Different people have different styles of investing. Maybe you’re the type who likes to buy shares that look cheap. Everyone loves a bargain. Or maybe you’re partial to the kind of stock that’s already rising like a helium balloon, expecting it to hold form and take your portfolio up with it.

Today, we see one company of each kind… and both operate in Australia’s primary sector. Throw on a cork hat, smear some grime across your face and saddle up.

Firstly… Incitec Pivot (ASX:IPL) has added 260% in the last year. For an AU$8 billion company, that’s pretty flash. It only lost 10% in the January correction. That’s about half what stocks lost on average. It is the epitome of a stock that’s “going up”.

Incitec is expecting profits before interest and tax to grow by 135% this year. It’s factoring in a phosphate fertiliser price at between US$760 and US$790. Maybe that’ll take, and the company could continue its ascent to nose-bleeding heights. Or maybe it’s a load of fertiliser. But if it turns out to be realistic, the market already loves the stock. There’s no reason why high stocks can’t keep going higher if the fundamentals are still good.

Herbicide seller Nufarm (ASX:NUF) announced some new acquisitions earlier this week, after it stopped trading for a couple of days. The company spent AU$200 million on similar crop-protection and seed-breeding businesses in the US and UK.

But because Nufarm raised the money with institutional investors at AU$15.10 per share, Nufarm’s public stock dropped off to that level from above AU$16. In essence, it invested money into expanding a good business, and shares fell because of dilution. To account for that dilution, Nufarm is offering a share purchase plan for public investors, at the same discounted price.

Now… reading about interest rates is about as interesting as watching paint that’s already dried. But painting your house is still kind of important, so bear with us for the white-knuckled extravaganza of the next paragraph or two.

Australian banks are again raising mortgage lending rates above the RBA’s base adjustment. We recall National Bank (ASX:NAB) in particular saying this wouldn’t happen again. We guess things have changed. St George is adding 0.15% on top of the 0.25% handed down by Australia’s central bank earlier this week.

The banks aren’t doing well because the sub-prime blow-out raised costs across all categories of credit. That’s meant even those who didn’t invest directly in high-risk mortgage assets are now paying for it. The only thing they did wrong was take on too much debt. Debt is a “sell”. It doesn’t even matter what type of debt anymore. Not many will want to buy it for a while. Those holding it will continue to sell down.

Tiger Airlines is launching an attack on Australia’s rural flight transport market. Chief Executive Tony David pointed out yesterday that a flight from Tamworth to Melbourne costs $356. He’d like to make it cheaper. The new low-cost group has 50 Airbus 320s on order as of today. They’ll take delivery of that order over the next eight years.

The airline market here is getting tight. The skies are fuller than they used to be. You can’t look up at heaven and make shapes out of ambiguous cloud formations anymore. Unless you’re trying to make the shape of an Airbus 320.

Will competition eat away at earnings here? Quite possibly.

Meanwhile, a high Aussie dollar added AU$800 million to our trade deficit in January. This means we imported AU$2.72 billion more than we exported that month. Leading our exports are iron ore, coal, and agricultural goods. But our exports were more expensive for foreigners, so they bought less. Can’t blame them really. We don’t like paying more for things either.

Heading up imports are capital goods and fuel to support the mining, energy and general commodity industries. It shows you that both the inputs and outputs for Australia’s economy are related to the same thing. One major industry is running the economy.

Editor’s Note: If you would like to hear more from Al Robinson take out a subscription to Diggers & Drillers, Australia’s premiere resource investing publication. The March was recently released and you don’t want to miss out on the Aussie oil stock Al is tipping this month.