Deutsche Bank announced late yesterday that they were pulling the plug on the PowerShares DB Crude Oil Double Long ETN (better known as DXO). Most ETFs and ETNs die out because they can’t attract enough investors. DXO seems to have suffered the opposite fate.

In the new clampdown on commodity speculators, it’s no huge surprise to see the world’s most popular double-long, leveraged ETN fold suddenly. Deutsche Bank didn’t specifically claim that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission put the kibosh on the DXO, but their press release did cite a “regulatory event” as the principal reason for the closure.

Set to close on Sept. 9, DXO is now hemorrhaging. We’re not sure which is worse for share prices: its imminent closure or that it’s double leveraged a commodity that’s currently plummeting.

Deutsche Bank has other popular commodity trading vehicles, like DBA (agriculture) and DBC (general commodities), that could suffer a similar fate. Both of those funds rely on a position limit exemption, which the CFTC revoked last month. Caveat emptor.

“Anytime the government intervenes like this in the financial markets, they destroy efficiency,” says Resource Trader Alert’s Alan Knuckman. “The action by the CFTC to limit position sizes will only make the problem worse by decreasing liquidity. Markets need more speculators — not less — to lessen the impact by any one entity. For example, the elimination of short selling in the financial stocks in the fall of 2008 caused more damage by dragging out the inevitable for companies that made disastrously poor decisions.

“The CFTC will force trading to move to the over the counter market, which lacks transparency, or to foreign exchanges. Volume and open interest could decline here in the United States and make transacting business more difficult and costly in the future. The present tight bid/ask spreads ensure smooth market entries and exits for all. Without the ability to execute a solid trading plan efficiently, the risks increase for all participants.

“With the current and effective monitoring rules, we know exactly who and how players are positioned. Under the proposed political pandering, that data will disappear from the public eye.”

Source: ETF Reckoning Day?

This phenomenon will push price inflation much higher, giving you an opportunity to profit on the “reflation trade” that will play out over the next decade.

Rogers and Soros are snapping up farmland right now. These two old hands are betting that demand for food will soar, pushing up the price of arable land. This from MoneyNews.com:

Falling commodity prices aren’t bringing prices for farmland down with them. Even as the price of grain goes down, the cost of the land it’s grown on keeps going up, leading George Soros and other guru investors to bet big on agricultural land.

The fundamentals are easy to understand: Over the next 40 years the population of the world is projected to grow from 6 billion to 9 billion, hugely increasing the strain on arable farmland worldwide.

The spiking grain prices that caused food shortages and rioting in dozens of countries in spring of 2008 fell some 50 percent by December. Yet even after the correction, grain prices remain above their 20-year average, and food stocks around the world are still near 40-year lows.

“Land is scarce and will become scarcer as the world has to double food output to satisfy increased demand by 2050,” Joachim von Braun, director general at the International Food Policy Research Institute, told Fortune Magazine.

“With limited land and water resources, this will automatically lead to increased valuations of productive land. And it goes hand in hand with water. Water scarcity will probably increase even more than land.”

“I’m convinced that farmland is going to be one of the best investments of our time,” says commodities guru Jim Rogers.

Long-suffering readers will know that we’re bullish on the PowerShares DB Agriculture Fund (NYSE:DBA). But there are a number of other ways to invest in the ag sector.

These include agricultural chemical companies such as PotashCorp (NYSE: POT) , Mosaic (NYSE: MOS) , Agrium (NYSE: AGU) and Terra Industries (NYSE: TRA). Also worth considering is farm machinery outfit Deere (NYSE: DE) and farm products company Archer-Daniels-Midland (NYSE: ADM).

There may be money to be made in stocks right now. However, before jumping in consider the following facts (which we’ve plundered from yesterday’s Daily Reckoning):

1) Unemployment has risen to 9.4 million, according to heavily doctored “official” Bureau of Labor and Statistics figures. In reality, the number is much higher. People without jobs don’t spend money. They also rely on handouts from the government. One in every six dollars of personal income in America now comes in the form of federal aid.

2) Housing prices have so far been knocked down 32% since the slump began. Housing expert and Yale economist Bob Shiller reckons we’re a long way off from a recovery. People with mortgages whose house prices are falling don’t have room for discretionary spending – the kind of spending that helped keep US GDP in positive territory for so long.

