I have to confess that before I tallied the results this week, I approached the task with an awful sense of dread. Everywhere you turn the news grows worse by the day. The U.S. economy is now being compared with the Great Depression. That’s depressing.

News about sinking markets in Asia didn’t help either. The ALL ORDINARIES IDX (ASX: ^AORD) Australia, the SSE Composite Index (Shanghai: 000001.SS) Shanghai and the ISHARES MSCI THAILAN (NYSEArca: THD) Thailand indices have been some of our best performers.

And even though I monitor the Taipan Emerging Market Index on a regular basis, the volatility of the global markets lately has been ferocious. You can check it in the morning and then at the close of the day, and any rational person could easily believe that the world had gone stark, raving mad in just a few short hours.

Well, call me lucky if you want, but the Taipan Emerging Market index closed out the day with a gain of 5%.

True enough the major markets in the U.S. closed up yesterday. The Dow rose 0.73%, the S&P 500 gain 0.70% and Nasdaq was up 1.03%. Still, even if you ad together those increases the Taipan Emerging Market index clearly did better than all of them combined.

Once again, our biggest winner this week was ISHARES MSCI THAILAN (NYSEArca: THD) Thailand. To find out why, please check out the Friday Snapshot of 6/27. A lot of Western manufacturing companies are moving into Thailand — including some who now believe that China it too expensive to meet their needs.

Well, this certainly is a terrific Friday, and tonight I’ll raise a brew for all of us. Have a great weekend.

–Irwin Greenstein

Two Asian newspapers revealed that China’s fight against inflation could pay off in the immediate future. If so, the SSE Composite Index (Shanghai: 000001.SS) Shanghai is the place for you to be.

Both The Shanghai Daily and The Standard reported that as early as this week the Chinese government could issue new numbers to show it has finally reined in inflation. The news could send the Shanghai Composite Index back up. In fact, in our June 11 issue, we thought it was a good idea to double down on the index while it was still in a trough.

The Asian newspapers quoted the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China as saying that the country’s inflation could peak in 2009 and then decline.

While the bank also predicted that stock markets could continue to suffer through 2011, our guess is that any government reporting good inflation numbers has got to be considered a superstar.

Continue Reading »

When Starbucks (NasdaqGS: SBUX) announced on July 1 it was closing 600 U.S stores, Big Media played it up with an apocalyptic gusto. The Starbucks meltdown was portrayed as divine retribution for our yuppie excess — the Angel of Doom descending on every street corner in America where BMW owners doubled parked for their $5 White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccinos.

Take a look at the chart, and you’ll see that SBUX looks like a massive cardiac arrest…

But there’s a much bigger part of the story that, in fact, Starbucks played down. Like a good corporate lap dog, Big Media ignored this important piece of news — depriving investors of a key piece of market intelligence that could make Starbucks a good long-term play.

Continue Reading »

Budweiser and Busch are as American as camo seat covers in a F-150.

Yet a hostile offer by InBev SA (Brussels:INB.BR) on Anheuser-Busch (NYSE:BUD) is about to show us that the star-spangled King of Beers is up for play because it ignored emerging markets.

When you look at the dynamics behind the InBev bid, it’s important to see America as a diminished player. The headlines tell you that the economy is dismal. What Big Media rarely tells you is that smaller, developing economies are kicking our butt. American companies that count strictly on the U.S. for revenues are destined for the rustbelt of the future — or a foreign buyout.

Analysts have been badgering A-B for years that it relies too heavily on the U.S. — one of the slowest growing beer markets in the world. A-B has buried its head in the sand as InBev and other competitors have pushed into high-growth emerging markets.

Continue Reading »