Yesterday I got a lot of attention, being quoted first on Seeking Alpha.com, which picked up my overall blog with the note by Dr. Max Golt on how currency trading is becoming more restricted, and my quoting Michael Kurtz on China inflation sectoral predictions. I was also interviewed on his hedgefund radio program by John Thomas, of  themadhedgefundtrader.com

I was thinking a bit about the latter chat today. As old-time readers know, I share a birthday with a Burmese “twin” Aung San Suu Kyi AKA The Lady. She was released from house arrest over the weekend. The question is whether there is any way to invest in Myanmar to celebrate with The Lady. The answer is: no. The SLORC, or whatever the military junta call themselves now, do not allow businesses, except Army businesses (like timber cutting, rubies, and oil exploration) they run for their own corrupt profit.

Every market in the world is not necessarily worth investing in. Vietnam is another. About 18 years ago Mark Mobius of the Templeton Group launched a closed-end Vietnam Fund which I and my readers bought. But Mark, an old Asia hand (his first job after getting his PhD from MIT was selling Tiger Milk in northern Thailand) could not find ‘Nam companies to invest in. So fund holders were given their money back or a chance (which I took) to buy into the Templeton open-end Emerging Markets Fund without paying the 8.25% fee then charged.

Just because Mount Everest is there, you don’t have to climb it, unlike Sir Edmund Hillary. And just because a frontier economy is appearing on the radar screen, you don’t have to venture to invest in it.

Meanwhile perfectly respectable stocks from westerncountries deep in disaster, like Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Japan are doing well for our subscribers. In serious economies with problems, often investment vehicles can override the problems. More on this for paid subscribers below.

I try to keep my stock picking ideas cool and objective. I generate stock picks, of course, but I prefer to keep myself out of the portfolio side of this newsletter. First, my readers want stock advice, not chatter about me, because the advice gives them a chance to make money. That is what they subscribe for.

Moreover, as journalism, global stocks are more interesting than I am.

Finally, while I founded Global Investing, I am today only part of it. My ideas are often triggered by readers or my reporting the team. Putting my name on articles I write seems like a mild form of narcissism. So when I have written something myself it is not signed in the copy posted or emailed, but only on the bottom of the newsletter along with the copyright protection.

Jason the marketing guy says we need to “put a face” on the company. I’m hard pressed to understand why anyone would want to see my face, or why showing it is good business, but never argue with marketing.

Anyway, I am relieved that we have our banner headline and my signature and the copyright notice back after a tech migration problem.

Which brings me to another vexed matter. Paid subscribers do not have any right to violate copyright by re-sending e-mailed issue to buddies or relatives. This is against the law. Paying a subscription fee gives a subscription to a single household, via a single e-mail address. (Sometimes we collect a second e-mail address for the same person because of delivery problems, but it goes to the same one person.)

When we discover that emailed issues are being illegally passed on, we require that subscriber to log on to our website, www.global-investing.com, to read the issues and the convenience of e-mails stops. Log-ons are tracked so we can be sure that the person has paid and logs on a reasonable number ot times.

There is nothing unfair about this. Ours is a business, whose purpose is to make money. The fact that we now distribute via the Internet does not change anything. When we run articles from a reporter in Japan, as we did yesterday, we pay him for them. There is no free lunch, no free yakitori, no free miso soup.

I let Chris Loew talk about growing up in the woods of the Pacific northwest before moving to Japan, because that is part of what he is paid to write about. And it makes Jason happy. The whole thing is copyrighted. It is ours. It is not distributable.

As I try to deal with the emotional havoc of restoring this business I am relieved that our subscriber numbers are going up steadily, and that I have been able to extract my capital invested in the restart and the Rightside bankruptcy three years ago.

And I am shattered that another letter I respect, www.Thaistocks.com, is being shuttered by its creator, Paul Renaud of Phuket who is fed up with the grubby business of soliciting subscriptions, and wants to become a money manager. I sympathize.

And when long time subscribers who have sent me thank you letters for my work turn out to be sharing subscriptions with grandpa or uncle in the Bahamas or Berkeley I am tempted to do a Paul Renaud myself.

