Stocks to Watch

Continuing recovery efforts in Japan will help stimulate the economy, potentially pulling 2011 out of its current global economic funk.

With the end of QE2 looming in the United States and concerns about a sovereign debt default in Greece reaching a fevered pitch, the global economy looks to be firmly mired in a rough patch at the moment.

However, there is still hope, with Nariman Behravesh, chief economist with IHS Global Insight, calling the current problems a temporary lull in the global expansion that can still be reversed.

There is no need to panic — yet, Nariman Behravesh, chief economist with IHS Global Insight, said in a report Tuesday. This is unlikely to be the precursor of another recession. While the balance of risks has shifted a little to the downside, IHS Global Insight still assesses the probability of a more robust scenario at 20%, compared with 25% for a return to recession.

IHS has slightly downgraded its global outlook for 2011, largely on downward revisions to the U.S. a

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I live in a rural town where a neighboring plot of mixed farmland on 36.5 acres is going for about $4,600 an acre. There are also several homes and smaller bits of land for sale in the area. I always keep an eye out for places that come on the housing market.

We bought our slice of paradise (8.3 acres with a farmhouse, barn and other buildings on a dead-end road) last Thanksgiving, so I have an interest in how well our new home is holding its value.

So far, so good…

But I fear that other neighborhoods aren’t doing as well as we are.

According to Zillow.com, Wisconsin’s home prices have dropped 5.5% in the past year. Not the best news, but certainly not the worst, either… Michigan homes have lost 12.4% and Minnesota a whopping 13.2%!

Of course, not all counties are stabilizing.

On Saturday, I was driving through a small but affluent suburb of Milwaukee called Fox Point.

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From its high this year the benchmark Reuters-CRB Index is down 9%. That’s the good news. The bad news is commodities are likely to suffer another hit this summer as the Fed exits QE II and global markets test longer term moving averages.

Oil, the single largest constituent in all commodity benchmarks, is losing support as the $90 level approaches for WTI crude. In “risk-off” sell-off, oil will head lower.

Historically, the summer is a bad time of the year for natural resources. Markets are often thinly traded as we approach August and most buyers in the commodities complex are away on holidays. That leaves room for the heavy-hitting speculators to attack volatile markets with a bias towards the downside; most commodities remain vulnerable.

The odds are pretty good that the U.S. dollar has started a short-term bear market rally. That’

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Today’s tickers: XOM, CCL, WYN & VRSN

XOM - Exxon Mobil Corp. – A large bearish options play on the world’s largest corporation indicates one strategist is positioned for shares in Exxon Mobil to fall ahead of August expiration. The investor responsible for the sizable ratio put spread on the oil and gas company may be taking an outright bearish stance on the stock, or could be hedging a long position in the underlying ahead of XOM’s July 28 second-quarter earnings report. Exxon Mobil’s shares are currently up 1.3% to stand at $80.75 just before 11:45am in New York. It looks like the options trader picked up 7,500 puts at the August $77.5 strike for a premium of $1.79 each, and sold 15,000 puts at the lower August $72.5 strike at a premium of $0.78 apiece. The net cos

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Traders who have invested their money in Legend International Holdings, Inc. (OTC:LGDI, LGDI message board) might face significant challenges in their quest for profitable transactions in the near future. Of course, this statement is based on LGDI’s market performance for the last four months.

Unfortunately, yesterday’s session proved incapable of performing miracles. On the contrary, LGDI continued to dig deeped and deeper. Thus, it closed the session at $0.50 per share, losing 5.6% in value and continuing the tradition of setting a new negative 52-week record every day. The decline in price occurred on a moderate volume spike as approximately 191 thousand shares of LGDI stock changed hands. The latter is a four-week high and almost twice as high as the average daily trading volume.

Apart from the PRE 14A form, which was filed with the SEC on Jun 10, LGDI has issued no updates for more than two months now.

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Are we “still too heavy“?

That was what I said about valuations back on May 4th, when we set new watch levels.  $96 was our goal on oil, we hit that and went long yesterday.  Of course, in our upside-down Wonderland Market, falling oil prices are somehow BAD for the Transports and we thought we accounted for that with our 2,448 target but they failed that last week and fell another 125 (5%) since then.  Similarly (easier to write than say), the Nasdaq blew through our 2,700 line and bottomed out at 2,639 yesterday (-2.25%) but the Russell has been the biggest surprise, leading us all the way down to 773 in yesterdays action before bouncing back to lucky 777.

As we expected yesterday, the Dollar was sacrificed on the altar of keeping the markets from going to Hell in a handbasket dropping all the way from 75.20 to 74.80 (0.5%) which gave us only a flat market but the 74.60 line held in overnight and were back to 74.80 and now the pre-markets are wondering why they gained 0.75% in overnight trading.  Oil po

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