David Fessler (Investment U):

As the old saying goes, “You’re either a contrarian, or a victim.”

It just so happens that one of the savviest contrarians I know is my colleague, Louis Basenese.

And nobody takes that to heart more than Lou does. I’ve scratched my head in bewilderment on many occasions after reading one of Lou’s bold predictions – only to see his intuition prove uncanny time after time.

So today I’m stealing a page from the “Basenese Playbook” and taking a look at the severely battered transportation sector, one that pretty much everybody hates. However, I think, it’s not only about to come off life support, but perhaps become one of the hottest investments in 2010.

The Transportation Sector: The Market’s Most Important Domain

Airlines, railways, package carriers, even oil and gas pipelines are all industries that make up the transportation sector.

But why should you care about it?

Because transportation is actually the most important sector – and for good reason: growth or contraction here serves as a proxy for both U.S. and global economic growth.

It stands to reason that if more “stuff” is being shipped, it means companies are producing more goods to satisfy business and consumer demand. In turn, this is a good indication that the U.S. economy – and that of the rest of the globe – is in decent shape.

Right now, however, there’s a big change underway in U.S. freight transportation. Thing is though, it’s hardly received any attention. So let’s take a closer look…

And the World’s Most Efficient Transportation System Is…

Let me toss a few statistics your way…

Click here to read the rest of Mr. Fessler’s article at Investment U and uncover his three transportation sector picks.

Oil prices have recovered, climbing over $60 a barrel, the recent stock market rally has lured many investors back off the sidelines, and President Barack Obama’s clean energy agenda has breathed some life back into the browbeaten sector.

Now, solar energy stocks – some that lost more than two-thirds of their value last year – have come roaring back.

After topping $300 a share last spring, shares of First Solar Inc. (Nasdaq: FSLR) plummeted to just $85.28 a share in November. But since then the company has bounced back, soaring 125% to Friday’s close of $191.72 a share.  Shares of Trina Solar Ltd. (NYSE: TSL) hit $52 last summer before bottoming out at $5.61 in November. That stock is up more than 260% since Nov. 21.

Global economic growth is far from guaranteed at this early stage, but there’s good reason to believe that when a recovery does get underway, solar stocks will be shooting for the moon.

California’s Gold Standard

While many other solar energy companies have collapsed under the weight of the economic downturn, a small upstart out of California has managed to greatly expand its business.

That company is BrightSource Energy, which last week agreed to what the company’s Chief Executive Officer, John Woolard, called the “the largest solar deal in the world.”

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. agreed to purchase 1,310 megawatts (MW) of solar thermal power from BrightSource Energy for a sum that analysts’ believe tops $3 billion.

BrightSource had already agreed to transmit 900 MW of solar power to PG&E in a deal that analysts valued at $2 billion to $3 billion. The terms of the new deal, which expands upon the original 900MW agreement, will build on top of that figure.

BrightSource plans to build seven solar power plants in the Mojave desert of California that will use mirrors to direct sunlight onto a group of centralized water towers to create steam that will, in turn, power turbines. PG&E estimates that the amount of energy produced by the plants will be sufficient enough to power 530,000 homes.

Earlier this year, BrightSource signed a similar 1,300 MW agreement with Southern California Edison Co. – an indication that, despite economic hardship, the solar energy business is still hot.

But a lot of BrightSource’s recent activity has to do with California’s newly adopted state energy policy. In 2006, California passed a law that required electrical utilities to get 20% of their power from renewable sources by 2010.

However, on November 17, 2008, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took the state’s green energy mandate further by signing Executive Order S-14-08, which requires that utilities generate 33% of their power through renewable sources by 2020.

Indeed, the state of California has led the country in adopting renewable sources of energy, particularly solar.

Renewable energy accounts for 13.5% of the state’s energy consumption, and for the past three years, the California Energy Commission has been managing $400 million targeted for solar on new residential building construction. That includes an ambitious “Million Solar Roof” initiative that will create 3,000 megawatts of installed photovoltaic capacity by 2018.