I’ve known Virginie Maisonneuve who heads Global Equities at Schroder Investment Mgm North America for decades. So I am delighted that the French-born China-hand is now buying into X, listed in Toronto, only traded in Canada, a long-time GI pick. Her firm now belongs to Vanguard; when I first met her she worked for Wellington, also part of Vanguard.

Another stock she favors is Y which can be bought by copycat investors if I put it in a Covestor account. X trades only in Canada. The Covestor system only allows me to pick shares whose capitalization is over $50 mn and whose USA trading exceeds $10,000/day. A stock from the True North, Y does not trade that much in this country. I am considering creating a buy and hold Covestor portfolio but compliance issues discourage me.

In any event, there will be no blog Wednesday morning since I am meeting with the Covestor compliance lawyers.

What follows below is for paid subscribers only, and not their children living away from home, their second cousins, poker pals, grandparents, uncles and aunts, ex-wives, etc. We report from the oil patch, on financial service companies and banks, on tech, on environmental stocks, and of course on chemicals and drugs. With a big find!

Back to the barbarous relic?

In an op-end article in today’s Financial Times, the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, calls for a new package of global trade and structural reform. Mr. Zoellick, an American, causes nowaves with his call for international cooperation to spur growth and avoid intervening in currency markets, and to help the poor and support private secotr development.

But then he lands a shocker, with an addition to his call for a new monetary system involving the dollar, the euro, the yen, the pound and a more international renminbi, in these words:

“The system should also consider employing gold as an international reference point of market expectations about inflation, deflation and future currency values.”

His Betton Woods II would revolutionalize economic exchanges by bringing gold back. He further writes “Although textbooks may view gold as the old money, markets are using gold as an alternative monetary asset today.”

If you look at the price of gold right this minute, it is going up because it is Diwali in India. While usually gold moves the other way to “fiat currencies” in times of high demand both gold and the US dollar can move upward together.

In fact gold is a pretty poor anchor for stability. Its price jumps all over the place. Chris Dillow writes about the yellow metal in today’s on-line Investors Chronicle:

“Since January 2000, the standard deviation of its weekly price moves has been almost twice that of the yen/$ or euro/$ rates at 19% annualized vs 10.5%. What’s more, major foreign exchange markets seem to be more informationally efficient than gold. Whereas these seem close to a random walk, gold prices are vulnerable to momentum effects. The notion that gold is a stable store of value – which is a desirable feature of a true monetary asset – is inconsistent with with facts.

“Linking exchange rate expectations to gold would – if it does anything at all – tend to introduce more volatility into exchange rates. I don’t see the point of this.”

Furthermore, Mr. Zoellick appears to to suffer under a delusion that the current global crisis and recession can be blamed on floating exchange rates unanchored to gold. On the contrary. The measures being taken by the Fed and other central banks would be impossible if the world still was being run under a gold standard. That was what went wrong in the 1930s, the last time there was a world financial crisis, when the need to support their currencies led central banks to deepen their domestic deflation, unemployment, and depression.

If you have a gold standard, you cannot have quantitative easing and you might not even be able to have deficit spending on the scale needed.

Curiously, Mr. Zoellick seems to think that his gold-link would not prevent another step he proposes, that “the US and China could agree on specific mutually reinforcing steps to boost growht [and} also agree on a course for renminbi appreciation.”

I am seeking shelter.Whither the dollar? Whither the markets?

The election results and the second huge round of Quantitative Easing by the Federal Reserve require that we ponder the trends. Dollar futures are continuing to fall, and momentum is still bearish. Stocks are still rising not just here in the USA but worldwide. Commodities are still hopping, except for gold which has a scizzors relationship to our currency. The Dow Theory confirmed a bullish trend when both the industrials and the transports closed over their 25-mo highs.

But when everyone is saying the same thing about where markets are heading and more and more folks are jumping on board the speeding train, a good conductor worries about her brakes. I am putting on my contrarian hat today.

