Silver is the most flexible metal on earth. We’re not talking about its malleability. We’re talking about how it is used.

Let’s take the point of view of those expecting a quick, painless recovery. In that case, silver is a great investment. It has many industrial uses other precious metals don’t. As the global economy kicks back into gear, we’ll see more demand from electronics manufacturers, battery makers and solar cell producers — all of which use silver in their products.

There are thousands of uses for silver in industry. It is used in water purification, medical machinery and, of course, jewelry. All of these industries will begin to pump out products again, which will put a strain on our limited aboveground silver reserves.

Now take a look at the world through the eyes of those thinking we are going to see a second collapse. The best place to store wealth is in precious metals. Of course, gold is the most common place to store cash, but silver is no slouch.

From 2006 until now, the physical holdings of silver funds have jumped 11-fold. That’s because more people than ever are interested in holding silver — or at least a fund that holds silver.

Silver is both a way to safely store your wealth and to spend it. Over the past several centuries, silver has been used as currency. In fact, our own U.S. dollar was once backed by silver. For those expecting the worst, silver is a must-own. These ETF holdings don’t even take into account how many people are stocking up on personal physical holdings.

There’s no shortage of demand. Everything is in place for another massive run-up. Gold already broke the $1,000 per ounce threshold last month. And it busted through its 2006 highs this week. Even so, silver is still lagging around $16.50.

David Morgan from Silver-Investor.com notes that when gold breaks through $1,000 and stays there for a length of time, silver will shoot up. He even went as far as to say silver will break through last year’s $21 high and hit $25 per ounce sometime in 2010.

Are we suggesting you buy silver? Well, yes. But we have a much better way for you to make money off this rise…

Buying shares of a major primary silver miner like Silver Wheaton (NYSE: SLW) would do the trick. It’ll certainly leverage its massive reserves and production against silver’s rise and return larger profits to shareholders than simply buying silver will. But even these gains will be miniscule compared with what you could see with small-caps.

We have an opportunity to get option-sized gains on silver’s rally without the downside or expiration hassles of actually buying options. By buying shares in a junior silver miner, like Hecla Mining (NYSE: HL) or Mag Silver (AMEX: MVG), we can take advantage of huge price swings without worrying about it expiring worthless, as options often do.

In just the last week, Hecla is up 15%, and Mag is up another 5%. As I write, these stocks are continually pushing into new 2009 highs ever day. When the silver boom gets traction in the market, expect small players like these to rocket as a result.

Sincerely,
Jim Nelson

Source: Finding Option-Sized Gains from $25 Silver

We’re told media conglomerates are among the most hated industries in the market today. Everyone knows they are struggling to keep afloat with competition from the Internet. Newspapers compete with blogs and free news sites. Magazines compete with nontraditional gossip and entertainment websites. And television ad revenue is continuing to dry up because of TiVo and DVRs. Even motion picture studios and record labels aren’t realizing what they’d like because of the never-ending efforts of media piracy.

But that doesn’t explain why these companies are still trading at astronomical ratios. Take The New York Times Co. for instance. NYT is one of the most out-of-favor stocks on Wall Street, or at least that’s what you’d think. Meanwhile, it’s trading at more than 2.2 times its book value. That means that if they called it quits tomorrow, shareholders would only receive about 45% of their money. And by shareholders, I mean preferred shareholders. Commoners probably wouldn’t get a penny.

Rupert Murdoch’s  News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) is a little better at 1.5 times book, which would be a fair valuation for a growing business. Murdoch’s precious Wall Street Journal addition isn’t even helping. He can add as many of these fallen media giants as he wants. It’s still not helping him grow his bottom line.

The problem is debt. These companies are swimming in it – especially smaller, regional media companies. Citadel Broadcasting, owner of the ABC Radio Network and 4,500 affiliates, is expected to close its doors soon, even though it somehow pulled a $2 million interest payment out of thin air earlier this month. The company owes some $2 billion, but its common stock is worth about six cents per share on the bulletin boards.

