Here are just a few headlines over the last couple of days, with my commentary, that will prove my point that the financial media doesn't have a clue about the economic trends and they're probably better off ignoring. Read on...

August 17th -

STXNEWS LATAM-Mexican stocks rise on US output, inflation data
Oh yea, Mexico is always watching us with bated breath as well. There are plenty of problems in Mexico that probably affect the stock market, I don't think they're sitting around looking at our economic figures for the most part.

Wal-Mart, Home Depot lift retail sector
Great, Wal Mart and Home Depot all of a sudden made all retail stock much more valuable. Just because investors may react to news such as this, it doesn't mean that the retail sector is just like magic, doing better. People have to buy stuff and companies have to earn a profit to make them more valuable.

Stocks gain on Wal-Mart profits, deal talk
Well, well, Wal Mart did better than lift the retail sector, it seems as if their profits boosted the entire stock market. How do you suppose that happened. Has Wal Mart been going to the gym again?

August 18th -

Stock futures gain as Target posts profit
Target is getting in on the action as well. Apparently they now control the futures market.

But just 3 hours later...

Indications: Stock futures flat as bid for Potash goes hostile
What? What happened to Target lifting futures? I guess since it was morning they hadn't fully woken up yet. Maybe they should get a Starbucks in the lobby of more of their stores. A little cup of joe might help futures next time?

Then 3 more hours later...

Indications: Stock futures gain as Target posts profit
Futures have been on a wild ride and it's only 9:30 in the morning. Pay attention to these ridiculous headlines and you won't know whether Target is coming or going. Maybe Target should paint all their stores black as opposed to "being in the red" since they are responsible for all this good economic news.

Retail stocks edge lower; Target, BJ's fall
See the nature of the schizophrenic financial media? Apparently investors didn't pay attention to Target's profits. In a normal world, profits would be good, but when it comes to stocks just flip a coin and you'd probably do better than most financial analysts and reporters.

Corrections: Stock futures gain as Target posts profit
Wait, here we go again. Futures are up once again thanks to the almighty Target.

Stocks Pare Losses; Exxon, Chevron Fall
Oh no, we're falling.

But just 6 minutes later we read this headline:

US STOCKS SNAPSHOT-Wall St gains ground on consumer shares
All is well again.

This compilation is brought to you courtesy of the buffoons at Yahoo Finance. Honestly, if you are an investor, why are you even reading the financial news headlines? As I write this there is about an hour left in the trading day. Have fun!

Education stocks were big losers today as fears that the government takeover of the student loan programs and tight controls over those that don't come under control of the behemoth of Uncle Sam.

The Dow started off the day in negative territory dropping nearly 125 points almost immediately and then recovered those losses and moved into positive territory for most of the mid afternoon riding low volume. The afternoon rally had exceptionally low volume signaling that not that many individuals were interested in the increase in prices and risking their money.

For candlestick watchers today's flat market is known as a doji pattern that could signal a significant movement in the market in the next couple of days meaning that we could see a large drop very soon...or not. With much of the data coming out about the economy lately such as jobs reports, industrial production, the Baltic Dry Index still quite low, foreclosure rates and housing starts low as well, the economic outlook isn't all that great and investors are worried.

And let's not forget the current administration's unwillingness to even consider the possibility of doing something about the national debt. With Obama trying to spend this country into oblivion and his answer to everything being to thrown tens of billions of dollars at problems in the hopes of buying votes or that unemployment or other issues might simply go away, the looming debt just keeps growing and is a monster that is probably too big to tame at this point. A day of reckoning is coming some day whether we like it or not and it will be a day that will simply won't be able to spend our way out of, although that seems to be what the current president is trying to do.

Maybe the smart thing to do is to buy a few gold coins and stock up on food with what little time we have left before the crash.

This obviously leaves many questions unanswered and a lot of speculation to be had about what exactly happened with these microscopic gadgets. According to the CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service), they knew nothing of these coins until it was brought to their attention by the U.S. Government. They are seeking more information about the incident to ensure everyone’s safety.

If this could happen, outside experts all agree that China, Russia, and France all have espionage operations inside of Canada, and have the right tools and funding to support this technology and type of spying. Coins might not seem like the right place for spying (although this example was quite ingenious), since they can be discarded or spent, but this nonsensical claim appears to be valid.