Today is a hiatus between the election and the next round of quantitative easing, so I wanted to fill you in on some great news. Lightening has just strike a third time for our small caps, as you can read below.

But here is something else.

“First class for all.” The Portuguese vacation charter airline White tested offering all passengers first-class meals in a Lisbon-Cancun flight earlier this autumn. Chef Olivier (not the British one) prepared meals served on board for all 214 flyers using products from Lidl, a German-owned discount discount supermarket which operates also in Portugal. He was on the plane to accept their compliments. Ad agency Leo Burnett thought the idea up to stress that Lidl can offer top quality food at low prices by selling out of cartons on the floor and shelves, and offering only a limited line. The happy passengers are shown in a clip that is running on Portuguese TV but which also has gone viral.

What a change from Ryanair which is charging for bottled water and plans a fee for using the toilet.

Goldman Sachs put out a doorstopper 100-page report with its 2011 forecasts for China mainly stressing that growth will be 10% (higher than consensus) and that the RMB will be allowed to rise 6% in the year. More on what that means for our portfolio below.

Other news from China, Israel, France, Switzerland, Britain, and Canada (francophone only) follows for paid subscribers.

Investors poured more than $13 bn into U.S. ETFs last month, lifting assets to over $940 bn, up14% year to date. The three most popular funds in October were all emerging markets ETFs(IndexUniverse.com data): Vanguard MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (VWO), which gathered $3.22 bn; iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund (EEM), $1.57 bn; and iShares MSCI Brazil Index Fund (EWZ), $1.18 bn. Dilma be good!

Australia’s CB raised interest rates another quarter point to 4.75%, in anticipation of which we bailed out of Westpac, worrying about the impact on the booming housing market down under. WBK.

Looking for something to do after losing his bid for the CT Republican Senatorial nomination, stockbroker Peter Schiff writes of his launch of Euro Pacific Precious Metals, LLC. A cynic might say this may indicate a market top for gold.

“This new company, of which I am [CEO], offers physical delivery of gold and silver coins and bullion at fair and competitive prices based on my reputation for integrity, straight talk, and fair dealing. It does not deal in numismatic coins, commemoratives, proof sets, etc., which I do not believe are suitable for investors.

He also launched a new monthly newsletter, Peter Schiff’s Gold Report which will feature feature articles by Schiff plus regular columns by the gold expert Aden Sisters and resource specialist Doug Casey’s firm, Casey Research. Peter adds:

“I have always advocated that investors hold at least 5 to 10% of their portfolio in gold and silver bullion and coins. Tangible wealth, not subject to confiscation, registration, or unwarranted intrusion by government, should be a core component of any well-balanced portfolio.

“I believe physical precious metals are the ultimate insurance policy in today’s perilous world. No other investment offers the same level of financial privacy, while eliminating counterparty risk. Physical precious metals do not depend on a court, a bank, or a stock exchange — their value is intrinsic.

“I expect gold and silver prices to move much higher. Pressure is building in all parts of the world for solutions to the debt crisis that many nations face. The classic way for governments to deal with excessive debt is by debasing the currency, i.e. inflation. This has already started, with the U.S. Federal Reserve printing trillions of new dollars since 2008. Many observers think the world’s only superpower is heading toward bankruptcy. And there is no one big enough to bail us out. This means inflation of historic proportions. Potentially sending gold prices higher than most hard money investor would ever dream.

“Over the years, many clients of my brokerage firm followed my advice and purchased coins and bullion from coin dealers. Too often, however, I heard that clients needlessly overpaid for their gold. In some instances, they were ‘sold’ on coins that were really not suitable for them. So I decided to go into the business directly. The goal is to provide a trustworthy source to find top-quality gold and silver products at competitive prices.

“Euro Pacific Precious Metals features the most widely known and liquid gold and silver coins, such as American Eagles, Canadian Maple Leafs, Australian Kangaroos, South African Krugerrands, and Austrian Philharmonics. I strongly believe you should avoid buying ‘exotic’ or ‘numismatic’ coins for investment purposes. Commissions on such products are very high, and liquidity often is very limited.”

