Baltimore — (TFN): You don’t believe all the hype do you? As we close out another year and another decade, the pundits are busy rehashing the action of the past ten years.

The political types are discussing the rise and fall of the Bush administration, a couple of wars and the nation’s first black president. The Hollywood folks are talking about the end of the sitcom, the death of an icon and the phenomenon that is American Idol.

And, of course, the financial types are talking about the decade that never happened. You know, the fact that at the start of the decade, the Dow was actually worth more than it is today.

Sure, if you happened to be the poor sap that bought the Dow on January 1, 2000 and held it until today, you’d be down about 9.5%. But I’m willing to bet that is not you.

As a contrarian investor, you are more likely to be holding a pile of gold. In that case, you are sitting on gains of about 300% over the past decade.

But again, I don’t think that is you, at least not entirely. If you are anything like me, you are sitting back, wondering if the next decade is going to be as good as the last.

Think about it. We had high interest rates, record low rates, a housing bubble, a tech bubble, record high oil prices, ultra-low natural gas prices, a couple of wars and the biggest government bailout you could ever imagine.

If you can’t make money in that kind of environment, you flat-out aren’t trying. Even if you racked up 300% gains from gold, you could have and should have done better.

The only thing the last decade proved was buy-and-hold investing is dead. But that’s why we have exchanges, so you can buy and sell assets when the mood strikes.

If you were a true contrarian investor – bought when nobody else was buying and sold when nobody else was selling – you probably just locked in monstrous gains on gold, you are rolling in cash at the moment and are looking for the just the right opportunity to hop back in.

If so, the next year and the next decade are going to treat you very, very well. If you think the last ten years was full of upside downs, wait until you see what’s in store.

Government healthcare, more bailouts, more regulations, more taxes, more government control, more investing options, more interest rate movement, more bubbles, more international exposure… the list goes on and on.

Yeah, we may be back to where we started, but it took one hell of a journey to get us here.

Take my word for it; the next ten years will be the decade for contrarians. Gold will soar. The dollar will fall and interest rates will rise. Better yet, the exact opposite will happen during calculated, short-term blips.

That means we have the kind of market active forward-thinking traders yearn for.

Now is the time to make your move. If you have been sitting on the fence, waiting for the right time, take the end of the year to approach a new starting line and join one of our three services, TFN Strategic Trader, Hot Stock Confidential or Penny Stock Confidential.

All three perfectly play the contrarian viewpoint, and better yet, as a member, you’ll never have to worry about saying, “where’d the last year go?”

You’re at the start of the best decade of your life.

*** As contrarian investors, we like hard assets, the more down and out, the better. Right now, there is no better tangible good, with a worse reputation than good ‘ole American coal. Politicians hate the stuff, factories love it and investors have yet another shot to get rich off of it.

In 2006, I was a bit of a coal industry junkie. I read books on the stuff, wrote countless articles about my research, even went on the radio, TV and the seminar circuit talking about the nation’s dirtiest fuel source.

In today’s world of “green energy” and global warming scares, coal is a nasty four-letter word. But with a couple centuries worth of the stuff buried underground, we all know that’s going to change. Come the next political campaign or environmental hype, coal will launch back into the foreground.

You know it. I know it. And the folks at Bucyrus (NYSE:BUCY) know it. That is why the heavy equipment maker is placing a $1.3 billion coal-industry bet this week.

In a move that tells Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) and Joy Global (NYSE:JOYG) that they had better pay attention, Wisconsin-based Bucyrus is cutting a check to Terex (NYSE:TEX) in exchange for the company’s mining business.

Again, this is the kind of far-sighted, buy-when-nobody-else-will move that pays incredible dividends in upcoming years. It’s the kind of stuff contrarians dream about.

Just when the coal industry could look no worse, the sector’s biggest names move their bishops in an ever-lasting game of chess.

Today’s move is beneficial for both sides of the bargain. Terex gets a cash infusion that allows it to concentrate on its core business and Bucyrus gets a hunk of assets that allow it to up the ante versus the industry’s behemoths like Cat and Joy Global.

Here’s what you can expect out of the coal industry over the next year: more consolidation, greatly increased share price, strong demand growth, and, most importantly, better representation amongst the nation’s politicians.

Now’s the time to make your move.

*** I wish I had better news for the gold bugs. It has been dang near a month now since I said to sell the stuff and prices have gone ever since. Don’t blame me. I’m merely the messenger.