We already know what happened to Tribune Co. The owner of the 162-year-old Chicago Tribune filed for Chapter 11 last December, and was just cleared to sell the Cubs and its Wrigley Field.

These stories are nothing new. They’ve been happening for a while, and it doesn’t look like they are going away any time soon. According to Reuters, television and print companies, along with automobile and airlines, are about four times more likely to go bankrupt in the next year than any other type of company

So why are the likes of The NY Times and News Corp still trading for more than they’re worth?

To us, it sounds like another case of investors covering their eyes and ears and pretending not to know there’s even a problem. So instead of building up the bubble, we’re just sitting on years of letting the bubble bounce on down the road. Today’s economic situation might just be the pinprick to pop this forgotten 20th century blister.

Last year, print ad revenue fell 18%. When these advertisers start filling newspapers and magazines again, they’ll do so in the online versions first. After all, that’s where the sweet 18-34 age group spends most of its time.

Murdoch and Turner can spend any amount of money on traditional media business they want. The industry as we know it – and the stocks that represent it – are headed for a collapse worse than the tech and financial services industries. At least tech and financials still play a significant role in the world economy. Television and print media don’t.

You can see how the market treats ugly industries. It just lets them hang out for years longer than they should. GM was dead long before Obama grabbed the defibrillators. The same has been true with television and print. That’s about to change.

Both the auto and television/print industries as we know them are showing us a new way to watch a collapse. Make sure you’re on the right side of this trade.

Sincerely,

Jim Nelson

Source: The New Way to Collapse an Industry

But first, there’s a catch…

These “Trump Cards” aren’t traded very often. And you can’t find them on an exchange. That’s what makes them so lucrative. You see, it’s this lack of liquidity that makes these high-yield bonds, as they’re called, double and even triple overnight.

Once you get past the sometimes-frustrating volume issue, you’ll find many advantages high-yield bonds use to trump regular stocks.

First, there is the time element. You can hold a stock indefinitely, as long as the company stays in business. Bonds, however, mature at a certain date. They can even be called away. But unlike options, bonds use time to work in their favor. The closer to maturity date, the better. Time adds an extra benefit, because once it runs out, investors get paid.

Bonds are also higher on the importance scale for a company. Even if the unfathomable occurs and the issuing company liquidates, bondholders are paid first. Next come preferred stockholders and finally common stockholders.

The most important advantage bonds have over stocks is their guaranteed value. Stocks are bought and sold with a constant moving target. Each investor has his or her own target value. Bonds, however, have a face value. That face value, usually $1,000, is the price those holders will receive at maturity. This gives us a clear picture of what our investment will pay us. It can also give us a guaranteed double or triple.

Say you buy a corporate bond with a face value of $1,000 and a maturity date of August 2011. Instead of paying the full $1,000, you’ll oftentimes receive a hefty discount. Let’s say in this case, the bonds are trading at around $330. That’s a guaranteed triple as long as the company doesn’t go insolvent.

Here’s why the guarantee is so important. Even if the company does go belly up, every asset sold will be used to pay you. Common shareholders might receive a few dollars of whatever is left in the end. But you are paid first.

Don’t want to wait until 2011 to have your payday? No problem. Just trade it in early. As you can see, that’s an equally lucrative choice.

Instead of waiting until October 2027 for a 614% payday, investors on this bond could’ve cashed out today for a 5-month 186% gain. It’s easy enough to flip that gain into other fast moving high-yield bonds.

To get you started, here are two of the top traded bonds:

• Realogy Corp 10.5% Coupon Maturing Apr. 2014 (CUSIP: 75605EAT7)
• Clear Channel Communications 10.75% Coupon Maturing Aug. 2016 (CUSIP: 184502BB7)

Note: Be careful trading these. Corporate bonds can be extremely volatile.

The coupon rate is the original yield based on the $1,000 face value. This is also a large selling point for income investors as the yield becomes inflated with lower prices.

