Its shareholders already love the company’s new Co-CEO, Sanjay Jha. Just hours after the announcement, shares jumped 11%. Sanjay Jha, former COO of Qualcomm (NADAQ:QCOM) and engineering genius who is now in charge of the troubled mobile phone business, will be the head of the new handset company when Motorola splits in two in Q3 of 2009.

But will Jha be able to pull it off? Industry analysts are skeptical. While acknowledging that he excelled in operations at Qualcomm, they fear that Jha doesn’t have the marketing know-how to create exciting new products and pull Motorola out of the mud.

So should you buy Motorola (NYSE:MOT)? It’s hard to say until Mr. Jha makes a decision in 3 months as to how to turn Motorola around.

Another play that you may want to consider if you’re interested in tech, would be South Korea’s LG Electronics (PINK:LGERF). LG handsets, already popular worldwide are closing in on Motorola’s market share and are quickly gaining popularity in the U.S., which is Motorola’s backyard. LG is anticipated to have record sales this fall and this is not limited to their mobile devices. Their premium products are expected to continue their strong sales pattern despite global economic slow down.

Buying LG stock directly is a bit tricky though and the stock isn’t cheap, averaging over $100 a share. It’s available on the Korea Stock Exchange, the London Stock Exchange, and the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, and as a tiny ADR on the pinksheets.

You can also buy an exchange-traded fund such as iShares MSCI South Korea Index Fund (NYSE:EWY), which includes LG Electronics.

Source: Has Motorola Seen The Worst?

The following is taken from this week’s Market Insights video featuring Todd Schoenberger.

Krista Das: We’ve heard a lot about the U.S. housing market lately. Probably too much. But there’s another avenue into real estate that doesn’t require you to buy property. It’s called a real estate investment trust, or REIT for short and is a security that acts like a stock with the major exchanges.

So, tell us a little about investing in REIT’s.

Todd Schoenberger: Okay. Well, a couple of things. One there is some significant tax considerations for investors to consider when investing in REIT’s. That’s a big plus if you’re looking for some type of an income adjusted investment.

The other side of it is that REIT’s offer a safety component whereas instead of just investing in actual tangible real estate, you can actually invest in an investment trust that holds many properties of real estate. However, there are different types of REIT’s and there are some that investors may want to consider and others they may want to stay away from.

Krista Das: So what are the advantages of owning REIT’s versus owning another stock or owning property?

Todd Schoenberger: That’s a great question. One issue is that clearly the tax consideration and the income that you do receive from those REIT’s.

A couple of different REIT’s that are out there are apartment REIT’s, hotel REIT’s, even housing REIT’s. I always like to look at shopping center REIT’s. I think this is where the economy is pushing the consumer and mainly in the form of higher gas prices.

Right now you have gas prices at four dollars north at the pump and therefore, you’re going to have more of an inclination of consumers that to go these shopping centers that do their one stop shopping. Maybe do their grocery shopping. Get their coffee, their cleaning, everything at just one stop because the days of actually going from store to store to store are pretty much over with these higher gas prices.

Krista Das: And what about other specialty REIT’s? What are some other ones that you would recommend?

Todd Schoenberger: Well, there are a number out there, a number of different REIT’s. There’s some hybrid REIT’s actually that are out there.

But right now, I would say you want to focus on the shopping center REIT’s for a couple of reasons just like I said before, for the one stop shop, but also thinking that these are where the real income is going to come in for investors.

For example, retailers are now thinking look, I want to have my shop in the shopping center places so that I know I’m going to get all the walk around traffic. Mainly because, like I mentioned before, you just want cars that just go in one spot, they stop and then they go from there.

The leases that are actually being sold here are going out three, four or five years for some of these shopping center REIT’s. One is Cedar Shopping Centers, which clearly they’re located here in the mid-Atlantic, as well as in the northeast. That is one shopping center that you actually see a grocery store chain. You might see the Wal-Mart there. You’ll see the Starbucks.

What it’s doing is it’s causing all these other little mom and pop shops to actually rent out and lease those open areas. Therefore, those heavy leases and that increase in money that’s flowing in is going to be then returned back to investors.

Using my example of Cedar right now, their dividend yield is paying 7 ½ percent plus investors might actually receive some type of capital appreciation if Cedar decides to sell any of these shopping centers in the future.

Krista Das: Now where does Cedar exchange on?

Todd Schoenberger: New York Stock Exchange, trading in the low teens right now and it would be something to consider for investors that are thinking of a derivative play as a result of the higher gas prices.

Krista Das: Where do you see the stock going in the near future?