But California is more than an energy pioneer. It’s an early indication of where U.S. energy policy is headed.

If President Barack Obama’s administration has its way, mandates similar to those issued in California will be employed across the country over the next 10 years. In fact, they already are.

Solar Shift

Obama announced Tuesday that he is making California’s standard for vehicle fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions the new national standard.

Under Obama’s new proposals, vehicles would be 30% cleaner and more fuel efficient by 2016. And that’s just the beginning.

The President’s budget incorporated $646 billion in revenue from capping global-warming pollution, while allocating $150 billion to renewable energy investment over the next 10 years, making his green-funding initiative the largest such effort in U.S. history.

Among other things, Obama’s recent stimulus package provides a tax credit of up to 30% for home solar installations.

The Obama administration also advocates a policy that would require 25% of U.S. electricity demand be met by renewable energy by 2025. The President has the support of the Democrat-led Congress. U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, (D – N.M.), Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is working on legislation that aims to make 20% of U.S. energy demand renewable by 2021.

While a renewable energy policy was largely neglected by the administration of George W. Bush, Obama’s effort can hardly be described as partisan. It is more representative of a shift in political ideology that arose when gas prices soared above $4 per gallon last summer.

A recent Gallup Poll showed that the majority of Americans support higher fuel efficiency standards such as those Obama announced Tuesday. In March, 80% of Americans said they favored higher fuel efficiency standards for automobiles.

Currently, just 28 states have renewable energy goals, but with the Obama administration’s effort and a shift in public opinion, it won’t be long before all 50 are enacting their alternative energy mandates.

According to a study by Allianz Global Investors, 78% of investors think green technology could be the “next great American industry,” and 97% of investors believe the development of alternative fuel sources will remain important even if oil prices remain relatively low.

And statistics bear that out. Venture capitalists invested $4.1 billion in alternative energy projects in 2008 – a 54% increase from the year prior, according to a report by PricewaterhousCoopers. What’s more, 45% of that money went to solar projects, compared to 23% in 2007.

“Alternative energy’s rise isn’t going to be smooth, but it’s going to be one of the great new growth industries,” Steven Berexa, managing director of research for RCM Informed, an Allianz subsidiary, told Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine.

A Global Industry

In addition to the United States, solar energy is gaining traction around the world.

After subsidizing 2,400 MW of solar projects last year, the Spanish government will subsidize an additional 500 MW this year. Japan aims to create more than 100,000 new jobs in its solar industry as part of an effort to jumpstart its flailing economy. Proposals for solar energy plants are also being considered in the Middle East and northern Africa.

Even BrightSource’s Woolard has attributed some of his company’s success to its overseas operations.

“PG&E looked hard at what we’d done,” Woolard told The San Francisco Chronicle. “They looked at the results from our plant in Israel, and that built a lot of confidence that we were meeting milestones and delivering.”

Most recently, Australia announced plans to build a solar power station that will rival BrightSource’s Southern California operation. The network is expected to produce about 1,000 MW of energy, but won’t be operational until at least 2015.

“We don’t want to be clean energy followers worldwide, we want to be clean energy leaders worldwide,” Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told the Financial Times.

The Australian government hopes renewable energy will account for 20% of the country’s power grid by 2020. Rudd said the government intends to spend about $1 billion (A$1.4 billion) of the $3.6 billion (A$4.7 billion) it has pledged to clean energy initiatives over the next decade.

Like in the United States, the Australian government hopes its alternative energy initiative will be a catalyst for private investment. John Connor, head of the Sydney-based Climate Institute, told the FT that Australia’s clean energy plan will drive an estimated $15.5 billion (A$20 billion) in private investment.

Another country with an ambitious solar agenda is China. A country with notoriously high greenhouse gas emissions, China installed about 50MW of solar capacity last year, more than double the 20 MW in 2007, Renewable Energy World reported.