There is good news. The downturn won’t last long. It’ll be just enough to get the speculators and the hyperbolic masses off the wagon and then prices will turn north once again.

As soon as the magical metal bars are selling for less than $1050 an ounce, put in your buy orders once again. My take is we’ll see $985 by mid-January, but just in case China makes more waves between here and there, $1050 is a good entry point.

When the stuff is selling for $1250 in April and $1,500 this time next year, the cushion won’t matter so much.

Tonight, after nearly four months of competition and thousands of possible contestants, the winner of American Idol will be announced on live television. This year’s contest, seen by hundreds of millions of viewers who accounted for even more votes via phone calls and text messages, has been one of the most popular of the show’s successful seven-season run.

So after all that, America will choose between 17-year-old wide-eyed wunderkind David Archuleta and 25-year-old Kansas City rocker David Cook. While the chance to win the competition looms large for both contestants, both will undoubtedly enjoy lucrative careers.

Over the past seven seasons, American Idol contestants have posted as many as 71 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The show has produced successful recording artists, multiple Grammy winners, and even an Academy Award winner. There is no denying the overwhelming achievement of what some consider nothing more than a glorified karaoke contest.

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Why Has Oil Surged?

Dwindling value in the dollar, a crisis in U.S. credit, rising demand from overseas. These are all explanations for the recent surge in oil prices. But that’s not the whole story.

There are more dangerous and deadly reasons for the rise in oil prices, and the real truth explains why we can expect this surge to last for a long time to come. Click here to read about the “bloody backlash.”

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Since becoming one of the most successful reality television shows of all time and the flagship program of the Fox network, American Idol has established itself as a marketing monster and moneymaking machine. With lucrative sponsorships from companies like Coca-Cola and AT&T, along with millions of dollars pouring in from other miscellaneous sponsors, American Idol has made many people very rich.

One of the ways Idol has been able to generate viewership and buzz is through the songs the contestants are able to perform. Over the years, performances on the show have evolved from classic standby numbers your grandmother may even strain to recall to many of today’s chart-topping hits. Even the elusive Lennon-McCartney songbook was opened for this season’s show.

The success of the show has opened up a dual incentive and revenue stream between the show’s producers and the owners of the songs they sing. The simple reason for this is royalties. Each time a song is performed on American Idol, the show’s producers pay the owner of that song’s rights a royalty fee. This creates a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship between Idol and the songwriters and recording artists who lend their work to the show.

The concept of royalty fees is simple, while the application is quite complex. But for our uses, simply imagine already incredibly wealthy musicians and writers sitting back and collecting checks for seemingly doing nothing. On last night’s finale performance show, popular songs by artists such as U2, Elton John, and John Lennon were performed. These performers have (or had) an unimaginable amount of wealth and fame, and last night’s performances simply added to that. Not only that, but recordings of the Idol contestants performing the songs are then sold as downloads in the Apple iTunes music store. You can bet that Bono, Elton, and Yoko will be picking up checks for those sales, as well.

The relatively new relationship between American Idol and Apple has generated even more money in royalty fees and more exposure for the original artists. This season, popular performances of Leonard Cohen’s biblical ballad “Hallelujah” and Lee Greenwood’s patriotic anthem “Proud to Be an American” boosted the sales of the original recordings on iTunes, as well as millions of downloads of the Idol versions.

For doing nothing, Cohen and Greenwood collected handsome royalty checks thanks to the popularity of American Idol.

For many people, the concept of royalty fees is exclusive to the entertainment field. We’ve all heard the story of Michael Jackson outbidding Paul McCartney for the rights to The Beatles recordings and the amount of money he has been able to make from the royalty rights alone.

But did you know that regular, everyday investors like yourself could also get in on the royalty game? It may not be as glamorous or public as sales of your song on iTunes, but you can still mint a pretty penny from collecting royalty fees.

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The royalty fees I’m talking about are not in the entertainment sector at all, but rather from the same oil and natural gas, gold, silver, and resource stocks we discuss all the time. These fees are paid by royalty trusts companies, and many investors have made a lot of money by, in essence, doing nothing.

With a royalty trust, you, essentially, own a piece of land that is rich in oil, gas, or any of these resources if you become a shareholder. These companies then rent that land to developers and miners who do all the dirty work of extracting the resource from the ground. The royalty fee is paid back to the trust, and a share of that money is then passed on to you.