The post below is republished courtesy of Trader Mark, writer of the Fund My Mutual Fund blog (hat tip: Damien Hoffman of Wall St Cheat Sheet).

Societe Generale’s Albert Edwards is generally considered an uber bear, although there were times in the past year he has tactically increased exposure to equities to take advantage of oversold conditions. Now is not one of those times. In fact, Edwards chimes in with many similar thoughts we’ve posted on the fundamentals … but sticks his neck out calling for new lows in 2010.

While the belief from this blog writer is this will all end badly, knowing when and how will be the ultimate question. Without the massive intervention by central banks and governments we’d have a different landscape; and without knowing to what lengths these people will continue to go to, it’s much more difficult to predict the intermediate

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Clenergen Corp. is a biofuels company that is approaching the sector from a different perspective – from an agronomy/biology and plantation standpoint. The company’s goal is to produce high-density, short-rotation biomass crops on a commercial scale which will then be used to power, steam and perhaps produce other products from advanced gasification and steam technologies.

The company is led by an eminent Board of Directors and Advisors. Here is a brief overview of the members:

Dr. Arvind Pandalai – Non-Executive Group Chairman

Dr. Pandalai has 32 years of experience in international trading, export and import management, joint ventures, project and financial management along with strategic planning. He has numerous prestigious management awards in his native India.

Robert Kohn – Non-Executive Vice-Chairman, North America

Mr. Kohn has been chairman/CEO, president/COO, and co-founder of three start-up public companies, with a combined market cap of over $1.5 billion.

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How do you like this recovery? Pretty good, huh? Except for the jobs, of course. And except for the retail sales. And except for the foreclosures… and house prices. And incomes. And consumer prices. And business profits. It’s like a female impersonator… just like a real woman in every way, except for the essential ones.

At least stocks are doing well. The Dow rose another 36 points yesterday. In terms of time, it’s already beat the bounce of ’30… it’s in its 6 th month. In terms of stock prices, it’s still a laggard, however. US stocks are up about 45% from their low of 6,547 on the Dow. By that measure, the current reading of 9,398 falls a little short of the 50% increase registered 5 months after the ’29 low.

Yesterday’s news was a big disappointment for mainstream economists. It’s ‘back to the drawing board,’ says the Wall Street Journal.

The

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Goldman Sachs coined “BRIC” for Brazil, Russia, India and China.  Some commentators have recently suggested that Russia’s stocks are too volatile, economy too fragile and politics too hostile to capital, and that maybe “BIC” is more attractive.  Based on the recently released forecast for GDP growth by the World Bank and the OECD, maybe “BICI” will become popular (Brazil, India, China and Indonesia) someday.

Actually, we don’t expect that to happen as a product phenomenon (although it may become a theme), but we do take note of the GDP growth ranking of Indonesia higher than Brazil and just behind China and India.  Indonesia is a very small market and its country funds have quite limited trading liquidity.  They have a long way to go to be in the same class as the BRICs for “investability”.

Country GDP Growth Outlooks:

The following table presents historical, estimated and forecasted GDP growth rates for selected countries

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Earnings continue to please the market. You can go right down the list: Microsoft, Ford, span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"Schlumberger/span, etc. For people that follow the markets closely, it is frustrating. The market is taking any kind of news good or bad, and putting a positive spin on it. To me, it has a feel that its gone too far, but I know better than to think it can't go further. Personally, I like to wait until periods where I feel comfortable with the market action before I commit more than average capital. br /br /I helped Trader Mark a href="http://www.fundmymutualfund.com/2009/04/americas-hottest-sector-casual-dining.html"write a synopsis of the casual restaurants/a and their earnings yesterday. These companies, such as PF Chang's, Buffalo Wild Wing's, and Famous span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"Daves/span, are performing well (on a relative basis). The past quarter, they have been restructuring to cut costs. This involves ...

Throughout this consumer-led recession, we've seen the trading-down from specialty goods and name brands to generic goods and discount items, not out of choice, but necessity. Wal-Mart (a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=wmt"WMT/a) has seen strong sales, and that trend should continue. But I'd take it a step further and take look at dollar stores. Family Dollar (a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=fdo"FDO/a) a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE5062TB20090107"posted strong results/a and raised their profit outlook. There aren't many companies doing that right now. br /br /span style="font-style: italic;""The company expects full-year sales to rise 4 percent to 6 percent, up from a prior outlook of 3 percent to 5 percent. On a same-store basis, it forecast a sales gain of 2 percent to 4 percent; it previously called for a rise of 1 percent to 3 percent."/spanbr /br /Dollar Tree (a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=DLTR"DLTR/a) would be another similar company. These companies appear to be some ...