By taking a look at Altria’s chart, you’ll notice a recent support line that was formed around $14 per share. This support line held up perfectly despite the sell-off.

Also, the Slow Stochastic (bottom of the chart) and RSI (top of the chart) both hit oversold levels and are showing a bounce towards overbought levels. As these indicators move to overbought, we should see Altria’s share price move even higher.

Your target should be its January highs ($17.50 a share) – a nearly 10% gain.

Here are eight stocking stuffers to unwrap.

1) The conversation between Libertarians and the rest of us (who aren’t on some nutty fringe) would go a lot smoother if we would all agree that laws and regulations do not prevent bad behavior.

Rather, they are merely guideposts to measure the quality of deviance in a way that allows the US’s local, state and federal judiciary to hand out retribution.

If you need further proof of this, I offer you two words – Bernard Madoff.

In an under-regulated world, Ponzi schemes might not be illegal. In fact, you can assume that is a near certainty, judging by the number of famous institutions and wealthy people that poured billions into Madoff’s fund, even as they suspected he was cooking the books.

The allure of that steady 9% return was just too strong… flies to the dung heap.

You have to wonder how many of Madoff’s investors will not only lose millions on the madman’s fund, then double those loses when the IRS goes all militia on their wacky offshore tax schemes. The latter is one of 2008’s most under-reported financial stories… as it will likely be in 2009.

2) Poor and middle-class people dream of the big investment score – the lottery… wealthy people, as the Madoff affair demonstrates, get all dewy eyed over 9%.

The reason is simple. Nine percent of $10 million is $900,000. That’s enough to survive on, even if it’s your only income. On the other hand, try living on 9% of $200,000 or 9% of $100,000…

Actually, if you don’t have health insurance and you live in a tent, you can probably stretch $18,000 out through a year, as long as you don’t pay the capital gains tax on it.

3) Now that the conservatives on the Supreme Court have opened the door for a new round of huge lawsuits against the Altria Group, you have to wonder what would prevent the President-elect, who can choke down some Marlboros, from joining a class-action suit.4) Here’s a play for all those union-hating people who believed, without verifying, all the recent bunk about how the United Auto Workers union is killing US automakers.

There is LUV in the air for you. Southwest Airlines trades around $7.50 today. Many of its employees, 7,200 ground-crew workers, haven’t had a raise since 2005. Ten-month long negotiations with these workers broke down in October.

LUV is profitable, its debt is manageable, and its earnings and revenues are slated to increase by about 10%. Additionally, though I hate the quarterly reporting game, LUV seems historically adept at producing earnings surprises on a regular basis.

Still, the best part of this play is it’s so Reaganesque… Southwest seems to hate its employees.

Nevertheless, LUV looks like one of 2009’s share-price doublers.

5) Here’s a sweet play that should tap into the infrastructure mania that’s about to sweep the world.

Find someone to give you good, long odds on an under/over bet that you won’t be reading at least 199 “First Great Obama Stock” promotions in the coming six months. Take the over.

Hell, I got an “Obama stock” via fax the other day – some 22-cent West Virginia coal play. Damn thing went up 10 cents the next day, too.

6) If you want to play the coming Obama/worldwide economic-stimulus infrastructure bubble, you’re going to have to get in soon.

In China, that would mean jumping on low prices General Steel Holding (NYSE:GSI). I’ve known the GSI guys for five years now – even before they were public.

Actually, I took a bunch of investors over to Beijing in 2004 and introduced them to the company just two hours before it went public.

Great company… great CEO… great management (much of its top management and board are from what I affectionately refer to as Beijing’s born-again Christian mafia).

Its earnings are slated to jump out of the roof next year. At around $4, GSI is a wicked steal.

GSI is one of 2009’s potential share-price triplers.

7) If you want to stay closer to home and still play the great-infrastructure-bubble-of-2009, then take a good look at Pasadena, California-based Jacobs Engineering (NYSE:JEC). But, do it fast, because it is destined to be a newsletter darling next year.

Multifaceted, JEC provides technical, professional, and construction services to industrial, commercial, and governmental customers worldwide.

It designs and engineers manufacturing plants that make chemicals and polymers, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, oil and gas refining, food and consumer products, and basic resources industries

It also designs and engineers infrastructure projects such as highways, roads, bridges, and other transportation systems, as well as water and wastewater treatment plants, water resources facilities.

Most analysts agree that JEC should see a nice jump in earning next year. It has a tiny amount of debt, which make its 20.5% return on equity that much more impressive.

JEC has the very real potential to be one of 2009’s safest share-price doublers.

Do your own homework on Illinois Tool Works (NYSE:ITW), Vodafone (VOD), Cosco Singapore (CSCMY)… each could have a smoking hot 2009.

That’ll do it for this week. I’ve been traveling so, I need get home to Boston and get some of that New England Christmas spirit going.

Of course, one of the season’s happiest symptoms is the fact that so many of us return to a naïve child-like state that peace on earth – even for a few weeks – seems like a noble goal.

Merry Christmas (for those among you that find such a salutation applicable).

Source: Double- and Triple-Profit Ideas For 2009

The “next big thing” our friends at The Daily Reckoning recently predicted, “will be downsizing, cutting back, making do. Barely on the radar screen now, thrift is coming into focus more clearly day by day. So far, people are a bit embarrassed about it…a bit ashamed that they have had to cut back. But soon, it will be popular…fashionable…and, finally, almost obligatory.”

This new austerity craze — if/as/when it arrives — will impose hardships on many American companies. But a select few might actually benefit.

The cause(s) of downsizing are pretty clear. Home values are falling so sharply that very few homeowners can still pull equity out of their houses. Stock prices are also drifting lower, more or less. Meanwhile, inflation is ramping up.

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Prices are rising in Europe as in America. Bread is up 12 percent in Germany over the last 12 months. Butter has gone up 45 percent. Milk, 25 percent.

Higher prices often stem from printing more dollars. “Force-feeding the rest of the world $2 billion per day (more consumption),” Warren Buffett reminded us last week, “is inconsistent with a stable dollar (more inflation).”

We share Mr. Buffett’s concern. Bernanke keeps printing. Politicians keep promising. Bridges keep crumbling. Wars keep spending.

With regret, we read last week that the projected total cost of medical care for U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will top $500 billion, a figure on par with the total military spending to wage these wars to date. And speaking of military might, Defense Secretary Robert Gates estimated in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon will spend upward of $685 billion next year alone. That’s $170 billion more than the $515 billion the president proposed in his first-ever $3 trillion budget.

If that weren’t enough, Gates doesn’t even expect that number to stick. “I have no confidence in that figure,” he admitted. You can expect the estimate to rise in the near future.

A hundred billion here…a hundred billion there. Who’s counting?

Apparently, no one.

But that’s not to say the S&P can’t weather the storm. The companies representing the Standard & Poor’s 500 index now derive 49 percent of revenue from foreign markets, up from 30 percent in 2001. Meaning, those with money to burn (Southeast Asian consumers) should keep earnings reports strong. Stronger repatriated currencies should only bolster this trend.

Unfortunately, many Americans believe a strong S&P equals a strong American economy. We tend to see another American economy. We see an economy riddled with debt, more debt and even more debt. We see the American consumer eerily close to tapping out. Thirty-four percent of Americans now believe they are among the “have-nots.”

It serves to reason. More than 405,000 homeowners lost their homes to foreclosure last year.

Most middle-income Americans, the ones driving our buy-now, pay-later economy, have spent well beyond their means. Americans currently perpetuate a negative savings rate. That can’t last forever.

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Cheap oil and cheap credit have fueled this era of consumption…this gilded age of instant gratification.