Todd Schoenberger: Well, right now it seems to me that you’ll have some of the bigger rates that are out there, some of the private equity firms that are looking for some type of cash flow, some type of income that is coming in.

What is happening is now some of these shopping center REIT’s are now being looked at as potential acquisition targets. But because of that you have the potential of maybe being acquired, but even then so you have a higher yielding investment right now, plus the potential of capital gains in the future.

So realistically, yeah, you can look at a 25 to 30 percent upside potential in this stock and that’s before the end of the year. But again, it’s all prevalent to the higher gas prices. It’s just a derivative play of thinking of how you to make money when you have to pay four bucks at the pump.

Source: Buying REITs

The following was taken from the March 29 Market Insights video with Krista Das featuring Sara Nunnally, editor of Taipan Trader. Watch this video.

Krista Das: Welcome to Smart Investing Market Insights on TodaysFinancialNews.com. I’m Krista Das.

The subprime crisis, now referred to as the U.S. housing debacle, has certainly stirred up much controversy about a greater debate, decoupling. Many analysts question whether the U.S. recession will cause emerging markets to follow suit. Not so, says my next guest. While it is true that global markets will feel some impact from the troubles of the U.S. economy, it’s not going to lead to a global meltdown.

Sara Nunnally is a regular on such financial shows as CNBC’s Squawk Box and is the editor of Taipan Trader, a trading research service that looks internationally for profits. She has become neck deep in research, traveling all over the world to find out who isn’t affected by this fiasco. And surprisingly, there are numerous international banks not carrying even a crumb of risky U.S. investments. Sara, welcome to the program.

Sara Nunnally: Thank you, Krista.

Krista Das: So tell us, when you are comparing banks and other financial companies, what sets apart a good investment from a bad one?

Sara Nunnally: Well, aside from having some of those crumbs of the U.S. market that keep having large ramifications throughout the entire global financial complex, we are looking at fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. That’s the very key. You need to find companies that are growing in their respective markets, that have a diverse loan portfolio and a growing loan portfolio. It’s as simple as that.

Rather watch the video? Click here.

Krista Das: What areas of the world are you finding these opportunities?

Sara Nunnally: Well, it’s no surprise that we’re looking in places like Brazil and India, but we’re also looking at places like Greece and Spain. But the key point is they have to be growing their own market share within their respective markets, and that is kind of the crux of what we’re talking about. Sometimes they may not be – they may not have been big enough to buy into this U.S. subprime crisis, and that’s a good thing. But on the other hand, they still have to be growing locally.

Krista Das: From your technical analysis, what is a good entry point?

Sara Nunnally: Without getting too complex, let’s keep it simple. While the U.S. market is going down, we’re looking for that decoupling with these other markets starting to rise or starting to find support. That’s a key thing. Now, in going a little bit deeper into that, as you said, we could see some of these tremors still affecting the rest of the world’s global financial markets. But you still need to find that support. You need to find that divergence away from the U.S. downward trend.

Again, that does make it a little bit more difficult to time the bottoms, but when you go back to fundamentals of these financial institutions and you make sure you have a good company, then once again, when these markets do start decoupling and do start diverging, you have a good company in your portfolio.

Krista Das: I see. Any particular picks that you can tell us about?

Sara Nunnally: Well, I mentioned Brazil before, and it’s no surprise that we first started seeing this decoupling come from that strong market. So in particular, we singled out a bank called Banco Bradesco. It’s traded as an ADR here under the symbol BBD. Over the last quarter it’s grown its net income 21 percent, and that’s only quarter over quarter. Year over year it’s grown 58.5 percent, and that’s due to its increasing loan portfolio.

Their loan portfolio grew 12.8 percent last quarter, more than 38 percent year over year. And that’s because more people are buying cars. More people are buying house – yes, still in Brazil. More people are taking out credit cards. Saving deposits, all of that core customer, fee-based income is coming into Banco Bradesco, and we find that that’s the type of information that’s going to keep this company sustained above any of the world’s global impact from the subprime crisis.

Krista Das: Okay. Now, that sounds good. Are there delinquent loans from BBD or are they completely covered?

Sara Nunnally: They are 117 percent covered. And they’re decreasing their delinquency loan rates from 4.2 percent of their total loans to 4 percent of their total loans. So those are two key figures that I think you should look at in a number of different, global financial companies in a way to move away from the U.S. market.

Krista Das: Sara, thanks for setting us straight on the decoupling debate. Great information.

Sara Nunnally: Thank you, Krista.

Krista Das: If you would like more information from Sara about international profit opportunities and her service, Taipan Trader, click on the screen or go to TodaysFinancialNews.com.