3) Defaults and foreclosures aren’t confined to the subprime part of the mortgage market. Prime and Alt-A mortgages are now under severe pressure. The contagion is spreading. And it will continue to spread thanks to record job losses and the contraction of credit.

4) The resulting fallout in consumer spending is impacting production. This is evident from the severe fall-off in the transport sector. Traffic in the trucking sector is down 13% year on year – the biggest drop in 13 years. Airlines are carrying 21% less cargo. Cargo rates are down a whopping 90% in shipping.

We could go on… and on… But you get the point. As least we hope you do. The plunge in the economy may be slowing, but the data points are still heading in the wrong direction. Until this changes, we don’t fancy our chances in stocks.

We’re conservative that way: we like to have a reason for investing other than “everybody else is doing it, so it must be right.” That attitude will get you killed. You may make some money on the way to the chopping block. But sooner or later your head will still end up in a basket.

Of course, a bet on stocks right now is a bet on inflation (although not necessarily a good one). This is where the plot thickens, as a good plot always does.

We suspect the reason traders and investors are ignoring economic fundamentals in their flight from relatively safe-harbor investments (think Treasurys) into stocks is because they’re counting on the Fed flooding the economy with liquidity.

As we’ve discussed before, stocks tend to be particularly sensitive to fiscal and monetary stimulus. The problem is such overwhelming stimulus is likely to make the currencies stocks are valued in worthless.

There are better ways to bet on inflation – ways that also allow you to benefit from currency dollar devaluation. At the risk of repeating ourselves, there are two easy ways to do this.

You can go long the SPDR Gold ETF (NYSE:GLD), which has been on a tear since mid-April.

Or you can go long the PowerShares DB Agriculture Fund (NYSE:DBA), which has also been a great performer since mid-April.

The global population is peaking and is consuming more food than it’s producing. This will make food scarcer and cause it to rise in price.

But there are more subtle reasons for investing in commodities right now. Rogers says that although stocks may touch crazy valuations in the near term, they may be in worthless currencies – a vista Notes readers will be familiar with. This from a recent interview with Rogers in the Economic Times:

Central banks all over the world have printed huge amounts of money, and the real economy is not strong enough for all this money to be absorbed… so, it’s going into stocks and real assets such as commodities. It’s a mistake what they are doing. It’s giving short-term pleasure, but there’s long-term pain as we are going to have much higher inflation, much higher interest rates and a worse economy down the road.

The American bond market is already beginning to go down dramatically as people realize that the American government has to sell huge amount of bonds, and secondly, there is going to be inflation, serious inflation, as it was always in the past when you had governments printing huge amounts of money.

The fiscal deluge is lifting stocks. But they’re getting frothy. And Rogers reckons the current upward trend won’t last.

It’s going to snap. Later this year, next year, we are going to have currency problems, maybe even a currency crisis. I don’t know with which currency — maybe with the pound sterling, maybe with the US dollar, who knows. It maybe with something none of us have at the moment. When you have a currency crisis, stocks will be affected, many things will be affected. It is not sound, what’s happening out there in the world.

In the 1930s, we had a huge stock market bubble which popped. And then politicians started making many mistakes. They became protectionist. They made solvent banks take over insolvent banks and then both banks failed in the end.

They are doing many of the same mistakes now. What’s different this time is that we are printing huge amounts of money which they did not print at that time. So, we are going to have inflation this time.

There are a number of ways to play this scenario with hard assets. But to keep things simple, you may want to focus on the following three market-beating commodities ETFs (hat tip ETF Trends).

1) The iShares S&P GSCI Commodity-Indexed ETF (NYSE:GSG), up 8.1% for the year

2) Notes’ old favorite, the PowerShares DB Agricultural Fund (NYSE:DBA), up 7.5% for the year

3) The Market Vectors-RVE Hard Asset Producers ETF (NYSE:HAP), up 25.9% for the year

One day I told my lovely wife to get her passport ready because we were going to Moscow.  She was quite excited because Moscow is a shopping mecca with many historical sites to see.  But, I assure you—I was there for business.

We traveled to Russia in December of last year and I saw firsthand how the country operates.  I observed that the Russians are a hard working and productive people that just want the best for their families.  Russians are striving for a better quality of life just like anyone else.  I knew right away that the country offers investor’s high profit potential.

I assure you that Russia is still a super power and their society is quite advanced.  The energy sector in Russia is still a powerful force in the world.  Plus, Russia is one of the biggest producers of palladium, platinum, diamonds, nickel and gold.  Russia is a natural resource power house and should do great as commodity prices skyrocket.