Schiff forgets that Franklin Roosevelt’s Administration confiscated American holdings of gold in the 1930s. When your editor got married, an elderly neighbor originally from Santa Barbara gave me one of her then illegal $5 gold pieces, part of a horde she kept in a safe deposit box. As ordered, I wore it in my shoe as I walked down the aisle, to ensure a prosperous marriage. Pres. Nixon ended the ban on Americans owning physical gold, but presumably a precedent for seizure by Washington exists.

Peter Schiff would never shop his clients to the Feds, but I am not sure they are safe from hackers and phishers.

More for paid subscribers with lots of news from our companies and a sell today, from Israel, China, Tennessee (!), Britain, The Netherlands, Brazil, Canada, and Denmark.

Today I want to talk about two vampirettes. Dilma Rousseff has broken the sex barrier in Brazil. Too bad she is supposed to be a bigger believer in state power and nationalization than Lula da Silva, whom she will succeed. That may be the bad news from Latin America, but nobody really knew what Lula would do before he took office, and I suspect Dilma has not confided in stock market analysts either.

The apparent good news is that some observers believe that Penguin Vampirette Cristina Fernandez, who kind of looks the part, widow of her predecessor Nestor Kirschner, will be more centrist now that he has died, leaving her free to find her own advisors, make peace with the IMF, Clarins, and the Argentine Oligarchs. Again this is not based on any serious info. Historically, Peronist women in power have been far more economically illiterate and dangerous than their husbands.

My Toshiba external hard drive is kaputt (or whatever they say in Japanese) and I therefore could not do my tables over the weekend. My excuses for the delay. The toll-free numbers I am given do not work. After the blog has been posted I will try again. The level of Toshiba customer service has sunk to levels reflecting poorly on Japan.

From Institutional Investor, which I used to write for in Paris, I got this:

In the article titled “Al Gore’s Fund Suffers and Green Investors are Seeing Red,” which appeared on our web site on July 13 and 14, we wrongly stated that the Generation Global Equity Fund was, according to its Securities and Exchange Commission filings, worth only $2.4 bn at the end of March 2010, having originally been worth $5.3 bn when it was closed to new investments in 2008.

We accept that these figures are wholly incorrect. The Fund’s SEC filings state the value of the Fund’s U.S. investments only (which at the end of March 2010 were approximately $2.6 bn), and not the value of the whole Fund. We understand that the value of the Fund at that date was $5.6 bn, and that the Fund has therefore grown in value since 2008. We apologize unreserverdly to Generation.

There’s more but you get the drift. II managed to set off legal pursuits by the veep’s employer without even mentioning Gore’s curious sex life, his embonpoint, or his split from Tipper.

More about writing English, correct statistcs, and other corrections follows for paid subscribers. News from Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain, South Africa, Israel, China, India and Panama.

First a message from the anti-Vivian, Leila Heckman. Vivian does bottom up and Heckman is the pioneer of top down country allocation research and an expert in quantitative analysis, macro economics, stock selection, and portfolio optimization with expertise in developed, emerging and frontier markets. She asks:

Over the past month, investments in Europe have increased 7-8%. Have investors’ worries about investing in the European market and contagion dissipated, or have they just quieted for the moment? Is Europe poised to bounce back?

According to Heckman, now Senior Director of Mesirow Financial, people are quick to forget crises, including those in the financial markets. She thinks while Europe’s bailout will likely take place over an extended period of time, there are several positive market drivers indicating that there are good investment opportunities now.

Currently, Heckman believes the most attractive European markets include: Turkey, the Netherlands, Spain, and Norway.

Heckman has over 20 years of experience specializing in country allocation modeling and international equity investing. Previously, she was the senior managing director and head of international equity for Bear Stearns; founder and CEO of Heckman Global Advisors; and head of global asset allocation for Salomon Smith Barney. Her Interactive model is built on a scoring mechanism. Each month it compares the markets under coverage on the basis of quantitative investment factors that have been shown to convey information about future equity returns in research by academics and practitioners, including ourselves. These indicators include valuations, growth indicators, macroeconomic indicators, and measures of momentum. The factors and the weights we put on each one are shown below. Each month statistical scores are computed for each factor, and a total score is computed for each country as the weighted average of the individual factor scores. The weights on each factor are determined by the strength and reliability of each factor in back tests. Each country then gets an allocation relative to the benchmark roughly in proportion to its total score, with restrictions on the maximum allocation to avoid unrealistically large exposures. Each month performance of the hypothetical portfolio is compared with the benchmark.

