Five Ways To Profit From The Commodity Nobody Likes

Tony Daltorio, Investment U Research

Forget Superman… the real man of steel is Lakshmi Mittal, chairman of the world’s biggest steelmaker, Arcelor Mittal ADR (NYSE: MT).

Mittal has built an empire – and a personal fortune – by being optimistic when it comes to the global steel industry. And he still maintains that confidence today, recently going on record to say that global demand could rise by more than 10% in 2010.

Meanwhile, many of his peers in the industry sport trembling lower lips over their present and future.

Believe it or not, that ongoing debate matters to everybody, not just those investing directly in the commodity. Steel demand feeds into a huge range of sectors, so much so that many regard it as an important bellwether of industrial trends.

The Half-Empty, Steel Glass

Other than

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The rating agencies have to review their quality control procedure after all the legal hassles they have faced recently. A bill has been placed in the U.S. Senate to review the functioning of the rating agencies. But it is expected that it will be rendered ineffective by the time it reaches the President, and only a part of the problem will be addressed.   Rating agencies such as Fitch, Moody’s Investor Service (MCO), Standard & Poor’s Rating Services, and A.M. Best have recently come up against some strong criticism. This led to the Rating Accountability and Transparency Enhancement Act (RATE) of 2009, which was introduced in May. The bill has been referred to the Senate committee, but has not yet been passed. As per the new bill, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will be empowered to monitor the functioning of the rating agencies. Besides, both retail and ...

Peter Schiff: Why this Money Should Replace the U.S. Dollar There’s a new universal currency, backed by solid gold. You can use it to make online purchases anywhere in the world. Converting some money to the new currency takes just 5 minutes. You can start with as little as $10…or as much as $10 million. According to CNBC star analyst and Euro Pacific Capital President Peter Schiff, this money could double the value of your savings – automatically – in just 6-9 months. For Schiff’s full analysis and recommendations, please go here.

U.S. GDP Contraction Slows, but the Road to Recovery Will Be Rocky

By Bob Blandeburgo
Associate Editor
Money Morning

While the many of the world’s economies continue to look for signs of growth, the U.S. economy took a big step in the right the direction in the second quarter.

U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) shrank 1% in the second quarter, …

Peter Schiff: Why this Money Should Replace the U.S. Dollar There’s a new universal currency, backed by solid gold. You can use it to make online purchases anywhere in the world. Converting some money to the new currency takes just 5 minutes. You can start with as little as $10…or as much as $10 million. According to CNBC star analyst and Euro Pacific Capital President Peter Schiff, this money could double the value of your savings – automatically – in just 6-9 months. For Schiff’s full analysis and recommendations, please go here.

While the many of the world’s economies continue to look for signs of growth, the U.S. economy took a big step in the right the direction in the second quarter.

U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) shrank 1% in the second quarter, following the first quarter’s 6.4% drop. The $787 billion Obama stimulus package, smaller decreases in business spending …

Elan Corporation

(Public, NYSE:ELN)

About

Elan Corporation, plc (Elan) is a neuroscience-based biotechnology company. Its principal research and development, manufacturing and marketing facilities are located in Ireland and the United States. Elan’s operations are organized into two business units: Biopharmaceuticals and Elan Drug Technologies (EDT). Biopharmaceuticals engages in research, development and commercial activities primarily in neuroscience, autoimmune and severe chronic pain. EDT focuses on the specialty pharmaceutical industry, including specialized drug delivery and manufacturing.

The following article was written and contributed by a highly regarded investor and member within the StocksHaven Investments community, Nicholas DeCesare:

Any long term holder of Elan can’t be happy with the stock price over the past year. In fact, shares have gone from the mid 30’s in the summer of 2008, to around $7 a share. Since announcing a deal with

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With the Rally Nearly Over the Germans are Buying Gold.

The Dow fell another 107 points yesterday. Oil held steady at $70. The dollar fell to $1.38. And gold rose $4 to 932.

What if the rally is over? Could be… It began on 9 March. That makes it more than 3 months old. Most likely, it will continue through the summer. But who knows?

The important thing to remember is this: there can be no major, sustained bull market without one of two things happening.

Either… the mistakes of the Bubble Epoque must be cleared away… allowing for a new era of genuine growth and real prosperity. At best, this would take a few years to achieve. Just imagine how long it will take to restructure GM into a profit-making business again. Just imagine how long it will take consumers to pay down their debts so they can begin to spend again. Just

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But for the many reasons we’ve described in these reckonings, we doubt that we’ve seen the last of this bear market.

“Either cuts in spending or increases in taxes will be necessary to stabilize the fiscal situation,” said Ben Bernanke in response to a question posed by a Member of Congress. Then, he added…

“The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.”

That last sentence has a ring to it. It reminds us of Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook.” Surely, it is destined to make its way into the history books, alongside Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman” and the builder of the Titanic’s “even God himself couldn’t sink this ship.”

Monetizing the debt is precisely what the Fed will do. But it will not do so precisely. Instead, it will act clumsily… reluctantly… incompetently… accidentally… and finally, catastrophically.

That’s our prediction, here at the Daily

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Gold climbed to a fresh two-month high of $957.50 an ounce in Europe on Friday, extending the previous session’s near 2 percent gains, as investors bought the metal as a hedge against dollar weakness.
Silver prices posted the biggest gains among precious metals, however, climbing to a nine-month peak of $14.79 as investors turned to the metal as a cheaper alternative to gold.
Spot gold was bid at $956.95 an ounce at 1207 GMT, against $953.40 an ounce late in New York on Thursday. U.S. gold futures for June delivery on the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange rose $6.20 to $957.40 an ounce.
Simon Weeks, director of precious metals at the Bank of Nova Scotia, said the majority of gold’s gains were dollar-related, with investors “buying hard assets as opposed to hard currency”.
“Physical (buying) has been

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Please click on the picture above to play the video

The following are references used in the video

Japan’s Lost Decade

From Doug Casey “Anatomy of Japan’s “Lost Decade”

“The similarities between the U.S. now and Japan then derive from the big run-up in debt prior to the onset of economic crisis. Likewise, the reactions of the Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve in cutting interest rates to zero and using unconventional methods to buy assets to expand their balance sheets are much the same. Further, the central governments both went into deficit to support the economy. Fed up with low growth from the early 1990s, Japan experimented with quantitative easing between 2001 and 2006, adding $250 billion to its excess reserves. The U.S. has adopted the concept of quantitative easing with even more vigor and promises much more intervention than even

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Edson Gould: The “Gould-en” Rule to Stock Market Investing

by Robert Williams, Advisory Panelist, The Oxford Club

To appreciate why we favor companies with consistently good earnings and discourage efforts to time the market, you have to consider the often overlooked studies of Edson Gould.

Gould is regarded as one of the best market technicians of all time, albeit his enviable track record was logged during the 1960s and 1970s, before the Dow had even cracked the 1,000 level.

All the same, he’s relevant because he was the first to suggest that economic fundamentals and monetary conditions alone couldn’t explain (or predict) stock market behavior.

He began his exhaustive studies as an analyst for Moody’s in the 1920s, intent on building a model that could accurately predict the movement of stocks.

Edson Gould had great difficulty finding a relevant pattern to the stock markets. In his frustration, he stumbled upon a principle that

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