In a market like this one, it pays to note the subtle differences between ostensibly similar assets. For example, there are car stocks and then there are car stocks. (Yes, I am writing about cars again, but not for the whole column, honest!)

Right now you can buy shares of General Motors (GM:NYSE) with a most unusual provenance: They used to belong to GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, GM North America President Troy Clarke, GM Vice Chairman Thomas Stephens, and Group Vice Presidents Gary Cowger, Carl-Peter Forster and Ralph Szygenda.

You Can’t Fix Stupid

Now I know we are supposed to think of stock shares as perfectly fungible. And it’s quite impossible to know for a fact that the shares you might be buying today actually came from some GM exec’s personal hoard.

Still, there is a touch of something – I’m not quite sure what: irony? fraud? despicable contempt? – to the idea that Bob Lutz is being allowed to sell off his last $131,000 in GM shares on the open market. Surely he has some sort of inside scoop as to when GM will declare bankruptcy?

On the other hand, one must also wonder as to who on Earth would be so stupid as to buy Bob’s shares, which have actually lost another 38% since he sold them.

But You Can Buy Smart!

And then there are Ford (F:NYSE) shares. In few days, you will be able to buy 300 million shiny new shares. This has the market in a bit of a tizzy. The very idea of an American car company deliberately diluting shares in these hard times is – well – delightful, really.

Ford’s health benefit responsibilities are under-funded to the tune of a couple of billion dollars. This doesn’t exactly show up as debt on the books. If the guys at Ford’s C-suite wanted to, they could just as easily sweep the whole issue under the rug. (Heck, GM did exactly that for decades!)

But they’d rather face up to it now and get it out of the way. Did they whine? Did they simper? Did they go to the government for a cheap loan? No!

Do the Right Thing

They are doing what American blue chips are supposed to do: They are raising capital on the open market, and using that capital to dramatically strengthen their company.

They can do this because unlike GM shares, which are hovering somewhere around a dollar (61 cents less, by the bye, than Bob Lutz got for his shares), F shares have gone up 547% over the past few months.

Right now F is down a tad on the news of these new shares. This is pure foolishness: First of all, the inherent value of all shares will rise in the end because Ford is using the cash to retire what is, in essence, debt.

And second, Ford’s market cap is somewhere in the vicinity of $14 billion, so it ain’t but so much dilution in the first place. My advice? Ford is on the straight and narrow path, and how many American companies can you say that about these days? Buy more here at $4.75 and smile when it hits $10 this fall.

Vive la Différence!

This ability to detect subtle clues can clue you in to all sorts of wonderful opportunities. For example, the difference between a cup of coffee at Starbucks and a cup of coffee out of the coffee maker at home is a critical clue that many in the commodities biz completely overlooked.

Everyone knows about the collapse of Starbucks (SBUX:NasdaqGS). It was the canary in the coalmine for the crash of 2008. SBUX completed a double top in November 2006 (well ahead of the rest of the market) and went on to peel away some 82% over the next 24 months.

The guys who study these things figured: “No one wants a morning cup anymore, so that’s it for coffee and sugar.” Wrong again! No one wanted a $5 cup of coffee. But a 10-cent cup at home? Heck, I’ll take two, honey, with tablespoons of sugar in each.

A Sweet Ride

In the end, demand has remained high, but supplies of both sugar and coffee are coming up wildly short.

The spot price for generic coffee has climbed to $1.28/lb, making for a 22% rise since December. Still think folks have totally abandoned the good stuff? Colombian beans have hit a two-year high of $2.20.

And sugar is putting them both to shame: White sugar has risen 52% since December to its three-year high at $450 a tonne.

How to Capitalize on the Coffee Guys’ Mistakes

Now I would be the last guy to tell you to buy coffee or sugar futures, because, quite frankly, I am terrified of getting an e-mail asking what to do with the truckload of beans that just showed up.

But these are most enlightened times, and there are Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), Exchange Traded Commodities (ETCs) and Exchange Traded Notes (ETNs) for most everything these days, including coffee. The name (oddly enough) is the iPath Dow Jones-AIG Coffee Total Return Sub-Index (JO:NYSE). The fund has been falling pretty much nonstop on the idea that coffee was going to tank. But now that coffee is clearly still the drug of choice, I suspect those fortunes are about to experience a real sea change.

Last price on my ticker is $39.01 a share and quite frankly, the volume is as thin as all get out. But if a body were to enter tenderly over several days, I imagine they could enjoy quite a ride.

Source: Subtle Differences Can Double Your Money