The election of Barack Obama as the next U.S. president creates plenty of profit plays for investors in the New Year. By Martin Hutchinson Contributing Editor Money Morning/The Money Map Report With his landslide election victory Tuesday - coupled with Democratic gains in the House of Representatives and in the Senate - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama will have the ability to pursue more or less any policy he wants. For investors who have been trying to analyze the economic outlook for the New Year, the election of U.S. Sen. Obama (D-Ill.) provides a major piece of the forward-looking jigsaw puzzle that these analysts hope to assemble. That’s because the likely trends of the United States and other economies around the world - and the relative success of different sectors within those economies - depends crucially on who’s in the White House, what policies they have, and ...

An important thing to remember now that election season is over is that regardless of who you may have supported, it’s imperative now to keep politics out of the picture. The focus here is now entirely on policy and the market’s response. Keeping your own stocks in line with the new administration’s policies takes precedence over any lingering fears or bitterness over the election’s outcome. Mark Manning of Real Money agrees with this philosophy, and in lieu of Obama’s win he has pinpointed a couple sectors that may be particularly profitable in the months to come. Obama’s free-market approach to emissions control will be very costly for “new coal-fired power plants” and other utilites that leave a big carbon footprint (EXC, ED, and DUK; for instance). But conversely, alternative energy sectors and quite possibly nuclear facilities can be expected to do well. ...