If there is anyone who’s even more clear-sighted about finance than Peter Schiff, it’s Jim Rogers. He’s a legendary investor, founder of the Quantum fund, and a highly respected financial commentator, moreso in Europe and Asia than in the US.

This video is an interview with Rogers about the government action and its effects, namely what Rogers calls the inflation holocaust that is to come. Highly recommended for Common Sense Investors.

A famous quote from Jim Rogers:
“If you were smart in 1807 you moved to London, if you were smart in 1907 you moved to New York City, and if you are smart in 2007 you move to Asia.”

Rogers, following his own advice, moved to Singapore in September of 2007.

Jim Rogers is saying what Peter Schiff and what countless other financial experts and economists have been saying as well: “Don’t interfere with the market”. And he’s coming up against the same backlash that they’ve all come up against. Media pundits don’t like to hear about the “hands-off” approach, they’re inherently motivated to do something, even though that’s exactly what causes the problems. Those media pundits have an extreme anti-market bias, which is the natural default way of thinking for most people.

It seems like no matter how bad things get because of government interference and no matter how obvious it becomes, people refuse to accept free market explanations. Michael Shermer wrote about and explained that anti-market bias in his fantastic book The Mind of the Market; which is a topic for another time.

We’re having the web-content equivalent of a “clip-show” today. Here is another article I found really interesting and thought I’d share it with the Common Sense Investor audience. It’s the 10 Countries Least Affected by the US Financial Crisis from BusinessPundit.com. Now, I don’t agree with this article 100%, I’m not so sure about the methodology, but I think it’s mostly right on. I’ll discuss the problems I have with it in more detail tomorrow. As for right now, here is the complete article. If you have any comments or questions, please leave them in the comment section below.

Here are ten countries suffering 80-100% less than the United States:

10. China

9. Brazil

8. Romania

7. Thailand

6. North Korea

5. Iran

4. Malaysia

3. Morocco

2. Armenia

1. The United Arab Emirates

The original article is here

Today, Knowledge Learning Corp, a privately held education provider, said it offered to buy Nobel Learning Communities Inc (NLCI) for $17 a share, which is a 33% premium over NLCIs closing price on the 20th. That caused stocks to soar 25% today to match the offer.

Of course Knowledge Learning offered $17 a share, NLCI is worth that AND more. Nobel Learning Communities, Inc. (NLCI) is a small, 167 million dollar company with a whopping 25% insider ownership. If you’ve been reading Common Sense Investor, you know how much we love insider ownership. This is a tremendous company that has built up a great school system spanning over 16 states. It’s consistently rated highly by teachers, parents, and students. It’s just a solid company.

The unfortunate fact is, they were “under the radar” up until today. After today, people will know that Knowledge Learning wants to buy them, and they’ll start doing research into NLCI. They’ll find the quality, and the stock price will rise. Not really so unfortunate, it’s just a shame you missed out on the one day 25% jump.

As for why they’re so great: The sector is strong, and strong companies in the sector will do doubly well. Every study that’s been done looking into the issue has found that average cost per pupil for public schools is twice that of private schools. Compound that with the fact that private schools do a much better job educating students, and you get the picture. Private schools do a better job for less money. Why do public schools still exist? Ah yes, the government.

Either way, more and more parents are realizing this fact and moving their children to private schools. Even politicians are realizing it and starting contract out programs and even whole school systems to private companies. This is a very good thing for everyone, except maybe bad teachers. This will mean only good things for Nobel Learning since they provide services highly compatible with public schools. They aren’t the haughty-taughty private schools you see in film, with uniforms and Latin classes and mahogany walls. They’re just well-run schools for regular kids. They do a good job, and they’re inexpensive. That’s all there is to it.

Check out this interesting video, not about Nobel Learning specifically, but about the public/private problem:

Let’s say you suffer from debilitating migraine headaches, and you actually have a medicine that works, but it takes 15-20 minutes to take effect. Fifteen to 20 minutes of crippling pain.
What if someone offered you a drug that would stop your migraine within seconds?

And now imagine someone who suffers from panic attacks. When the panic attacks happen, they honestly believe they’re going to die. Every second is stretched out in their head. Imagine a drug that could ease that persons anxiety the moment they take it.

Or a cancer patient, a person who experiences ‘breakthrough pain‘ so intense and sudden that it overpowers any of the painkillers that the patient’s already on. What if that person could eliminate that pain instantly.

That kind of instant relief is possible with an inhalable drug delivery system. When you inhale a drug, the chemicals get into your bloodstream and get to your brain even faster than if you had injected it. And a relatively new pharmaceutical company has developed a drug delivery system based on that fact.

Alexza Pharmaceuticals has developed a what they call the Staccato system, which is a proprietary system that vaporizes various drugs to form an aerosol that delivers the pure drug to deep lung tissues through one simple breath. The company currently has six products in development targeting five central nervous system or psychiatry indications: acute agitation, panic attacks, migraine headaches, breakthrough pain, and insomnia.