The CUSIP is the equivalent of a stock’s ticker symbol. Although, instead of using it to place orders on an exchange like stocks, the CUSIP is used for bond traders to quickly identify each particular issue.

To find your own high-yield bonds, you can check out any free bond screener such as Yahoo! Finance’s. Just enter the criteria you are looking for – like coupon rate, maturity date, and credit rating – and scan through the results until you find one you like.

Sincerely,
Jim Nelson

Source: Your Guaranteed Triple with the Stock Market ‘Trump Card’

Oil peaked at $147 per barrel in July 2008 — right before the house of cards came crashing down on the global economy. Once banks started to fail and credit dried up, other businesses slowed production and laid off workers. This created a massive trickle effect on the overall economy.

Big corporations and individual consumers alike were using less energy. That meant the prices of every energy-related commodity plummeted.

This spring, things started to turn around… The unemployment rate quit falling at such a rapid rate. Inventories were too low in many industries, creating a ramp up in production again. Energy prices climbed…

Since the start of this year, the price of crude oil has nearly doubled. In just the last six months, heating oil jumped as much as 90%. These two commodities are still cheap as far as we can tell. But they aren’t the real story…

Two other commodities are still low, but won’t be for long…

Coal and Natural Gas Are Commodity Buddies

Back in June, Greg Guenthner told you about coal’s recent history. Coal, being the most widely used fossil fuel in the U.S., took an extra-hard hit during the past several months. It’s down nearly 70% and hasn’t recovered in the slightest.

Demand will flood back into the system. In fact, that’s already happening. We have no doubt that the coal play we let our Penny Stock Fortunes readers in on is the best way to take advantage of the coming coal boom. But there’s another energy commodity about to shoot even higher, even faster…

Natural gas prices have utterly collapsed. After trading above $13 in June 2008, natural gas fell the whole way down to $2.70 today. Its decline happened as gradually as can be. Most of the financial world has been trying to time the bottom for months. But it keeps falling.

We don’t know if this is the bottom, but it can’t be far from it. It doesn’t matter to us even if it’s not. You see, we found the best natural gas seasonal laborer in the world, and we can just wait it out… no matter how long it takes.

Before we get into any specific natural gas play, we need to know how big natural gas’s recovery will be…

Why We’ll See Natural Gas 209% Higher By Year-End

Natural gas and coal go hand in hand. They are oftentimes found together in the same place. Natural gas hides beneath and between coal beds. It’s not uncommon for a coal company to come in and mine the same site an oil and natural gas driller just left.

When one of these two is no longer in demand, it usually spells trouble for the other. That’s one of the main reasons natural gas has taken such a hit. But just as they fall together, they rise together.

We already laid out the reason coal will see a price spike in coming months and years. Natural gas is just as lucrative, if not more…

Natural gas demand is continuing to increase around the world at an unprecedented pace. Many nations are starting to choose NG over traditional coal and oil in power plants. It burns about 29% cleaner than petroleum and 44% cleaner than coal.

And because of its recent price collapse, it’s now the cheapest choice for customers. Why pay more for coal or oil when you can get natural gas for $2.50 per thousand cubic feet?

The supply side of the coin is even more compelling…

The U.S. imports around 17% of its natural gas — almost all of which comes from Canada. Unfortunately, Canada’s natural gas reserves are drying up. Daily Canadian natural gas production peaked in 2001. We’re already back down to 1995 production levels, and falling.

Natural gas production here in the U.S. has also fallen off a cliff. Most drillers can’t drill for a profit at these prices. So they aren’t. We have almost no production right now. We’ll eventually burn through stored natural gas reserves. When they go too low, it will spur a panic.

This panic will be enormous. Natural gas is simply too cheap. It hasn’t been this cheap for decades. The average oil-to-natural gas price ratio is about 9.3. Now it’s at about 29.

It wouldn’t take much for prices to shoot upward from here. To reach the 20-year average natural gas-to-oil ratio, NG prices would have to climb 209%.