Beijing plans to expand the installed capacity to 1,800 MW by 2020, as the demand for new solar modules in China could be as high as 232 MW each year from now until 2012.

China is also a good place to find promising solar companies. LDK Solar Co. Ltd. (NYSE ADR: LDK), Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. Ltd. (NYSE ADR:YGE), and JA Solar Holdings Co. Ltd. (NYSE ADR: JASO) have all been beaten down by the market, but could post a strong rebound when China’s solar initiative takes full flight.

Many analysts also like the aforementioned First Solar and Trina Solar Ltd., which stand a better shot of withstanding the recession because of their size and experience.

[Editor’s Note: Money Morning Investment Director Keith Fitz-Gerald is the editor of the new Geiger Index trading service. As the whipsaw trading patterns investors have endured this year have shown, the ongoing global financial crisis has changed the investment game forever.

Uncertainty is now the norm and that new reality alone has created a whole set of new rules that will help determine who profits and who loses. Investors who ignore this “New Reality”will struggle, and will find their financial forays to be frustrating and unrewarding. But investors who embrace this change will not only survive – they will thrive. With the Geiger Index, Fitz-Gerald has already isolated these new rules and has unlocked the key to what he refers to as “Golden Age of Wealth Creation” The Geiger Index system allows Fitz-Gerald to predict the price movements of broad indexes, or of individual stocks, with a high degree of certainty. And it’s particularly well suited to the kind of market we’re all facing right now. Check out our latest report on these new rules, and on this new market environment.

Source: Is the Dark Cloud Over Solar Energy Beginning to Break?

U.S. stocks were mostly higher in thin trade on Friday, as investors eyed retail sales on the first day of the shopping season after the Thanksgiving Day holiday, to gauge the extent of weakening consumer demand.

European and Asian shares were also higher, despite the attacks in Mumbai, India, while U.S. Treasury debt prices and the U.S. dollar both gained as investors continued to look for safe-havens as global economic growth slows.

“It’s a light volume day so you’re going to see some choppy trading, with so many people out,” said Robert Finkel, consumer trader at Stifel Nicolaus in Baltimore of the U.S. stock market.

“I’m watching how things go from a retail standpoint today – we’ve heard a lot of speculation about how bad it’s going to be, now we’ll get some proper feedback.”

The U.S. holiday weekend will test the strength of consumer sentiment, a main driver of the U.S. economy, as the country faces its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. If the U.S. consumer fails to buy, companies across the globe can expect to see fewer exports and profits.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 32.42 points, or 0.4 percent, to 8,759.03. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 0.66 points, or 0.1 percent, at 888.34. The Nasdaq Composite Index shed 11.99 points, or 0.8 percent, to 1,520.11.

The S&P’s retail index dipped 2.3 percent.

The U.S. stock market was closed Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday and is trading for half the day on Friday. On Wednesday, stocks ended higher, capping the Dow’s biggest four-day percentage gain since 1932.

Technology shares slid after signs of a downturn in global chip demand as STMicroelectronics cut its fourth-quarter outlook. Industry sources said Taiwan companies want to slash costs. The semiconductor index shed 1.1 percent.

OPEC MEETS

U.S. light crude for January delivery stood at $51.52 a barrel, down $2.90, on course to end the month down more than 20 percent, as OPEC ministers prepared to meet in Cairo to discuss potential further supply cuts to combat a global fall in demand .

In the U.S. Chevron fell 1.9 percent tracking oil lower.

Indian stocks ended higher despite the attacks in Mumbai, but India’s 10-year bond yield fell to its lowest level in three years on expectations that the attacks will an impetus to central bank interest rate cuts.

Globally, the MSCI all-country world index was 0.1 percent firmer, although it has gained more than 10 percent this week, the first weekly gain in four weeks.

“On a range of measures, there is undoubted value to be found in many of the world’s equity markets,” said Sarah Arkle, chief investment officer with Threadneedle Asset Management.

