Reformed oil man, repenting sinner, and borne again environmentalist, T. Boone Pickens, Jr. says that ?When we turn the US green, it will have the best economy ever.?

I met the spry, homespun billionaire at San Francisco?s Mark Hopkins on a leg of his self-financed national campaign to get America to kick its dangerous dependence on foreign oil imports. For the past 30 years, the US has had no energy policy because ?no one wanted to kick a sleeping dog.?

Production at Mexico?s main Cantarell field is collapsing, and will force that country to become a net importer in five years. Venezuela is shifting its exports of its sulfur-laden crude to China for political reasons, once refineries in the Middle Kingdom are completed to handle it.

Unfortunately, stable energy prices have put urgent alternative energy development on a back burner, with his preferred natural gas (UNG) taking the biggest hit. If the US doesn?t make the right investments now, our energy dependence will simply shift from one self-interested foreign supplier (Saudi Arabia) to another (China).

Wind and solar alone won?t work on still nights, and can?t power an 18-wheeler. Don?t count on the help of the big oil companies because they get 81% of their earnings from selling imported oil. The answer is in a diverse blend of multiple alternative energy supplies from American only sources.? Although Boone now has Obama?s ear, it?s a long learning process.

Boone says he has donated $700 million to charity, and argues that the 20,000 trees he has planted should offset the carbon footprint of his Gulfstream V private jet.

I worked with Boone to organize financing for a Mesa Petroleum Pac Man oil company takeover in the early eighties, when it was cheaper to drill for oil on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange than in the field. Now 85, he has not slowed down a nanosecond.

As Boone walked out the door, I shook hands with him and said ?I want to be like you when I grow up.? He smiled. When you meet a friend who is 85, you never know if you are going to see him again.

I am pleased to announce that I will be participating in the Invest Like a Monster Trading Conference in San Francisco during October 25-26. The two-day event brings together experts from across the financial landscape who will improve your understanding of markets by a quantum leap and measurably boost your own personal trading performance.

Tickets are available for a bargain $399. If you buy the premium $499 package you will be invited to the Friday 6:00 pm VIP cocktail reception, where you will meet luminaries from the trading world, such as Trademonster?s Jon and Pete Najarian, Guy Adami, Jeff Mackey, and of course, myself, John Thomas, the Mad Hedge Fund Trader. All in all, it is great value for the money, and I?ll personally throw in a ride on the City by the Bay?s storied cable cars for free.

Jon Najarian is the founder of OptionMonster, which offers clients a series of custom crafted computer algorithms that give a crucial edge when trading the market. Called Heat Seeker ?, it monitors no less than 180,000 trades a second to give an early warning of large trades that are about to hit the stock, options, and futures markets.

To give you an idea of how much data this is, think of downloading the entire contents of the Library of Congress, about 20 terabytes of data, every 30 minutes. His firm maintains a 10 gigabyte per second conduit that transfers data at 6,000 times the speed of a T-1 line, the fastest such pipe in the civilian world. Jon?s team then distills this ocean of data on his website into the top movers of the day. ?As with the NFL,? says Jon, ?you can?t defend against speed.?

The system catches big hedge funds, pension funds, and mutual funds shifting large positions, giving subscribers a peek at the bullish or bearish tilt of the market. It also offers accurate predictions of imminent moves in single stock and index volatility.

Jon started his career as a linebacker for the Chicago Bears, and I can personally attest that he still has a handshake that?s like a steel vice grip. Maybe it was his brute strength that enabled him to work as a pit trader on the Chicago Board of Options Exchange for 22 years, where he was known by his floor call letters of ?DRJ.? He formed Mercury Trading in 1989 and then sold it to the mega hedge fund, Citadel, in 2004.

Jon developed his patented algorithms for Heat Seeker? with his brother Pete, another NFL player (Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Minnesota Vikings), who like Jon, is a regular face in the financial media.

In order to register for the conference, please click here. There you will find the conference agenda, bios of the speakers, and a picture of my own ugly mug. I look forward to seeing you there.

Cling! Cling!

Jon Najarian

One of the joys of having small children is that you get to know the guy at the local plumbing supply shop really well. It?s amazing what will fit down a toilet these days.

He once told me that when Troll Dolls hit the market, every plumber in the country was guaranteed a job for life. When I went there yesterday I thought I?d pick up some leading economic indicators as well. After a deadly year, business is picking up a bit. Sure, it is still down from the onset of the Great Recession five years ago, but there is a definite improvement going on.

This was the Eureka moment! His comments confirm the sort of modest recovery I have been expecting. We aren?t going to zero anymore, but it is not exactly off to the races either. Throughout the nineties, a salesman at Circuit City (RIP) walked me through every generation of technology, and he was worth his weight in gold. All I had to do was buy a new TV from him every year, and they kept getting bigger and more expensive. I bought the second high definition TV sold in California, after George Lucas, who I used to run into at the local IHOP having breakfast with an aspiring young starlet. It was his casting couch.

Sometimes figuring out the direction of the economy is as simple as going down to the local butcher, baker, or candlestick maker and asking. They are on the front lines of economic activity, and they will see any changes months before those of us glued to computer screens. Make it your own unfair advantage, your own heads up in the marketplace. Just keep your eyes open and observe.

Asking George Lucas also helps.

A Troll Doll