When I got back to America I watched the Russian markets for some time and waited for the right moment to tell you to invest.

Then on 04/09/09 in this column, I wrote:

“the Russian market is way oversold and now is a good time to be a contrarian investor and invest when no one else will.”

I told you to buy the Market Vectors Russia ETF (RSX).  This Exchange Traded Fund holds a basket of Russian stocks and seeks to mirror the Russian stock market as measured by the DAX Global Russia+ Index.

I hope you took the advice.  If so, you’re sitting on a 39% gain in just 53 days.  And that’s not the only profitable advice you’ve received for free in these pages…

In fact, just this year I sent you lots of big winners including:

7% SPDR Gold Shares (GLD)
21% iShares Silver Trust (SLV)
85% Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. (FCX)
45% Plum Creek Timber (PCL)
13% PowerShares DB Agriculture ETF (DBA)
26% iShares MSCI Brazil Index (EWZ)
39% Market Vectors Russia ETF (RSX)
29% PowerShares India ETF (PIN)
18% iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index ETF (FXI)
13% The Coca-Cola Company (KO)
11% Market Vectors Agribusiness ETF (MOO)

If you missed this opportunity to get into any of the above positions, it’s not too late.  Each one of these picks has the potential to run much higher.

I’m sure you are happy we deliver these great ideas for FREE in this Investor’s Daily Edge daily newsletter.  Our staff here at Investor’s Daily Edge strives to give you information that can help you accumulate wealth and enhance your financial well-being.

Now I have an important favor to ask of you.  I need you to tell your friends and family to sign up for our free daily newsletter.  Simply just tell them to go to http://www.investorsdailyedge.com/ and sign up.  Or forward this email to everyone in your address book.

We currently have over 300,000 elite members like you getting Investor’s Daily Edge on a daily basis.  Our goal is to get to one million subscribers.

Tell your friends and family that can benefit from independent and profitable financial insight.

Thank You,

Ted Peroulakis

Source: The Russia Pick I Recommended to You Is Up 39 in 53 Days

This chart shows the price movements since the beginning of the year of the Powershares DB Agriculture Fund (NYSE:DBA). It represents a basket of futures contracts for commodities such as wheat, corn, soybeans and sugar. As Justice says, “Commodity after commodity has roared back to life, thanks to a combination of renewed inflation expectations, a crashing U.S. dollar, and newly bullish fundamentals.”

Last Thursday, we discussed at length the effects that inflationary expectations are having on the market. We said that Treasuries were a bad place to be and that energy-related commodities such as uranium and lithium were likely winners in an inflationary scenario. Justice points out that corn, soybeans and sugar are worth considering.

Corn prices surged to a six-month high,” Bloomberg reported earlier this week, “after the U.S. government said domestic demand will exceed production for the third time in four years, slashing reserves by 28%.”

Corn inventories are expected to fall even as the various demand sources for corn – food, livestock and fuel – rise an estimated 3.5% next year.

Soybean prices, meanwhile, recently hit seven-month highs on the CBOT (Chicago Board of Trade) after U.S. stockpile forecasts dropped. Beans were also boosted by word that the Brazilian National Agriculture Confederation, a major farm lobbying group in Brazil, would press for limited soybean acreage in the coming planting season to help keep prices firm.

And finally Sugar, not to be outdone, recently hit 34-month highs – their highest level in nearly three years – on “poor crops and robust demand,” according to the Financial Times. A failure of India’s local sugar crop was seen as a big price booster. “Swings in Indian sugar output, which move the country back and forth from exporter to importer, are a critical factor in global prices,” the FT reports.

“The price of lumber is a fair indicator of where the market is headed,” says Tom Dyson in last Friday’s DailyWealth. Lumber is an “on-demand” market. That means prices are set by real commercial demand (not the pie-in-the-sky nonsense we’re seeing in US equities right now). This from Tom:

Take the 2008 credit crisis as an example. The lumber price was the first to signal a bear market was coming. It peaked in May 2004. The Bloomberg Homebuilders Index peaked in July 2005. The Case-Shiller U.S. home price index peaked in July 2006. The credit crunch started in February 2007, when New Century Financial collapsed. And finally, the S&P 500 peaked in October 2007.

“Mr. Market” is starting to show clear signs of split personality disorder.

