There is a full economic calendar this week, but all eyes will be on the two-day FOMC meeting and the rate decision on Wednesday.

It will be interesting to see how the FOMC approaches this meeting. The current Fed Funds target rate is 0-0.25%, which in and of itself is rather strange. It is a moving target, not a fixed rate. Who determines which rate is used? My guess is this meeting will be used to clarify what the rate is. The Fed will either officially reduce it to 0% in a continued effort to resuscitate the economy, or lock it in at 0.25%. This would at least leave the Fed with one perceived bullet in the gun.

The rest of the…

Retirement Plans Lose $2 Trillion; eBay Sells Out Workforce; Eli Settles Marketing Dispute; Morgan Stanley Gets OK on Capital Infusion; IMF Says Rough Economic Times Ahead; Wachovia Split?

S&P Slashes RBS Rating; Dendreon’s Big Boost; Eli Lilly Comes Out Ahead on ImClone; AgFeed’s Hungry For Its Own Shares; Bank of America Surprises with Loss; Paulson Taps Another Goldman Exec.

Eli Outbids Bristol; Carmax Crashes; IBM Could Miss Estimates; Micron’s Loss; Cereal’s Sugar High; Canada Drives Toyota

Given the gut-wrenching financial turmoil of the last year, many investors are looking for more secure ways of investing.

Floyd Brown says one way of doing this is to rethink the “boring” image of dividend-paying stocks. These stocks can offer great returns and a steady cash flow.

Floyd says there are five pharmaceutical companies offering outstanding dividend yields in a growing sector. And with most negative sentiment already priced into the stocks, downside risk is limited…

Monsanto Co. (MON), the world’s largest seed producer, is selling off its rights to a synthetic milk-producing hormone in order to focus its attention more closely on its core business of developing genetically modified seeds and pesticides. U.S. pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly & Co. (LLY) will pay Monsanto $300 million for Posilac, the brand name for recombinant bovine somatotropin or rBST. The deal includes the global sale rights and a Georgia-based manufacturing plant.

Drug discovery is high-risk, high-reward. It takes about 10 years and $1 billion to bring a new drug to market. And only one of 10,000 new prospects ever makes it to pharmacy shelves. Those that do fetch monopoly-like margins and can bring in billions in sales.

The economic calendar is light in number this week, but it is not without important reports to point out. Christian Hill in Investor’s Daily Edge has the details…

The secret of a Death Cross Trader is simple: Find a stock that’s failing and short it. Of course, as with all things, timing is everything.

Contrarian Investing Approach

When the moment is right, will you be ready? A lot of men are about to be. Any time. Any day. Every day, in fact. That’s because the Food & Drug Administration is expected to grant Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) approval for a daily version of its erectile disfunction drug, Cialis. This comes after the European Commission approved it in June.

Okay, first things first: Who the heck are these guys married to? Seems to me they have lofty and unreasonable expectations!

But it’s not just in the boudoir where expectations are high. The stock market lives on expectations. And at this time of year, many of them are unreasonable, too. For investors like us, it means we have to…