That doesn’t take into account the future boom in demand. It won’t take long for it to correct itself…certainly before the end of this year.

This panic is inevitable, and there are a number of penny stock plays that could take advantage of it… Union Drilling (NASDAQ: UDRL) and Pioneer Drilling (AMEX: PDC) are two that could be worth looking at right now.

Sincerely,
Jim Nelson

Source: Natural Gas’ Triple Could Give Us a 416% Gain by Year-End

This caused the federal debt clock to add a 14th digit (by breaking the $10 trillion dollar mark).

We’ve also got an out-of-control trade deficit. For having a 40% share of the world’s economy, we certainly don’t produce that many goods.

Finally, we have a credit crisis that is causing many to worry that our lenders, like China and Japan, will turn off the tap.

With this nightmarish scenario we find ourselves in, it wouldn’t surprise us if the US’ credit rating fell. That would cause an immediate panic in the currency markets and send the buying power of the dollar into a tailspin.

I guess what we’re saying is get out of the dollar as fast as possible!

There are a couple of ways to go about this:

Currency Protection Strategy No. 1: Sell the Dollar

The easiest way to get out of the dollar is to trade in the cash you don’t need to live on for another currency. You might even be able to hold other currencies in your brokerage account.

Here at Lifetime Income Report, we don’t recommend currencies directly. We’re here to help you find income, not to pick currencies.

Exchanging currencies is one way to protect your wealth from a potential dollar disaster. But it’s not the only way…

Currency Protection Strategy No. 2: Buy Precious Metals

There’s probably no safer way to protect your wealth in the world than to own gold and silver. There are many Web sites and exchanges where you can do this, as well as coin dealers that can help you make this move.

While we personally think precious metals are going to continue increasing in value, you probably shouldn’t just spend all your money on gold nuggets. There’s a big difference between the spot prices and what you would pay. Gold coins, for instance, are trading at a hefty premium over spot.

Currency Protection Strategy No. 3: Buy US Companies With International Exposure

Again, this shouldn’t be a surprise. We have many US companies in our portfolio. After all, we are here for income, not to be global traders. But you’ll probably notice that most of our US companies have plenty of international exposure.

Currency Protection Strategy No. 4: Buy American Depositary Receipts

We saved the best for last. This is the theme we have been hitting the hardest in recent months. ADRs have been a cornerstone of this newsletter. From the very first issue, we had at least two ADRs in our portfolio. This month, we are adding another.

There’s a huge reason why we buy ADRs instead of the currencies themselves. Instead of just the upside of foreign currency to US dollars, we also get the benefit of fast-growing emerging markets and mega income from international players.

You see, foreign markets, especially now, have huge dividend yields.

The US is near the bottom of the list of places for income investors to look. The smart money is in companies staying out of the dollar.

Regards,

Jim Nelson

Source: 4 Ways to Protect Against a Falling Dollar

Those gains came from companies you are probably already familiar with: Roche Holdings, Wal-Mart of Mexico, and Adidas. These three companies have a combined market cap of $177 billion, yet produced enormous penny stock-sized gains.

Beyond being large, international, and profitable, these three have something else in common: none of them trade on a major U.S. exchange.

Roche is Swiss, Adidas is German, and Wal-Mart of Mexico is a southern neighbor. So unless you live in Switzerland, Germany, or Mexico, you might be wondering how you can get in on opportunities like these.

Until a few years ago, we wouldn’t have had an answer for you. Luckily, the international investment landscape made at least one change for the better in recent years…

67 Companies That Are 3.4 Times Larger Than the Whole OTC Market

You may already be familiar with the Pink Sheets, now known as the Pink OTC Markets. The Pink OTC is just the information center of the over-the-counter market. It’s not actually an exchange like the New York Stock Exchange. Instead, it just gives individual investors access to OTC broker-dealers. Broker-dealers are the people that actually trade these securities.

One common criticism of OTC companies, especially those on the Pinks, is their lack of financial reporting.