Here is another important note from Information Line, a hard money newsletter, of interest to all US investors, by Vernon Jacobs CPA. He writes that the Foreign Bank Account Report form used by the Dept of the Treasury for many years to collect information about American banking and investment accounts overseas, which have to be reported if they total more than $10,000, is about to be supplanted by new rules. Mr. Jacobs writes about the Housing Act to Restore Employment (HIRE):

“Questions about what must be disclosed on the FBAR form may soon become a moot issue. The recent HIRE act incluedes a new requirement to report foreign financial assets – which is much broader than foreign financial accounts. This new form is to be effective for tax years beginning after the effective date of the HIRE act which was March 18, 2010.

“For most individuals, that means it will be necessary to discolose any foreign financial assets with their 2010 income tax return – but only if the total of those assets exceeds $50,000 at any time during the year.

“Unlike the FBAR form, the new and expanded report of financial assets is to be included with the income-tax return of the ‘person’ that has foreign financial assets that must be reported. The law specifically mentions that the report should include information about foreign securities, financial instrucments or contracts and any ownership interest in a foreign entity. The law also gives very broad authority to the IRS to develop regulations to implement the law and to exclude assets that are being disclosed in other reports.

“Even so, it seems likely that there will be a duplication of reporting in the new HIRE act asset report and the FBAR form. One of them goes to a part of the Treasury Department that is separate from the IRS and is not part of an income-tax return. The new asset report will be required as part of a tax return.”

For his readership, Mr. Jacobs then worries about how holdings of gold bullion or silver will be dealt with under the new rules, which probably is irrelevent to most of us. Mr. Jackobs has written a half dozn books on international taxes and writes the twice-monthly International Wealth Protection Monitor newsletter. He is producing a new edition of his Guide to Reporting Foreign Financial Accounts. www.vernonjacobs.com Information Line is published by info@assetstrategies.com

-Barclays is skeptical that we are in for another economic decline. So, it recently advised clients to continue accumulating stocks on corrections, favoring sectors with a strong demand base across the major economies.

-Credit Suisse Securities recently told clients we are in an environment of healthy corporate balance sheets and a fair amount of excess cash, but a decidedly un-exciting medium-term growth outlook for the average US corporation. As a result, it expects U.S. corporations will increasingly focus cash flows on increasing dividend payments and share repurchases.

-Bank of America Merrill Lynch reminds clients the strong role dividends have played over the years. “If dividend tax rates stay aligned with capital gains rates, we think companies will raise dividend payout ratios significantly over time.”

Note that there are two meanings for double dip, one for the economy as a whole, and another, quite different, for the stock market. The two do not move in phase.

Here is a bullish take from Steve Chun of Miller/Howard Investment research:

“There are some interesting features in the current landscape that may auger well for equity investment–which 2009 amply demonstrated is not all that closely correlated to the larger economy in the intermediate term. Corporate cash and noncorporate funds available for investment (even excluding funds that might be switched from bond positions) have never been higher, measuring in the multitrillions. The rate of improvement in corporate operating margins has grown faster than any period for which we have data.

Astonishingly, some sectors such as Technology and Consumer Discretionary show margins that are off the charts on the upside, higher than ever! Corporations are as lean as they have ever been, and they have more cash than they’ve ever had. This is a nice prescription for an era of mergers and capital expansion if necessary (though capacity is fairly ample). The former would shrink the overall capitalization in the market, a market that is already rather small compared to the funds that could be available for equity investment, as we’ve pointed out on a number of occasions, if those funds were of a mind to get to work.

