FOREX, Equities & Real Estate Investment Strategies

REAL ESTATE
This week my husband and I have been searching for foreclosures property to buy in Northen Virginia. It seems that the market in the metro DC area is a buyers market, however, foreclosures are rife and so is high debt. We have been unable to find any homes with enough equity to consider buying to then rent out. It seems rents are still low and the house prices are still considerably high and the homes being foreclosed on have no equity or worse still negative equity. It seems people have speculated and taken out risky interest only loans etc and are now in deep trouble, unable to meet payments or sell the houses which, is causing an oversupply. Sellers and banks are relutant to lower prices so the market is pretty dead right now. We will still be looking for deals and will keep you updated on our findings in the metro DC area.

We have decided to look further afield and we shall be researching the mid States and Texas for real property to invest in. We will update on out progress in the near future.

STOCKS

OIL
Is it time to buy the dip in oil -- and oil stocks? Oil prices are down about 35% from their highs of July 2006, and oil stocks have pulled back some in 2007.
ConocoPhillips (COP, news, msgs), for example, is down 10% year to date, Occidental Petroleum (OXY, news, msgs) is off 8%, and even sector stalwart ExxonMobil (XOM, news, msgs) is 1.84% lower as of Jan. 23.

The rally that has lifted the price of oil from $50 a barrel to $54.20 a barrel at the close on Jan. 23 is almost certainly temporary. Supply looks like it's going to be far enough ahead of demand to keep oil inventories high. A slowing U.S. economy will give the oil market some more breathing space.

In addition, oil company stocks face very difficult comparisons in 2006. It will be hard to grow earnings in 2007, even if oil rebounds to $60 a barrel, because oil prices were even higher in 2006. The difficulty of those comparisons is not yet fully reflected in oil stocks' prices. Even after the declines of 2007, the sector is selling at something close to fair value.

The strategy That said, I don't expect the price of a barrel of oil to drop much below the low $40s in 2007 or 2008. And I think the long-term price of oil is still headed higher. The long-term fundamentals of oil demand say that from the perspective of 2010, 2007 is likely to look like the year the oil market took a short breather.

That leaves me with a short list of oil stocks that I'd keep an eye on for purchase later in 2007, especially if the prices of oil stocks correct further.
Let me explain.

The recent rally in the price of oil is a very good example of a commodity trader's bounce. Unseasonably warm temperatures -- 60 degrees in New York in early January -- had fueled the last leg of the sell-off in oil. So when the weather forecast called for a return to colder temperatures, traders rushed to go long in anticipation of a bounce in the price of oil. They got exactly that, plus an extra bump on Jan. 23 from news stories saying that President Bush would call for doubling the size of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to 1.5 billion barrels of oil by 2027.

More downward pressure on oil If you want to trade that bounce, though, you'd better move quickly. The data arriving from the U.S. Department of Energy over the next few weeks are almost certain to show crude inventories near four-year highs. Gasoline supplies have been climbing, too, with a rise of 3.5 million barrels in the week that ended on Jan. 12. That inventory data will likely produce enough worries about supply surpluses to cancel out the recent bounce.
Another kind of data arriving over the next few weeks will put downward pressure not on oil prices but on the price of oil stocks. Wall Street analysts have been busy cutting their earnings estimates for oil companies for the fourth quarter of 2006 and for all of 2007. Bear Stearns, for instance, has lowered its fourth-quarter earnings estimates of the major oil companies by an average of 9%. Cuts in earnings estimates range from 19% for ConocoPhillips to 18% for BP PLC (BP, news, msgs) to 14% for Occidental Petroleum to 13% for Marathon Oil (MRO, news, msgs). The investment bankers did, however, raise estimates for ExxonMobil by 11% and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS, news, msgs) by 13%.

Outlook from the oil companies But the problem won't be limited to the fourth-quarter numbers set to be reported beginning with ConocoPhillips on Jan. 24 through Chevron (CVX, news, msgs) on Feb. 2. No, investors will also get to hear about exactly how slow growth will be for most oil companies in 2007. ExxonMobil will see earnings decline by 1.12% in 2007 from 2006 levels, according to the Wall Street analyst consensus. At Chevron, the projection is for a 4.26% drop in 2007. At ConocoPhillips, a 6.89% decline. At Marathon Oil, a 15.91% decline.
It's enough to make the 6.63% earnings growth projected by Wall Street for Apache (APA, news, msgs) look positively stunning.


MORE STOCKS
Below is a list of stocks and and stock call options we are looking to buy throughout 2007 when the price is right.
Adobe Systems Incorporated ADBE American Express Company AXP AIG-AMERIC.INT.GRP Buy AIG Amgen, Inc. Buy AMGN Applied Materials, Inc. AMAT Avon Products, Inc. AVP AXA (ADR) AXA The Boeing Company BA Broadcom Corporation BRCM Caterpillar Inc. CAT Chevron Corporation CVX Cisco Systems, Inc. CSCO Citigroup Inc. C The Coca-Cola Company KO Corning Incorporated GLW Duke Energy Corporation DUK Exxon Mobil Corporation XOM FedEx Corporation FDX Genentech, Inc. DNA General Cable Corporation BGC GENERAL ELECTRIC GE Google Inc. GOOG Intel Corporation INTC International Business Machines Corp. IBM Johnson & Johnson Buy JNJ McDonald's Corporation MCD Microsoft Corporation MSFT Nokia Corporation (ADR) NOK NEWS CORP NWS Nucor Corporation NUE PACCAR Inc PCAR PepsiCo, Inc. Buy PEP Pfizer Inc. PFE PROCTER GAMBLE Buy PG QUALCOMM, Inc. QCOM Rio Tinto plc (ADR) RTP SCHLUMBERGER SLB Smithfield Foods, Inc. SFD Southwest Airlines Co. LUV Stryker Corporation SYK SYSCO Corporation SYY Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg. Co. Ltd. (ADR) TSM Texas Instruments Incorporated TXN Toyota Motor Corporation (ADR) TM Valero Energy Corporation VLO Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. WMT The Walt Disney Company DIS Walgreen Company WAG The Washington Post Co. WPO Whole Foods Market, Inc. WFMI

LONG TERM INVESTMENTS
Best Mutual Funds of 2006:

1) Dreyfus Premier Greater China A DPCAX Up 85.58%
2) Oberweis China Opportunities OBCHX Up 81.17%
3) Old Mutual Clay Finlay China Inst OMINX Up 79.54%
4) JHancock Greater China Opp A JCOAX Up 70.34%
5) Columbia Greater China A NGCAX Up 69.50%
6) ING Russia A LETRX Up 67.52%
7) Gartmore China Opportunities A GOPAX Up 67.26%
8) AllianceBernstein Great China '97 Adv GCHYX Up 65.95%
9) Matthews China MCHFX Up 64.80%