I’m sold. They are a development stage pharma company, but the technology looks solid and it works. I think these guys are going to partner up (or get bought out entirely) by a much larger pharmaceutical and the stock will go through the roof.

Check out the Staccato system device:

Preformed Line Products (PLPC) has been paying dividends every three months from day one. Their financials are stellar, with growth year over year. And, best of all, insider ownership is very high.

This really is one of my favorite companies. They’re one of those behind the scenes businesses that are integral to our society, yet no one really knows about.

PLPC designs and manufactures all the little gizmos and widgets that keep our electrical and communications infrastructure connected. Things like connectors and splicing ends for fiber optic cables and coax; wire grips and braces, protective wire or cable coverings… spacers, dampers, compression fittings, etc.
Basically all the little bits a pieces that help connect and stabilize our communications and electrical infrastructure

And they deal with public and private energy utilities and communication companies like cable operators, financial institutions, governmental agencies, contractors and subcontractors.

also, recently:
Preformed Line Products (PLPC) acquired Direct Power and Water Corporation on April 13th 2007 and formed a new division of PLPC, PLP Solar. That added a whole new line of revenue and a whole new area of expansion that’s related to their main business.

Really, this is a super awesome value. If I could own stock in only one company, it’d be this one.

I’ve been following WD-40 (WDFC) for a while now. I love their main product and always have a few cans of it in my house, but I was concerned about their diversity. I worried that they relied too much on WD-40 lubricant. But after some due diligence, my mind is changed.

Ten years ago, almost 100% of WDFC’s revenues came from WD-40 lubricant, but since then a lot of things have changed. CEO Garry Ridge has focused on innovation and creating new products and buying new product lines. In addition to WD-40 lubricant, they have products like LAVA Hand Soap, 2000 Flushes, X-14, Carpet Fresh, and tons of other little household products; and they keep buying up more product lines. They’re whole plan is to build up each brand, to get the “mindshare” for each of their products respective niches, and to keep on acquiring more products. Sales have more than doubled since Ridge took over as CEO, and they’re only going to get better.

WDFC is branching out in Europe and China and all the world markets as well, trying to make cans of WD-40 as common in Indian households as they are in US ones. It now markets its products in more than 160 countries around the world.

Management is doing everything right; as of right now, WDFC has solid insider ownership, great management, it pays a dividend, grows every year, and it has lots of cash. I see this as a great long term company that’ll help you retire one day.

also:
the 2000+ uses of WD-40

Gehl Company (GEHL), the Wisconsin based earth-moving and construction equipment manufacturer and distributor has been acquired by the French firm Manitou.

The offer consideration, to be fully paid in cash, values Gehl at $30 per share, representing a 120% premium over Gehl’s closing price on the last trading day prior to this announcement, and a premium of 92% above the average closing price of Gehl’s shares over the last six months.

That’s huge. Gehl’s stock saw a real surge of 115% today. That’s great for them, but could we have spotted it beforehand?

Well, you can never really spot a buyout like this, but the quality of the company was apparent.

Gehl was trading as a huge discount recently. They had a very low P/E ratio compared with the rest of the industry, very little long-term debt, steady growth, and good returns. They were a solid micro cap company with hardly any attention, and that paid off for them. Manitou realized they were too cheap to pass up, and they snatched them up. Investors are happy. Manitou is happy. And the managing team at Gehl is happy since they’ll probably stay in place.
Good Times all around.

China is still the place to be.
Usually, a stock that’s 77% below it’s 52 week high is very worrisome, but ACH is an extremely well run company, poised to become a major player in the Chinese metal market.

Sure, demand for aluminum has been slowly declining in the US, but as recently as April, forecasters were saying global demand will rise 8.5% in 2008. That’s well above the average 6% growth rate for the previous 10-year period. Global demand is still nothing compared to the 24% rise in China.

Producing aluminum does take massive amounts of energy, that’s part of the reason why ACH stock has been declining. Aluminum costs much more than steel, and yet, aluminum is vastly more plentiful on earth than steel is, it’s actually the most abundant metal. So why does it cost so much more? The refinement method. With iron, you just take the ore out of the ground, smelt it and separate the metal from the junk. Aluminum, on the other hand, is generally found in bauxite, which needs to be processed using huge amounts of electricity to extract the free aluminum.

But with 24% growth coming from the Chinese market, ACH is still in a great spot. They don’t need to ship the metal across the ocean like Vale or Alcoa. They’re already there, smack dab in the middle of the greatest economic boom the world has ever seen.

So they’re a great company, with a very low P/E, earnings of $9.3 per share, and great leadership. Plus crude prices are starting to fall back down, which will impact their high production costs. This looks like the perfect entry point for a nice long term stock.