To get listed on the NYSE, AMEX, or NASDAQ, you have to submit on-time, regular financial results to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

OTCBB-listed companies are required to report, but not as much as others.

Pinks, on-the-other hand, don’t have to report anything… ever. That’s why large institutional investors — like investment banks and mutual funds — aren’t usually allowed to touch these companies. Individuals like you, however, can trade Pinks using a simple online broker.

In 2007, the people at Pink Sheets brought us a new classification system to help us evaluate these often-misjudged securities: the OTCQX.

The OTCQX is a listing service with NYSE-like requirements. A few of these include minimum ownership requirements, trading volume, regular financial reporting, and ongoing business operations. These seem like a no-brainer, but millions of dollars are thrown at companies in the regular Pink Sheets that don’t meet any of these requirements.

This new OTCQX also opened another door… this one on the global stage.

Many foreign companies don’t seek listing their securities on the NYSE or AMEX because of these exchanges’ stringent filing requirements — not to mention the obscene fees they charge. With the OTCQX, these companies finally have another access point to U.S. investors.

Most OTCQX International-listed companies were previously traded on the Pink Sheets. In many cases, individual investors took it upon themselves to do this. Meaning the company didn’t have to draft a U.S. investor prospectus or sign a formal American Depositary Receipt bank agreement. U.S. investors and investment banks would literally travel to these companies’ home-country exchanges, buy shares, and trade them on the Pinks. With the OTCQX, and its massive success, these companies are now actively seeking this kind of trade volume.

Take a look at the traffic the OTCQX has spurred compared to its OTC counterparts:

More Than 3 Times More Dollar Volume Than Its Competitors Combined

As you can probably tell by now, the companies we discussed are all listed on the OTCQX International. But they are still on a relatively short list. According to the OTCQX website, there are only 53 in this category — out of only 67 total OTCQX-approved companies.

In coming months and years, these numbers will increase. As you can see, investors are already benefiting from this short list.

We have one OTCQX International company currently catching our attention. This $29 billion company is a global leader in its industry. It’s also growing at double-digit rates — 53% in the first half of this year!

If we decide to pull the trigger on it, we’ll do so to our Lifetime Income Report readers.

Sincerely,
Jim Nelson

Source: Grab Secret Penny Stock Gains from the World’s Best Blue Chips

Diaz was willing to give up his presidency, but apparently not to Madero. Diaz imprisoned Madero on election day. Madero broke out and escaped to Texas, where he published his “Letter From Jail” — a manifesto for suffrage and term limits.

In this letter, the hint of agrarian reform and socioeconomic changes was enough to start the Mexican Revolution and seat him as the new president in 1911. While his presidency was a failure, his principles lived on.

After a bloody revolution from 1910- 1921, Mexico started implementing many of Madero’s suggestions, including free land distribution to peasants and constitutional social rights. These changes helped Mexico’s GDP grow sixfold between 1940-1970.

Nearly 100 years after Madero’s pen spurred economic and political change in Mexico, a second “Mexican manifesto” was published, and we have a chance to get in on Mexico’s revolutionary growth.

Studying the Subtleties of Obrador’s Manifesto to the People of Mexico

On July 29, 2009, disenfranchised former presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador drafted Manifesto to the People of Mexico.

The 2006 presidential election in Mexico was a brutal, down-to-the-wire fight. In fact, many Mexicans still don’t recognize the current president, Felipe Calderon, as the legitimate leader of Mexico. Obrador contested the results and even ends his pronouncements — including the Manifesto — with the sign off, “Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Legitimate President of Mexico.”

The left-leaning Obrador continues to mock and fight with supporters of Calderon, as well as the president himself. In his manifesto, Obrador slams Calderon’s handling of this economic recession. But there is another message articulated in this document — one you need to familiarize yourself with.