On the one hand, certain areas of the market – the ones much favored in the big run-up – have started to wilt and fade as the much-lauded “green shoots” turn brown. On the other hand, other areas of the market – which didn’t participate so much in the rally at first – have started showing signs of life.

Take the grain markets for example. Foodstuffs like corn, wheat, soybeans and sugar have been red-hot in recent days.

We can see this in the Powershares DB Agriculture Fund (DBA:NYSE), which Macro Trader has been long for a number of weeks. (We took partial profits earlier this week, and continue to ride the move with the remainder of our position.)

DBA, which is NOT built around “total return swaps” like other inverse/leveraged funds, is essentially a basket of futures contracts – primarily wheat, corn and soybeans, with sugar thrown in for good measure.

Commodity after commodity has roared back to life, thanks to a combination of renewed inflation expectations, a cratering U.S. dollar, and newly bullish fundamentals. Let’s take a closer look at some of DBA’s components to see what I mean.

Prices as High as an Elephant’s Eye

“Corn prices surged to a six-month high,” Bloombergreported earlier this week, “after the U.S. government said domestic demand will exceed production for the third time in four years, slashing reserves by 28 percent.”

Corn inventories are expected to fall even as the various demand sources for corn – food, livestock and fuel – rise an estimated 3.5% next year.

Soybean prices, meanwhile, recently hit seven-month highs on the CBOT (Chicago Board of Trade) after U.S. stockpile forecasts dropped. Beans were also boosted by word that the Brazilian National Agriculture Confederation, a major farm lobbying group in Brazil, would press for limited soybean acreage in the coming planting season to help keep prices firm.

And finally Sugar, not to be outdone, recently hit 34-month highs – their highest level in nearly three years – on “poor crops and robust demand,” according to the Financial Times. A failure of India’s local sugar crop was seen as a big price booster. “Swings in Indian sugar output, which move the country back and forth from exporter to importer, are a critical factor in global prices,” the FT reports.

Wheat is the one area with potential for disappointment, relating to large India stockpiles that could be released onto the market later this summer – hence Macro Trader’s willingness to take some gains off the table and watch closely as further developments unfold.

Reflation and Stagnation

Agriculture is thus one area where the market is doing well. Other foodstuffs not mentioned, like cotton and coffee, have also seen big gains in recent weeks. On top of that, various agriculture-related equities have been performing well and look to have strong potential upside in the coming months.

Along with base metals, ag has been showing signs that the “reflation trade” is on. There is a new and aggressively bullish stance emerging on hard assets and inflation-themed plays, including everything from base metals, to gold and silver, to crude oil and natural gas… and well-run companies related to all the above.

China, too, has had a hand in pumping up the reflation trade with its aggressive stockpiling of base metals. (A few weeks back we wondered aloud in these pages if good Dr. Copper, the “metal with a PhD in economics,” was being goosed by China buying. That hunch was more or less correct, as Beijing doubles down on industrial inflation hedges with a vengeance.)

But all is not rosy and cheery for the recovery-minded bulls, as other, weaker areas of the market can attest. At the same time that inflation-linked themes are hopping, other econ-related data points are dropping.

“U.S. railroad freight traffic is running about a fifth lower than a year ago,” The Wall Street Journal reports, adding that the news “is one of several less-obvious indicators that all isn’t well, despite the financial-market rally since early March.”

The underlying reality, as the dismal freight numbers point out, is that a change from “bad” to “less bad” on the economic data front doesn’t mean things are necessarily getting better. It only means we aren’t free-falling quite as fast as we were.

Think of the skydiver hurtling towards the Earth at an astonishing rate. A few thousand feet above the ground he pulls the ripcord and – hooray! – his rate of descent has been arrested, to the point where he is pleasantly drifting rather than free-falling now. But in which direction is he still headed? And where exactly is he going to land? (Let’s hope it’s not an alligator swamp…)

The budding hope that U.S. consumers would come bouncing back with wallet intact also took a hard knock this week. April retail sales were down for the second month in a row, coming in below expectations and breaking the bulls’ happy winning string of positive upside surprises.

Brian Bethune, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Mass., believes the “green shoots” talk was premature. “There are some preliminary signs (of improvement) in certain areas of the financial markets,” Bethune tells Reuters, “but in terms of the real economy, we are still a long ways off.”

To which we try (and fail) to resist the temptation to say: “Well, duh.”

