Solid tech company whose core products are industry standards and will require upgrading immediately upon release of Vista OS.

Ethanol and food production. I expect ethanol to be the alternative fuel of choice in the near term. I also expect a petroleum crisis before fall of 2008, with a Congress that won't rubberstamp further drilling.

This is a speculative investment. AVI Pharmaceuticals has been around for a long time. It's never actually developed a wonder drug for anything, but it's "on the brink of discovering" one for just about every dire disease that finds its way onto the nightly news. It's terribly cheap right now, and it will spike way high (as it always does) for a week or two when the next pandemic threat comes down the pike. Buy now; sell then; buy again when it's cheap again. This can go on for years. I know! It has!

Ivanhoe Energy is an oil company with a technical process for obtaining oil from areas where normal methods can't. The process isn't cheap, and when oil's easy to come by the demand for their services dries up. But when oil is scarce enough to warrant developing fringe sources, Ivanhoe shines. They'll probably do well before ADM and PEIX do. Ivanhoe's shares are traditionally at their cheapest in the 4th quarter. I buy them then and sell for a profit in the summer or early fall when they hit their peak.

All right, it's 54 degrees outside today. Who'd have known? But it's not gonna stay that way all winter. Is it?

I expect ethanol to be the alternative fuel of choice in the near term. I also expect a petroleum crisis before fall of 2008, with a Congress that won't rubberstamp further drilling. Why PEIX? Because investors take this company seriously, unlike that Earthy Hollywood outfit. I don't think I'd own this if I didn't also own ADM, though.

I own Target. My wife owns WalMart. We can't lose.