He writes, “It is crucial to continue creating alternative networks of information to break our enemies’ manipulation of the media. It should be borne in mind that the very instrument of domination that the oligarchy uses is through controlling television, radio and the press.” This simple paragraph is the third of five changes he claims the Mexican people need to fix their political and economic systems. It’s also a giant opportunity for us.

If media control goes back to the people of Mexico as Obrador suggests, it will do so in one of two ways: dissolving the current media outlets completely or restructuring them.

Dissolving television, radio and newspapers as they stand today would probably be a disaster. In today’s modern world, the demand for information is incredible.

Restructuring, however, would take only a few small tweaks and could help drive Mexico’s economy out of this recession.

While the current government does have a large amount of influence on media, it operates in a pseudo free market system. Many of these outlets — TV and radio stations, newspapers, and even international press agencies — are publicly traded.

Restructuring would lead to billions of pesos pumped into these organizations, which would push share prices much higher. Even the possibility of spin-offs would create moneymaking opportunities.

Source: How Mexico’s Second Manifesto Could Pay You a Fortune

Before we get into the ins and outs of this sale, we need to clarify what it means to actually buy one-fourth of the Internet. Of course, you can’t just own something as large and independent as the Internet. But you can buy a portion of its traffic.

We’ve been recently writing about international telecoms. If you bought up enough of these Internet Service Providers you could potentially own enough Internet traffic to constitute a quarter. But there will soon be another way you can invest in the traffic with just a single click.

About 50% of all Internet traffic is from file sharing– people sharing music, videos, games, and every other type of file you can think of. Regardless of how you feel about Internet piracy, 50% of all bandwidth on the net is made up of this type of activity.

Here’s where the story really starts heating up…

The Pirate Bay: 2009 Has Already Been One Hectic Year

Half of all file-sharing traffic is hosted on a single website. That’s a fourth of all Internet traffic in one place. That site is called The Pirate Bay.

TPB was launched in 2003, less than one and a half years after Napster—the pioneer in music file sharing— was forced to shut down because of court rulings.

TPB operates in Sweden, free from initial U.S. laws. But over the past several years, the European Union and many individual member-countries have cracked down on e-piracy.

In 2006, Swedish police raided TPB’s headquarters, temporarily shutting down its server. April of this year was an even worse time for the organization. Founders Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundstrom were sent to prison for one year and slapped with a $3.6 million fine.

TPB’s Next Giant Step Forward

With the founders in jail and facing serious fines, another Sweden-based company, Global Gaming Factory, announced plans to purchase TPB for $7.8 million. GGF intends to turn TPB into a legal, fee-based website. Users would have to pay a monthly fee to share files. This money would then be used to pay copyright fees for each file transfer.

This, again, might conjure up images of Napster, which was bought by Roxio Inc at bankruptcy auction. Roxio rebranded it as Napster 2.0, which began to offer legal, paid transfers. Best Buy acquired Napster last year for $121 million, but is struggling to see profits.

GGF’s plans for TPB, however, aren’t as small as Best Buy’s were for Napster. GGF, almost immediately after announcing its plans to buy TPB, declared its intent to take the website public… on Nasdaq.

If all the legal and technical aspects of this deal work out as expected, TPB’s intial public offering will take place sometime in 2010. This gives us less than 16 months to plan.

But before we start setting aside cash for this IPO, we need to take a serious look at what this deal will look like.

Why You Should Not Buy Pirate Bay… At Least With What We Know Now

It’s safe to assume TPB’s 25-plus million users aren’t all going to start paying the monthly fees. Instead, we can expect more than 75% of these users to stop sharing files. Possibly as little as 10% of TPB’s current user base will be left when GGF starts requiring fees.

This transition is expected to come very soon. On August 27, GGF is holding a press conference to go over the details of this reorganization, as well as its plans for the IPO.

GGF is also working on deals to turn TPB’s enormous share of Internet traffic into a second revenue stream. By setting up deals with ISPs, GGF will trade promised bandwidth usage for cash.