The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 was up 0.7 percent, as buoyant pharmaceutical shares eclipsed a drop in cyclical mining and industrial sectors.

Earlier, Japan’s Nikkei average climbed 1.7 percent to close out its best week in a month.

The U.S. dollar regained traction against major currencies after early losses. The euro lost 1.8 percent to $1.2656 . The dollar was flat at 95.36 yen .

Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes traded higher in price for a yield of 2.9673 percent. The benchmark yield, which moves inversely to prices, fell to as low as 2.82 percent on Friday, according to Reuters data, marking the lowest in at least five decades.

Overall, benchmark yields are on track for the biggest monthly fall in at least 12 years, according to Reuters data, as investors have stampeded into lower-risk investments on signs of ever-deepening economic distress. The 10-year yield has shed more than a full percentage point since the end of October.

Euro zone government bonds rose, reflecting concern about the economy and expectations of interest rate cuts. Two-year Schatz yields were last down 3 basis points to 2.202 percent.

By Nick Olivari
NEW YORK, Nov 28 (Reuters)

The amount the World Bank lends to developing countries such as China, India and Brazil could reach $35 billion for the 12 months ending June 30. That’s almost triple the $13.6 billion doled out to developing countries over the last fiscal year. The bank said it is prepared to commit up to $100 billion over the next three years, with the majority of the funds to be made available through its International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).

“The global financial crisis, coming so soon after the food and fuel crises, is likely to hurt the poor most in developing countries,” World Bank President Robert Zoellick said in a statement.

Emerging markets, which were flooded with speculative cash prior to the financial crisis, have seen a rapid withdrawal of private investment. Investment in infrastructure, education, and healthcare projects have been scaled back as a result, undoing much of the progress achieved over the past decade.

“The response to this crisis must be global, coordinated, flexible and fast,” Zoellick said. “It is more critical than ever that the international community acts in a coordinated and supportive way.”

The World Bank has lowered its 2009 growth estimate for developing countries to 4.5%.  The bank projected 6.4% growth for emerging markets as recently as June.

The bank estimates that a 1% decline in emerging market growth pushes an additional 20 million people into poverty.

World Bank estimates for global growth were also revised downward. The bank lowered its global economic growth estimate for 2009 to 1% from the 3% it projected in June. That is significantly lower than the International Monetary Fund (IMF) November 6 estimate of 2.2%.

Growth in developed countries will shrink by 0.1% next year, and global trade may suffer its first decline since 1982, the World Bank said.

World Bank Triples Lending to Developing Countries

This from Investment U:

Our next President will be faced with unprecedented challenges in health care, energy, global warming, an aging infrastructure and huge “legacy” automobile businesses that are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.

He’s also being presented with an incredible opportunity… one that, if implemented correctly, could have profoundly positive effects on the economic health of the world, just when we need it.

For years, the engine that fueled global economic growth was the spending of the American consumer. Market crashes because of the dot-coms and the housing boom have left many individuals with too much debt and not enough money. Americans are tapped out, and they’re closing their wallets.

Reinvigorating our economy rests upon jumpstarting consumer spending – and ultimately improving the financial condition of millions of Americans. It’s much easier said than done – and this new administration will have its work cut out for it.

If you’ve got an eye on how these government actions could benefit your bottom line, you should take a look at our past. You might find these newest sources of “economic fuel” and wealth creation look surprisingly familiar. The government’s solution could be just the thing our portfolio needs for a healthy return in the years to come…

The Cause of The Current U.S. Economic Slowdown

Ask most people to give you the cause of the current economic slowdown enveloping the United States and the rest of the world, and their likely answer will be the explosion of housing and the subsequent bubble in the credit markets.

But that was just the peak of the problem, not the beginning. The trouble has its roots in something that started 20 or 30 years ago.

That was when we started seeing the shift away from personal savings in America and toward the beginning of a huge consumer credit crisis.

