Tom Lydon (ETF Trends) submits: Emerging-market countries have gathered their composure with grace, and emerging market related ETFs have bounced back to impressive heights since the March 9 low. Let’s take a look at five emerging countries that have shown some robust gains.Turkey. Turkey is rapidly developing and there’s no indication that the economy needs aid from the International Monetary Fund. Growth in the economy could likely accelerate in 2011 after a return to growth in 2010. Turkey’s market index has been driven up by the banking sector, which makes up around 40% of the market. Bank earnings have been bolstered by a series of rate cuts that have reduced interest on customers’ deposits as lending rates remain high.Complete Story »

  The one stock holding that I have that did not beat its earnings estimate, Lorillard (LO) did not perform well on Wall Street Monday and had all short term traders exiting all at one time. The report was not bad and the reaction in this Analyst's opinion was way overblown. This is a short term event and for those of you who are in it as a long term dividend play, the stock will pay you $4 a share in dividends or most of Monday’s losses over the next year. As a Lorillard investor you have only lost money on paper and until one sells these are just paper losses. The management of the company is top notch and for those who want to see it with their own eyes here is Monday’s conference call transcript for everyone to read. (Thank you Seeking Alpha for that service).Complete Story »

  The latest Grantham quarterly is a real gem. It sounds to me like he has been reading too much TPC (more likely, I have been reading too much Grantham!). He calls out just about everyone involved in the economy in the letter. He claims Bernanke is clueless and is repeating the mistakes of Greenspan. He calls Geithner and Summers the captains of the USS Disaster. He says the homebuilders are reckless and that the mortgage borrowers and consumers are idiotic. He hammers the big banks and CEO pay. In essence, he argues that very little has changed in the last 18 months and that the market is now well overbought and at risk of a substantial downturn that is based on the weak real economy and realization that stimulus can’t get us out of this mess. The main takeaways: The market is 25% overvalued He hopes for “some modest hopes for a collective sensible resistance to the current Fed plot to have us all borrow and speculate again.” “The U.S. market will drop below fair value, which is a 22% decline (from the S&P 500 level of 1098 on October 19).” “All in all we are likely to have learned little, or rather to act, through lack of character, as if we have learned nothing. In doing so we are probably condemning ourselves to another serious financial crisis in the not too-distant future.” I hope investors will take particular note of point two above. This Federal Reserve is destroying the dollars in our pockets as they implement the exact same boom/bust policies that helped create this mess in the first place. We absolutely must do something to help change the system and limit the power of these reckless and destructive bankers. Grantham has some suggestions in his letter, but it’s the investors who need to take power back from the Fed and the bankers.Complete Story »

  Newspaper online advertising has not benefited greatly from the recent upswing in online ad spending, according to the New York Times and most of the recent newspaper company quarterly results. This is no surprise because most newspaper websites sell space for commodity advertising — display ads and classifieds — and thus are hard pressed to compete with ad networks that specialize in selling commodity ad space by the megaton (or giving it away for free, in the case of Craigslist). Back when newspapers were the only game in town for ad space, they could charge whatever they wanted. Now the web has near infinite ad space, and newspapers find themselves playing the wrong game. They’ve got ad sales staff that specialize in commodity order fulfillment and not premium advertising solutions.Complete Story »

  The ATA reported a “miniscule” 0.3% decline in truck tonnage for the month of September. Though minor, the declines and weak recovery in trucking are not dissimilar from weak trends we’ve seen in other transport related industries such as Air Cargo Transportation and the railroads. The recovery in transports is meager at best, despite what Bob Costello notes below. The ATA reports: Complete Story »

  Jim Delaney submits: A group of Asian nations gathered for a summit in Cha-am, Thailand this past weekend to discuss forming a bloc similar to the EU. To the extent that necessity is the mother of invention, a statement by Thai Prime Minister Abhist might best sum up the ethos behind the gathering.“The old growth model, where, simply put, we have to rely on consumption in the West for goods and services produced here, we feel will no longer serve us as we move to the future.”Complete Story »

  Wade Slome submits: Currently there is a witch hunt under way to get rid of excessive compensation levels, especially in the financial and banking industries. Members of Congress and their constituents are looking to reign in the exorbitant paychecks distributed to the fat-cat executives at the likes of Goldman Sachs (GS), Bank of America (BAC) and the rest of the banking field.Complete Story »

  Trader Mark submits:I personally think it is pathetic the entire market, with all these trillions of dollars, sophisticated computer systems, and PhDs galore has become nothing more than a 1st grade math equation dollar up = everything down dollar down = everything up but this is the monster we've created... thanks HAL9000. The weak dollar trade is sickening in how crowded it is, but I said that 3 weeks ago, 7 weeks ago, etc. "Long technology" was crowded in fall 1999, and that didn't stop it from continuing as a gold mine for another 6 months. As we've said, when everyone is on one side of the boat, it is fine and dandy, until we fall into the ocean. So it's a game of chicken for those who continue to play it. But knowing when it reverses is of course the $64,000 question (inflation adjusted, it's really the $3,000 question - trust me, that was a funny joke to economic geeks like me)Complete Story »

  

  

  Trader Mark submits:These words from Morgan Stanley's chief European equity analyst, Teun Draaisma are particularly interesting as we (the collective) sit awash in a world of government intervention and central bank liquidity, while ignoring the fact it is not endless. Fascinating chart below as well.If you are not familiar with Draaisma, he made a well known call in summer 2007 to avoid equities. While he did get investors back in too early after the September/October 2008 crash - I would assume someone who followed his advice between summer 07 and November 08 would have saved themselves a lot of pain; and losses suffered in Jan/Feb 09 would have been made up by now.Complete Story »

  Trader Mark submits:There have been many things that one could describe as "remarkable" the past 2 years... I've lost count. But for the technical crowd, one thing I read over and over is how astounded people are by the reversals we have been seeing once any support is broken. If you live on a grassy knoll, you might say "large forces with a huge stake in creating the appearance of prosperity" are no dummies, and have their own set of technicians letting them know where it is most important to provide support. That's a whole different discussion. What cannot be argued is we don't seem to have consolidation and gentle rebounds once a support is broken. I've gone back the past 3 months and looked at every break of the 20 day moving average... Monday marks the 4th episode. Again I cannot stress how vicious this market has been to bears - you expect a break of support to give you some downside action (at best) or some sideways consolidation (at worst). Instead of either of those scenarios, all bears have received the past few months on these breaks are things not fit for print.Complete Story »

  

  Patrick Chovanec submits:I came across a rather astounding set of numbers yesterday, posted on Shanghaiist.com. As you probably already know, access to Facebook — as well as YouTube (GOOG) and Twitter – have been blocked in China since July.The ban came in apparent response to two events that greatly alarmed China’s leaders: the disputed election in Iran, where all three social networking sites provided citizens with a vital tool for coordinating protests and broadcasting information, and the deadly ethnic riots in Xinjiang, in far western China. No official explanation was given, but most people held out hope that the block might be lifted after China’s sensitive 60th Anniversary took place on October 1st. So far, no such luck.Complete Story »