ISPs are starting to sell bandwidth to customers instead of offering unlimited packages. This means that users that transfer a large amount of data packets will have to pay considerably more than those that just us the Internet to check their email.

With this transition from monthly subscriber to pay-as-you-go, ISPs will have an opportunity to make more money off bandwidth use. GGF promises that TPB will provide this.

However, we’re not sold on this business model. Napster 2.0 has not been able to mount a significant attack on powerful rivals such as (NASDAQ:AAPL) Apple’s iTunes store. Even web giant Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) has not been able to effectively monetize its $1.65 billion purchase of the world’s most popular video sharing site, YouTube.

GGF’s plan might seem enticing to some—don’t buy into the hype. Music and movie pirates will go somewhere else for their illegal downloads. Avoid this IPO at all costs.

Sincerely,
Jim Nelson

Source: How You Can Own a Quarter of the Internet… And Why You Don’t Want to

Most of the time, backdoor plays offer the largest profits in growth industries like this one. Sometimes, however, a straightforward approach is your best chance at the quickest gains. This is one of those times.

Take China Mobile (NYSE:CHL), for instance. This telecom behemoth is the most obvious play in the region. In the last three years, the company doubled the number of subscribers and grew its bottom line 107%. That’s a rare feat for a $230 billion company.

China Mobile’s growth is impressive, but it’s nothing compared with what a small-cap player can do in this field. And with the telecom industry in Asia predicted to almost double by 2013, there’s plenty of room for other players to grow too.

That’s why we’ve been looking for under-the-radar Internet providers in Asia. And we just we found the only place worth looking at…

The Forgotten Power in Asia: Investing in Hong Kong

Most people think of China, India and Japan when you bring up Asia. The place most often left out of the conversation is Hong Kong — a Chinese territory that in 1997 ended 156 years of British rule.

Other than the small island nation of Brunei, Hong Kong has the largest GDP per capita in the entire region. In fact, the small territory is No. 14 in the whole world, and it’s only four spots behind the U.S.

Most are writing Hong Kong off these days, however. With the recent global financial collapse, Hong Kong’s large financial services industry was slaughtered. Even so, the world can’t just forget about this tiny-but-affluent region.

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange, for instance, is host to companies worth a total $2.7 trillion. That’s 10 times larger than the American Stock Exchange!

Another surprising tidbit about Hong Kong is the resilience of its tourism industry. While nearly every country in the world saw a decline in number of tourists, as well as income from its tourism industry, Hong Kong actually saw its tourism grow. Last year, the number of visitors to Hong Kong grew 5%, and average spending per overnight visitor grew 6.2%.

Needless to say, this is an overlooked region, but it shouldn’t be. Hong Kong is very capable of producing winners.

Right now, there is a small handful of exciting Hong Kong telecom plays that are worth looking at, but unfortunately, at this stage, it’s a case of look but don’t touch. Many of them are too speculative to mention here right now.

Watch the region — we’ll let you know when that changes.

Sincerely,
Jim Nelson

Source: How to Profit from the Asian Internet Boom

Below is a breakdown of S&P 500 yields by sectors:

As you can see, the biggest loser on the list is financials, which shouldn’t be a surprise. The segment’s dividend yield fell 300 basis points (right-hand column) from last year to now.

The sector that pays the most is doing so under the radar: telecommunication services. This is a favorite of ours. That 14 basis point increase is primarily due to AT&T (NYSE:T) and Verizon (NYSE:VZ) — both paying out around 6%.

These dividends aren’t nearly as safe as we’d like, though. Instead of gunning for the U.S. telecom industry, we like to play that game in emerging markets. We already have a Pacific Rim telecom in the Lifetime Income Report portfolio, and we’ll be adding another this week. Even after that, we’ll continue to keep our eyes peeled and noses to the ground in case something else pops up in that industry.

Going back to that table, you can see the next two best-paying sectors are utilities and consumer staples. Our portfolio is already loaded with these, and we’ll continue looking in these directions as well.

Source: Best Sectors for Income Seekers