Unless the technology was super advanced, there isn’t really much proof that a transmitter would have worked past a few feet of distance, so there is still a lot of speculation. So do Canadian spy coins still exist, and if so, who is responsible for them? And why are they? Sadly, because of the classified nature of the incident, we simply may never know unless of course, they turn up again unexpectedly.

Many people are not satisfied with traditional investing any longer because of the instability of the current US stock market, gold coins, the Iraqi Dinar, and other alternative investments to add some stability and diversification to their portfolios. People are also getting involved in Forex trading and making a killing in this market. There are all kinds of investments to put your money in instead of traditional markets. Of course if you know what you are doing, you can also make a killing in the stock market as long as you time it right.

Here's the list of the top Iraqi Dinar speculation and investment websites:

IraqiDinar.org
DinarTrade.com
eDinarFinancial.net
DinarProfits.com
InvestorsIraq.com
DinarSpeculation.com
TrackIraq.com
TheIraqiDinar.com
SuperiorInvestor.net
XE.com

Happy dinar trading and investing!

These coins eventually became known as the Canadian spy coins. And this is definitely an event that ranks very high in privacy invasion, and often begs the question, what will happen next? This technology is entirely possible, so no one wants to be presumptuous to think that these tactics don’t actually exist and are quite possible in use today.

It doesn’t specify in the report who is responsible for tracking the contractors or why they might have been looking for them, which is obviously classified information, given the nature of the work that the contractors are involved in. These coins, if they were legitimate, can actually be used for tracking devices and as a GPS of sorts for those who carry the coins. The CIA even has an Eisenhower silver dollar-looking container that is used to hold messages or film without detection, since it is just pocket change, after all.

Come back for the next post were we will discuss what happened to these coins and talks about if they are still around today.

In the process of cyanide leaching, gold extraction plants keep a high amount of cyanide antidote on hand in the event of an accident or spill, so the process is relatively safe and effective in reality. In the 1980s, gold mining equipment became cost-inhibitive to the mining process, because low grade ores were becoming more economical. In oxidized ore, gold wasn’t trapped within the rock, allowing cyanide to be poured over the rock, extracting the gold. This created a better financial means for effectively mining gold.

Mercury used to be part of the gold extraction process, but isn’t popular any longer because of its negative health effects and even more poisonous properties than cyanide. Many illegal and small-scale operations still use this method, but it isn’t nearly as popular as it used to be. The cyanide process is effective, but can also be complicated because cyanide likes to make friends with copper. If there is copper in the ore that gold is being extracted from, it can impede or complicate the process of extraction. Pressure cooking, grinding, and roasting are other methods used in gold extraction that are less popular, but necessary when cyanide cannot be used.

Free gold is affordable, because there isn’t a lot of expense put into production, making it much easier for miners and mining companies to get their money’s worth from free gold than from gold that has to be extracted from rocks and walls of a mine and from the ore found in the mine.

“Free” gold is extracted very simply from piles of dirt and rocks, using the simple concept of gravity. If you take a pile of dirt, and run it through a water bath on a screen, the dirt will seep through the screen, leaving the gold and other large rocks left behind on the top of the screen. Gravity plays a large role in getting gold nuggets out of dirt and rocks, because gold is denser than most rocks. This is the way that gold was mined by early miners, and this process is still useful today.

In a later post we will discuss the process of extracting gold from ore and cyanide leaching.

The Iraq Stock Exchange opened in June 2004 after replacing the Baghdad Stock Exchange being in place since before the 2003 invasion of Iraq by coalition forces. In 2004 the ISX opened with 15 companies being represented and at the present time there are now more than 100 companies on the exchange. When the exchange opened in 2004, trading was done th eold fashioned was, with pen and paper and traders yelling trades across the floor where brokers then wrote on whiteboards the current price of a company's stock.

Fortunately in February of 2009 that all changed and a computerized system of keeping track of trades, but not electronic trading itself, was put in place. On April 19, 2009 electronic trading was put into place and there are currently only 5 stocks available to be traded that way with more being added in the next several months.

The Iraqi Stock Exchange is small compared to the NYSE as in 2006 there were only 92 trading sessions held trading a total of 58 billion shares. The trades had a total value of 146 billion Iraqi Dinars or $146 million USD and were actually 38,000 individual trades made. Currently the trading floor is only open 6 hours a week.

