The nerds of the world have a huge war going on: Microsoft versus Linux.

Consumer spending is falling off a cliff. Yet stores won’t feel the effects universally. The store with the best value is sure to move higher.

For the past year, the prices producers pay for their goods have been skyrocketing. Yet even with the higher prices they pay, they’ve hesitated to pass along higher prices to consumers. Now they’re paying the price as they face the biggest margin squeeze since 1975.

On Monday, we saw the Dow dive 777 points. It was all about expectations, says Charles Delvalle in Investor’s Daily Edge. Figuring out what the market expects can lead to big wins. Failing to do so means you can lose your shirt.

“In a market like this, you need to look for companies that have cash,” says Charles Delvalle in Investor’s Daily Edge. Basically, what you’re looking for is a company with more cash than debt.

Most resource bugs have been less than excited lately, because gold has been in a huge sell-off for the past few months. Many have been trying to time a bottom, to no avail. But there may be hope. On Wednesday alone, Gold rose $70 an ounce. Is a bottom in?

At the end of last month, Charles Delvalle at Investor’s Daily Edge said what we’re getting ready to see is not inflation at all… but deflation. That’s because in July the money supply grew under the rate of inflation. In real terms, that means the money supply shrank. Charles says data now suggests shrinking money supply is putting the brakes on inflation.

After this past weekend’s big bailout of Freddie and Fannie, investors are wondering if the big three are next. Sorry to tell you, but they’ve already been bailed out. It happened without much fanfare last December, when Congress approved a $25 billion loan package for the big three (about $8.3 billion per automaker).

With some currency traders expecting the Fed to push rates higher to combat inflation, the dollar has seen recent strength. But will that strength last long enough to reverse the multi-year long dollar downtrend? It’s highly unlikely.

Since March, The U.S. Dollar Index (NYBOT: DX) has been consolidating between the 70 and 74 cent range. Since mid-July the dollar has mounted a strong rise to the top of this range. But with the continued risk of more foreclosures, multi-billion dollar losses in the financial sector, ballooning deficits and a sluggish economy, the dollar will have a hard time finding traction for a long-term move.

Strong rallies in the dollar should be seen as an opportunity to take a bearish position. Of course…

Intel vs. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). It’s like the epic battle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. This battle helped bring down the price of a CPU, speed up the adoption of new technologies, and increase the feature set and speed within a computers main brain. And it was all brought to you thanks to market regulation.