And now, we are witnessing first-hand the effects of the increasing use of massive leverage can have on the markets, and ultimately on the American consumer. They’re broke and can no longer be the fuel that powers the world’s economic engine.

With consumer spending slowing, layoffs increasing and hiring all but stopped, the prospects for future economic growth aren’t particularly bright. Or are they? We have almost everything we need to fire up the world’s economic engine again: The ingenuity of the American people, plenty of factories, etc.

There’s only one thing missing… the fuel to get it going again. So what’s going to be the new “fuel?” History is a great teacher, and we need look no further than the Great Depression, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

The New Deal was a series of programs Roosevelt employed between 1933 and 1936 with the intent to provide work for the unemployed, reform of financial and business operations, and economic recovery. Here are a couple of examples:

• The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was the largest of the New Deal agencies. It alone was responsible for providing almost eight million jobs. What did all of those people do? They built public buildings, roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects. Anyone who needed a job could easily become eligible.

• Another program, created by an act of Congress in 1933, was the Tennessee Valley Authority. The TVA, as it was known, was chartered to provide food, navigation and flood control, electrical generation, fertilizer manufacturing and general economic development for the people of the Tennessee Valley, a region hard hit by the Great Depression. And it was just what the doctor ordered: The TVA’s projects were catalysts that fueled unprecedented economic growth in the area that continued through the 1960s. Today, the TVA’s 43 power plants make it one of the largest producers of power in the country.

7 Companies Profiting From a “New” New Deal

While the slowdown we are experiencing is nowhere near as severe as the Great Depression, the solution will be the creation of similar New Deal programs in two specific areas: the infrastructure and energy sectors.

More specifically, developing energy savings, making alternative forms of energy our mainstream sources, and building the green infrastructure to support what will be our growing energy independence.

More insulation in a house’s walls, lower thermostats, fluorescent bulbs, more fuel efficient cars and commercial building energy management systems are just a few of the ways to save energy. Public transportation is another. Expect the new government to provide tax incentives for these and other programs as short-term incentives to save. Companies that stand to benefit are Owens Corning (NYSE:OC): insulation, General Electric (NYSE:GE): lighting and Johnson Controls (NYSE:JCI): energy management systems.

Clearly wind, solar geothermal and tidal energy companies stand to benefit, too. While a comprehensive list is beyond the scope of this article, companies like First Solar (Nasdaq:FSLR): solar panels, Ormat Technologies (NYSE:ORA): geothermal and Vestas Wind Systems (PINK:VWDRY): wind turbines, will do well.

As new green sources of energy begin to come on-line in a big way, the nation’s electrical grids will have to be upgraded to move the power to where it’s needed. This is a huge project, and one of the biggest winners will be ABB (NYSE:ABB): power and automation technologies.

Ironically, the same government that’s trying to find a solution to the energy problems we face has been the biggest roadblock to solving them. The trillion dollar coal and oil subsidies prolong the carbon industry’s advantage over – and are a constant roadblock for – fledgling alternative energy companies.

The new President and his administration have an opportunity to turn the recession ship around, before it runs aground. By implementing new energy and infrastructure projects, thousands of new jobs will be provided at a time when they are desperately needed, and most importantly, these projects will provide the fuel to restart the world’s economic engine.

Source: Obama’s New “Economic Fuel”… and 7 Ways to Profit

Traders were still digesting the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s last meeting on interest rates, and they weren’t sitting well since they said that a more ‘prolonged’ and ’severe’ downturn could not be ruled out.

Meanwhile, the IMF is putting the chance that global economic growth will drop to recession levels in 2008 and 2009 at one in four. If the financial markets were a twin-engine plane, both engines would be on fire, the agency said.

The IMF is now projecting world economic growth will slow to a 3.7% rate in 2008, down from 4.2% forecast previously, and it says that we will have to depend on the emerging economies, particularly China and India, to prop up the global economy.