“To get rich is glorious!” said Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese general who launched the country’s modern economy in the seventies.

Featured Trades: (POT), (BHP), (VALE), (MOS), (AGU)   1) BHP Billiton Develops an Appetite for Potash. BHP Billiton’s (BHP) low key, South African CEO, Marius Kloppers, has announced that he is making a hostile takeover bid for Potash (POT) for $39 billion, or $130 a share, a multiple of a mere 13 times earnings. POT [...]

Featured Trades: (FRONTIER MARKETS), (GXG), (FRN), (FFD), (TFMAX) Claymore/BNI Mellon Frontier Markets ETF Global X Interbolsa FTSE Columbia ETF 2) Hedge Fund Managers Head For the Frontier. No, they are not donning a Stetson, cowboy boots, and a six gun to fight Indians in the Wild West, where I live. Their never ending reach for [...]

Featured Trades: (JGB), (YCS), (FXJ) Currency Shares Japanese Yen Trust ETF ProShares Ultra Short Yen ETF 3) Why the JGB Market May Be Ready to Collapse. When I first arrived in Japan in 1974, international investors widely expected the country to collapse, a casualty of the overnight quadrupling of oil prices to $12 and the [...]

Featured Trades: (THE LAW) 4) My Run in With the Law. I'm sorry I'm late getting my letter out today. I was racing home from San Francisco on Highway 24 when the California Highway Patrol pulled me over for doing 80 mph in a 65 mph zone. The officer asked me where the fire was, [...]

'Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and they die on euphoria,' said my late friend, Sir John Templeton, over lunch at his home at Lyford Cay in the Bahamas.

Featured Trades: (FOR PROFIT EDUCATION), (APOL), (DV), (CPLA), (COCO), (STRA), 1) For Profit Education Jumps From the Frying Pan to the Fire. On Friday, the Department of Education released data showing that the student loan repayment rate at some schools was as low as 25%, and that it would take action to disqualify these schools [...]

Featured Trades: (CHILE), (ECH), (CU) iShares MSCI Chile Index Fund ETF First Trust ISE Global Copper ETF   2) Why Can’t We Be More Like Chile? I just want to pass on some data forwarded to me from my extensive band of Chilean readers in response to my recent piece, ‘Chile is Looking Hot’ (click [...]

Featured Trades: (CHINA), (TAIWAN), (JAPAN), (FXI), (EWJ), (EWT) iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Japan iShares ETF Taiwan iShares ETF 3) It's Official: China is Number Two. With China's (FXI) economy rocketing at 8%-13% quarterly growth rates, and Japan (EWJ) plodding away with meager 1%-2% rates, it was only a matter of time before the Middle Kingdom [...]

Featured Trades: (CNBC SPOOF) 4) Trashing CNBC on a Slow Day. With trading volume dropping through the floor the market has gotten so boring that I have run out of things to write about. So I can either pump out a mediocre piece of crap that you will probably lose money on, like the other [...]

'A slave with three masters is a free man,' said guru, Peter F. Drucker, in his classic tome on management, The Essential Drucker.

Featured Trades: (QUANTITATIVE EASING) 1) The Fed Makes Its Move. Man, I go on vacation of a couple of days and the world turns upside down. I’m talking about the arrival of the QE II. No, I’m not talking about the docking of a new cruise ship, or even the ruling member of the House [...]

Featured Trades: (COP), (BP), (OIL) 2) ConocoPhillips Looks Like a Steal. Since I am a permabull on energy of all types, I am constantly trolling the markets for cheap energy plays, and ConocoPhillips (COP) popped up on my radar. The large cap integrated oil major has announced a $20 billion restructuring that has whetted my [...]

Featured Trades: (SHIPPING), (TK), (NAT), (OSG), (FRO) 3) Pick Up Shipping Stocks for the Dividend. The markets are currently stampeding for yield of any description, damn the risk. That’s why shipping stocks have suddenly come into focus, which offer some of the highest dividend yields on the board. Nordic American Tanker (NAT) has a bounteous [...]

'We're all just one trade away from humility, Bud,' said a stockbroker in the classic film, Wall Street.