Two Sagging Economies… Two Laid-Back Banks

by Martin Denholm, Senior Editor

Anemic. Stagnant. Plodding.

Pick your favorite… it doesn’t matter. They all describe the state of the British and Eurozone economies.

Two weeks before the official third quarter U.K. GDP figure is released, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) delivered a somber verdict. The group says it actually didn’t grow at all, confounding those who said the economy started growing again.

Cue a fresh round of some good, old-fashioned British grumbling.

The culprit: a 2.5% fall in industrial production in August, as oil demand dropped. Still, neutral is better than reverse – a gear that Britain had driven in for 2009 up to that point, posting a 2.4% first-quarter slump and 0.6% second-quarter decline.

It’s not alone either. Its European neighbors are also backpedaling. The latest quarterly figure from Eurostat shows that the

London Calling: FTSE-100 Racks Up its Best Quarter in History

by Martin Denholm, Senior Editor Wednesday, October 1, 2009

As September concluded, so too did the third quarter of 2009.

And what a quarter it was for London’s FTSE-100 (^FTSE) stock market. In fact, it was the Index’s best three-month period in its 25-year history.

As global stock markets scoffed at the traditional “sell in May and go away” adage and sizzled throughout the summer, the “Footsie” notched up a 21% gain.

The positive vibes weren’t just restricted to Britain either. Stocks across Europe enjoyed a strong summer, with the FTSEurofirst 300 Index of top European shares posting its best quarter in 10 years, with a gain of 16%.

The question is: How long can the markets – both in the U.S. and overseas – walk the tightrope between bull and bear? As

Euro Telecom Giants Swap Numbers, Agree Mega Merger

by Martin Denholm, Senior Editor

It’s Friday night…

French telecom firm Orange is standing at one corner of the bar, sipping a fine Bordeaux. Its German rival T-Mobile is propped up at the other, slugging down a hearty Hefeweizen.

Their eyes lock. The deal is on.

Before you know it, the two have swapped numbers and arranged to get together.

That’s the deal that has the European telecom sector buzzing at the moment, as Deutsche Telecom’s T-Mobile and France Telecom’s Orange have agreed to merge their British operations.

The result is a veritable cellular beast, boasting 24.8 million customers, vaulting it to the top of the pile in the U.K. and knocking Telefonica’s O2 into second place. The T-Mobile-Orange partnership would own almost 40% of the British mobile market and bring together two firms with combined annual sales

Another Monday… Another “Game-Changing” Deal

by Martin Denholm, Senior Editor

Monday is Merge Day.

A few weeks ago, the market saw the busiest day of deal-making in three months, as the news-wires lit up with news of several big takeover announcements, including Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) buying Marvel (NYSE: MVL).

It happened again the following week. In fact, over a 10-day period, more than $40 billion worth of deals were announced.

And even as the third quarter winds down, the pace is still frenetic in the M&A market.

Today saw technology equipment firm Xerox (NYSE: XRX) announce a $6.4 billion deal to buy Affiliated Computer Services (NYSE: ACS) – its biggest acquisition on record.

Xerox investors greeted the news with a collective “ugh,” as shares of the photocopying and business supplies giant spiraled down by 17%. While perhaps

IPOs Heating Up Markets

by Martin Denholm, Senior Editor

What would you do with $3.5 billion?

While you decide between a luxury beach house on your own private island in the South Pacific, or a Swiss-style log cabin in the Alps, Corporate America is mulling over an option that isn’t nearly as sexy, but is hugely important.

Pumping some of it into the IPO market.

Today kicks off a busy week, in which eight deals are on the table, worth a combined $3.5 billion. Among them is Chinese media firm, Shanda Interactive (Nasdaq: SNDA), which has raised $725 million to spin off its Shanda games division.