A Classic Combo

The environment we are headed into – and the view Mr. Market seems to (perhaps) be acknowledging now – is a classic combo of wearisome economic stagnation and creeping paper-fueled inflation. One acts as a fearsome headwind, blowing in the face of consumer-oriented names reliant on economic recovery to justify their newly bid-up valuations. The other acts as a powerful tailwind, further bidding up the price of inflation hedges and hard assets.

The main worry that has wracked markets these past few months, a relentless deflationary downward spiral leading to Great Depression 2.0, has now more or less been put to bed (at least in the mind of investors at large). Upon coming to the realization that we’re not all going to die, a massive post-apocalypse bear market rally ensued as investors audibly exhaled and the “green shoots” meme excited suggestible minds far and wide.

But now the follow-on reality is slowly sinking in that, while we may not be dead ducks, we’re still far (quite far) from being out of the woods. And that means an unpleasant combo of debt-hobbled economic growth, budget-busting government deficits, and persistent fiat currency erosion as far as the eye can see.

Macro Trader’s special recipe for an environment such as this is two-pronged. We are scanning the landscape for bearish trading opportunities in overhyped and overinflated consumer discretionary-type names, still pumped up from the short-covering aspects of rally and vulnerable to fresh disappointment, while simultaneously ferreting out bullish opportunities to play the “reflation trade” (in everything from ag to energy to metals) on the long side.

Source: Reflation and Stagnation – Welcome to What’s Next

We are in the middle of a global economic crisis and commodities are on sale. Buy commodities now while they are still cheap. When we finally emerge from this global economic crisis — prices will explode higher. I’m talking about another long-term bull market in commodities. Let me explain…

Inflation Will Push Commodities Prices Higher

Our Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is an inflationist, which is an advocate of the policy of deliberate inflation achieved by increasing the supply of available currency and credit. They call him helicopter Ben because he once quoted a statement made by Milton Friedman, about using a “helicopter drop” of money into the economy to fight deflation.

Bernanke is a student of the causes of the Great Depression, and he has written extensively on this subject. Bernanke knows that deflation is quite negative for an economy and should be avoided at all costs. We have recently seen deflation as prices for real estate and commodities dropped during this recession. But, Ben Bernanke’s Fed and other central banks around the world have fired up the printing presses to combat deflation. They have been dumping new currency into the economy to reverse deflation and stimulate the economy. It’s working! One measure of inflation- the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has recently turned positive. Deflation is out—Inflation is starting.

The problem is, inflation could really skyrocket, especially when we finally emerge from this recession. Inflation eats away at your purchasing power and takes away your wealth.

One of the best ways to protect against inflation is to invest in commodities.

In the 1970s, when inflation in the U.S. was high and the economy was in a deep recession, commodity prices soared.

You want to own tangible assets like metals, energy, agriculture, and livestock as these commodities hold their value in inflationary times.

Exploding Population and Living Standards will Push Commodity Prices Higher

We have already seen a surge in demand for commodities from developing countries, like India and China. Plus, global commodity supplies are low; the inventories for food are the lowest they have been in 50 years. Rising income levels in emerging countries and the spread of western ideologies are having an effect on food consumption. We are seeing greater consumer demand for certain foods like meat and poultry.

The Earth’s population is estimated to be about 6.77 billion, and the world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion by the year 2040. The world’s masses are already demanding more vegetables, fruits, meats and dairy products. Imagine what the demand for agricultural products will be in 10 to 20 years.

Growing global demand from population growth and a rising standard of living will push commodity prices much higher.

Some Good Commodity Picks

The fundamentals make commodities an extremely attractive investment.

Plus, adding commodities to your portfolio gives you added diversification.

Here are some good ways to invest in commodities right in your normal brokerage account:

GLD - This gold tracking Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) mirrors the price of gold.

SLV - This silver tracking ETF mirrors the price of silver.

DBA – This ETF tracks widely traded agricultural commodities like corn, wheat, soy beans and sugar. As agricultural prices rise the price of this ETF goes up.

MOO – This ETF comprises a basket of companies engaged in various sectors of agribusiness like agricultural chemicals, livestock operations, agricultural equipment and ethanol/biodiesel.

PCL – One of the best timber producer stocks. Historically, timber prices have done exceptionally well under inflationary circumstances.

FCX - Freeport is one of the world’s largest copper producers and this copper stock goes up when copper prices go up.

XOM - Exxon Mobil Corporation, a great way to invest in oil.

Take a close look at investing in commodities. We are at the beginning of an unprecedented bull market in the commodity sector.