“Cash available, rapid margin improvement, moderately negative investor sentiment, and the help that might come from still-growing economies to the south and east of us could make for a potent brew boosting stock prices—a configuration that tends to get lost in the constant news flow about sovereign debt troubles, tax increases, and an overall ‘Age of Austerity.’” Miller/Howard is at (845)679-9166.

Moody’s today downrated Portugal by 2 notches to A1 while citing weak growth and mounting debt. It said the reform measures will take time to kick in.

The euro today did not collapse against the greenback on the news. It may be that panic about the single currency has played out. Or it may be that poor US May trade figures (showing a mounting $42.3 bn trade deficit, mostly with China) kept the dollar down. More about China for paid subscribers below thanks to a special survey shared with us.

Chartists are carefully watching gold. The precious metal has apparently hit its trend line 5 times according to Dutch analyst Charles Nenner, which may signal a reversal. But he is sititng on the sidelines all the same.

Your editor will be doing a tour of the River Duoro highlands east of Porto next month, her contribution to Portuguese recovery, thanks to a 30% senior price break in the government-sponsored network of Paradors, and the offer of an air-conditioned mini-car at the same price as a hot one. Paradors are hostelries built in old castles and convents to encourage tourism in remote regions. They were built under Salazar in Portugal, imitating the Pousadas built by Franco’s Spain. Even without the discount most of them are great bargains. Your credit card only gets swiped when you sign out, so I am hoping for a weaker Euro.

Switzerland struck a blow for liberty by freeing French-born film director Roman Polanski rather than shipping him off to the USA for a trial on very old statuatory rape charges. Having given way over secret Swiss bank accounts I guess they had to find another way to show their independent spirit.

More from China, Spain, Britain, Research Triangle, Germany, Australia, India, and Israel for our paid subscribers follows. Join them. Your portfolio will be grateful.

To become a paid subscriber, click here now for more details…

Today our pro-Dutch reporter is preparing an octopus stew by chopping up lots of garlic while her buddies blow vuvuzelas. A German octopus correctly forecast every single winner in the World Cup which ended yesterday. with Spain the champion. Meanwhile an economist panel, having rightly predicted Spain would win its first-ever Mundial in a first poll, then revised its figures to produce a muddled message

It reminds me of Harry Truman who said: “what I need is a one-handed economist.” But an 8-handed creature, despite another octopus’s brilliant foresight (or perhaps because of it), is being sacrificed in Amsterdam.

Your editor thinks the best team won. Dutch fouls and far kicks tried to stop the Spanish who advanced with brilliant handovers and clockwork passes. The best moment was the arrival of 91-year Nelson Mandela, dressed for the South African winter in fur coat and hat.

The French are in soccer disgrace after their team lost its only match because les bleus turned on their manager and refused to practice. French chefs still make very good octopus stew being creative and self-indulgent, insubordinate and egotistical. This works better in cooking than in football.

The low point of the World Cup was the murder of 64 Ugandans watching the final game at two different sites. They were attacked by terrorists with a grievance not related to the game, reportedly from Somalia. As heightened security makes it harder to murder Israelis, Americans or Europeans, the Al-Queda terror machine is turning on softer targets like African sports fans.

In the market today, bad news is good news, for example that BP is trying a Notre Dame pass to try to stop the oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, and also may cede shares to a Chinese takeover bid. It will sell its Alaska crown jewels to Apache Corp.

And good news is bad news. Banco Santander is being penalized for plans to further expand in South America and for its purchase today of the German branch network of Skandinavska Enskila Bank. These are marks of its management’s confidence in the STD balance sheet.

Your editor however is still frightened of the Spanish banking sector, however enamored of Spain’s football prowess.

So today paid subscribers are going to be told about a German specialty chemical stock to buy. It will have to be bought with a specialzed brokerage for international trading, like HSBC (my bank); Euro-Pacific Capital (Peter Schiff’s firm), or Lassalle St., a specialized brokerage whose principals are subscribers to this newsletter (tel: 407 539 1004). I could not do the trade with E-trade and my trying to do so is why this blog is late. We also have news from France, Britain, China, and Israel.