Eight deals in a week – the most since December 2007 – evokes memories of the heady days of the mid 2000s when companies were falling over themselves to hit the stock market. Already, the pace of new offerings

Recently, my colleague Marc Lichtenfeld and I took a collective pop at some lazy journalists and other media cheerleaders. Their crime? Whipping the investment community into false optimism through misleading headlines regarding earnings announcements.

They’re at it again.

This time, the flashy headline writers grabbed onto the latest report from the National Association of Realtors, which stated that existing home sales climbed for the third straight month, and at a faster pace than economists expected.

And they were out in force again when the Commerce Department said new U.S. home sales saw an 11% bounce in June. On an annualized basis, that equated to 384,000 homes - 9% higher than estimates.

Collectively, new and existing home sales hit the highest level in eight months in June.

Sweet! Hand me some champagne - let’s celebrate. Or maybe we should hang on a sec… there’s a problem with these headlines. Here’s what you need to know about

The U.S. Housing Market: Three (More) Reasons Real Estate Isn’t Rebounding

by Louis Basenese, Advisory Panelist

Editor’s Note: Yesterday we heard from Martin Denholm, the managing editor at Smart Profits, one of our affiliate publications which will be joining us over the next few weeks. We’ll be adding their experts to our esteemed panelists to give you the best investing ideas and advice out there. Today we follow Martin with outspoken favorite, Louis Basenese, who also gives us his take and concern for investors, on the housing market.

If ever an off-the-wall indicator existed to predict the fate of the U.S. housing market, I found it… You see, business is booming in one particular niche of the real estate industry - shrink-wrap.

That’s right. Contractors and developers are wrapping mothballed building projects in plastic, literally - from single-family homes to 25,000 square foot commercial properties.

The beneficiary? Privately-held Fast Wrap

The Real Estate Market: Don’t Celebrate Housing’s Recent Uptick Yet

by Martin Denholm, Contributing Editor

Recently, my colleague Marc Lichtenfeld and I took a collective pop at some lazy journalists and other media cheerleaders. Their crime? Whipping the investment community into false optimism through misleading headlines regarding earnings announcements.

They’re at it again.

This time, the flashy headline writers grabbed onto the latest report from the National Association of Realtors, which stated that existing home sales climbed for the third straight month, and at a faster pace than economists expected.

And they were out in force again when the Commerce Department said new U.S. home sales saw an 11% bounce in June. On an annualized basis, that equated to 384,000 homes - 9% higher than estimates.

Collectively, new and existing home sales hit the highest level in eight months in June.

Sweet! Hand me some champagne - let’s celebrate. Or maybe we should hang on

Of all the people you might expect to spearhead a movement away from oil and onto alternative energy, T. Boone Pickens probably wouldn’t be at the top of the list.

But a year ago, the 81-year old chairman of BP Capital spent his own money to buy prime time on major networks and mobilized an “army” of believers in order to get the word out about the dangers of continued dependence on foreign oil.

Earlier this month, Pickens appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to discuss the progress of the “Pickens Plan,”which essentially seeks to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil through a combination of wind-generated power and natural gas powered vehicles. The goal: Drastically reducing or eliminating the need for foreign oil in as little as 10 years.

His timing was perfect, as oil prices shot to all-time highs around $150 a year ago. The plan garnered a lot of attention. And to

Selling Put Options: How It’s Done & How Easy It Can Be

Martin Denholm, Contributing Editor

Editor’s Note: There has been an incredible amount of interest from Lee Lowell’s put option strategy article from the last two weeks - and his unbroken winning streak in his Instant Money Trader premium service. But we’ve also seen a few questions pop up as well. So today we turn to Contributing Editor, Martin Denholm, to break down Lee’s strategy on selling put options a little more.

The “buy-and-holders” just got killed again…

With the market’s plunge last week, many regular shareholders have seen their portfolios awash with more red numbers.

Tough break for them. But savvy investors know that this offers a great chance to value shop and buy back in. And one of the most effective and profitable investment strategies that you can use in a market like this is one that generates income… no