There you have a simple run down of the ISX as a fledgling market. The market is currently dominated by very wealthy Iraqis and the trades are called in from outside the country. Is it worth your time to invest in this kind of market? Maybe you should just buy Iraqi dinars on eBay and hope they will go up some day.

There are 2 kind of gold coins that may be of interest to particular kinds of investors. The first kind is bullion type gold coins. These coins are primarily for those investors who are looking for their investment to be stable or to follow the price of gold. Most true bullion coins will not have much more of a value than the price of gold. There are some gold bullion coins that do have collectible values, but most are only worth the price of the gold they contain.

The other kind of investment gold coins as what is known as numismatic coins. Coins that fall into this category have a value that is not so much related to the gold they contain but, rather the scarcity, age, quality, strike or some other unique feature. Some of these kinds of gold coins are valued far above the amount of the gold they contain. In fact, they are so valuable that they are usually not affected by the price of gold at all.

Listed below are a few select coins for your shopping. Click on the auctions below to have a look or place a bid on the coin of your choice:

US Auctions Australian Auctions Austrian Auctions Belgian Auctions Canadian Auctions French Auctions German Auctions Indian Auctions Irish Auctions Italian Auctions Dutch Auctions Polish Auctions Spanish Auctions Swiss Auctions UK Auctions

Best Match Time: ending soonest Time: newly listed Price: lowest first Price: highest first Price + Shipping: lowest first Price + Shipping: highest first

1924 St Gaudens Double Eagle 20 Dollar Gold Coin    US $1,325.00

1926 US $20 ST GAUDENS DOUBLE EAGLE GOLD PCGS MS66    US $2,079.77

1928 $20 GOLD DOUBLE EAGLE ST GAUDENS GRADED NGC MS61    US $1,431.00

1914 D $20 GOLD St Gaudens Double Eagle CHOICE UNC    US $1,380.00

1908 St Gaudens NO MOTTO $20 Gold Double Eagle coin    US $1,275.00

1924 St Gaudens $20 Gold Double Eagle coin    US $1,225.00

1

Under the Hussein government, every aspect of the economy was closely controlled. The Baghdad Stock Exchange, which was established in 1992, only traded approved stocks and only within a controlled price range.

Under the new regime, the stock exchange has surged and a financial market with good competition is developing. The international financial community also agreed to forgive over 80% of Iraq’s debt in exchange for a partial payment over the next 20 years.

Of course, Iraq’s economy is dominated by oil, but the returns on this resource were limited by a shortfall of capital investment. Under the new government, GDP is expanding by as much as 6.6%. (More accurate statistics are currently unavailable.) Unemployment has begun to slowly fall, but is still at a painfully high level.

When new notes were printed at the end of 2003, foreign investors began buying large amounts of the new currency on the speculation that the economy would soon improve. This practice is legal, but Iraqi companies exchanging the currency, sell it at various rates. The high volume of speculation has also led to significant counterfeiting.

However, the speculation played out for many investors, as dinars have appreciated almost 400% against the dollar since that time. Speculation on the dinar has significantly decreased since 2007. At the present time, the IMF together with the Central Bank of Iraq hold the dinar at a steady level, though an international exchange rate has not yet been set. For that reason, most banks and forex agencies do not exchange the dinar.

On the 6th of February, the Central Bank of Iraq revealed a plan to re-denominate the dinar later this year by removing zeros. In other words, 1,200 dinars (equivalent to $1) will become 12 dinars but with the same value against the dollar.

Based on the rapid growth in Iraq, there is every reason to believe that the value of the dinar will rise in the future. The greatest problem, however, is getting access to the currency within traditional forex trading systems. Even if you are able to do so, expect to pay a premium for the privilege and recognize that you run the risk of buying counterfeit. If you do make the investment, you should also be careful to take advantage of the re-denomination this year. Because the dinar is not traded internationally through standard channels, it is also impossible to follow forex signals or trade the currency using normal strategies.

In short, investing in the dinar is still a speculation. It is a particularly promising speculation, but a speculation none the less. For the sake of the Iraqi people, we can only hope that their fiscal policymakers continue to direct the nation well and that the dinar continues to be a risk worth taking. Perhaps, the dinar will be available through more standard means in the near future.