the amount of CEO Jeff Immelt’s compensation. Yes, earnings have dropped 35% and GE has a number of divisions like it’s entertainment and financing units that have performed poorly. And yes, there was even talk of breaking up GE into smaller companies.

But it’s all a smokescreen.

GE is looking better considering its size, and markets that it serves. In fact, earnings actually beat forecasts. Yes, forecasts were low – but again who cares, earnings forecasts have all been guesswork anyways

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Agricultural Bank of China Raises $7.3 Billion; Banks Applying to Repay TARP; Fiat CEO Confident About Opel Bid; World Bank Prez Sees Year-End Recovery; Derivatives Shrink to $592 Trillion; GE Reaches Debt Funding Goals for 2009; UAW & GM Still at Odds on Labor Agreement; Home Depot Beats Street

Agricultural Bank of China raised 50 billion yuan ($7.3 billion) in the nation’s biggest corporate bond sale. The goal of the bond sale was to raise capital and help set up an initial public offering, Bloomberg reported. A handful of banks have applied to repay the billions they borrowed from the U.S. government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Sources told Reuters that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) are two of the banks eager to ...

GE (GE) and Intel Corp. (INTC) declared yesterday they will jointly invest $250 million over the next 5 years to develop home-health monitoring devices.

The technology giants aim to make devices that will allow doctors to monitor patients' health remotely.

"The digitization of healthcare is in the first inning," said GE Chief Executive Jeff Immelt, who believes it could become a multi-billion dollar business.

"We think it's going to grow quickly," he added.

Both companies expect market demand for home healthcare to reach $7.7 billion by 2012 from $3.0 billion in 2009.

GE's closest peer, Philips, had acquired Respironics Inc. a year ago, making it the world's leading provider of home healthcare products.

Shares of GE are up a little more than 1% today, while INTC shares are down by about 1%.

GE is a is a Zacks #4 Rank ("Sell") stock and INTC is a Zacks

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Conventional wisdom says the Dow jumped nearly 3% Friday on the following perverse logic: Awful unemployment numbers would spur Congress to speed up passage of the “stimulus” bill, and happy days would soon be here again.

I have an alternative theory: After a lull of a couple of months, Paul Volcker is back in the news.

And when Paul Volcker’s in the news, the market feels good.  It’s the Volcker Effect.  He shows up on TV, it’s market Prozac.  A warm glass of milk.  Endorphins flow as traders conjure fuzzy memories of the guy who put the inflation tiger back in its cage  and sparked a secular bull market in stocks.

But don’t take my word for it.  Just look at his “news reference volume” on Google starting late last fall and compare it with a chart of the Dow.  You’ll find a rough but compelling correlation.

Think back to the final

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