Source: Commodities Are The Best Place To Be For The Next Decade

And, ominously, the price of contracts used to speculate on the creditworthiness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and to protect against a default doubled in the past two months.

What about the government’s implied guarantee of the debt held by the companies? It seems investor confidence in short supply.

Stocks in Fannie Mae have shed 73 percent in the past year on the New York Stock Exchange. Meanwhile, Freddie Mac dumped 60 percent.

Yesterday currency expert Chuck Butler said the markets were smelling blood in the water. Chuck says the markets now  think Fannie and Freddie will need about $75 billion in new capital to remain viable companies. But a rumored bailout didn’t happen. More from Chuck:

Could these two be the next ‘risk events’ that I keep talking about in the U.S.? It’s all rumors and hearsay now.. But like the song goes… There’s no smoke without a fire…. There’s no heat without a flame…

Or… Could it be the news from Indy Mac, who agreed with regulators to halt new loans under an agreement with the regulators, and then announced that they would cut half its staff as mortgage losses mount? Again, folks, I’m not picking on these companies because I have some vendetta against them… I’m just reporting what’s on the news wires, as something that could affect the value of the dollar in the long run.

Jennifer Yousfi in Money Morning says the end of the housing slowdown is a long way off…

We might be getting closer to the bottom. In fact, existing home sales rose in February, the first such increase in the past seven months. But it’s probably too soon to get excited about a full housing recovery.

“It looks like this may be a temporary pause,” Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Mass., told Bloomberg News after the existing homes sales report was released. “The price declines have helped, and people are still getting financing, though not on the good terms they could before.”

“We’re still a long way from a recovery in housing,” Gault said.

Where to put your money as the credit crisis rollicks on? Invest abroad, says Jennifer. Anywhere but the US…

With foreign economies growing that briskly, there will be plenty of profitable investment opportunities available in the 12 months to come.

With growth sputtering and a recession still possible here at home, investors should turn their attention to such U.S.-based multinationals as McDonald’s Corp. (MCD) and Yum! Brands Inc. (YUM). Both firms derive substantial portions of their sales from overseas markets, where growth is likely to continue over the next 12 months, regardless of what happens to the U.S. economy.

And while these firms offer significant foreign-market exposure, the fact that they’re U.S. based means such corporations as McDonald’s, Yum! Brands and such others as The Coca-Cola Co. (KO) and PepsiCo Inc. (PEP) offer the transparency of U.S. financial reporting requirements and the relative protection of the U.S. investment-regulatory system.

But if you prefer to invest more directly in foreign growth, then Hutchinson – the Money Morning contributing editor – says to try South Korea’s largest wireless service provider, SK Telecom Co. Ltd. (SKM). SK is well positioned to capitalize on the growing Asian markets. Likewise, the Hsinchu, Taiwan-based Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg. Co. Ltd. (TSM) [commonly referred to as TMSC], the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, is another Asian tech company that is not currently overvalued and should do well in the New Year, Hutchinson says.

Traditional inflation-sensitive investments such as currencies and commodities are also good plays for 2008, investment gurus as Fitz-Gerald and “adventure-capitalist” Jim Rogers both say.

The PowerShares Agriculture Fund (DBA), operated by German giant Deutsche Bank AG (DB), is intended to reflect the performance of four commodities in the agriculture sector: Soybeans (31.13%), wheat (28.87%), corn (23.43%) and sugar (16.58%). These include some of the key agricultural commodity plays that Rogers advocates.

Another is Van Eck’s recently launched Market Vectors Agribusiness Exchange-Traded Fund (MOO). Like the PowerShares Fund, this reflects the agriculture industry but in a different way. Instead, the ETF’s holdings reflect returns seen from agriculture chemicals (34%), agriproduct operations (33.5%), agriculture equipment (24.3%), livestock operations (5.6%) and ethanol/biodiesel (2.3%).

For investors who have the constitution of a Contrarian investor – as well as some patience and a long time horizon – it may be well worth a look at some of the beaten-down financial-sector stocks that state-run sovereign wealth funds are buying into in a wholesale manner. Although many U.S. investors are preaching caution – if not total avoidance – when it comes to companies involved with the American financial-services sector, these government-run investment pools clearly view such stalwarts as Citigroup Inc. (C), UBS AG (UBS), Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. (MER), and Morgan Stanley (MS), as bargain-basement investment opportunities.