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I know that these trading fiascos are bad things ... and yet part of me is strangely pleased about them. I like having big object lessons that show what happens when people break the rules and refuse to cut their losses short. Rogue traders aren’t greedy criminals - none of the big ones have made any money for themselves on their dealings. But their mistakes remind us that anyone who reacts to losses by making increasingly riskier trades can parlay bad luck into a financial catastrophe of amazing proportions.

My investing idea in this issue is FLIR Systems, a global leader in thermal imaging. The company’s name is an acronym for Forward Looking Infrared, a kind of imaging technology that allows military aircraft and vehicles to see through darkness (and also daytime fog and smoke). Government Systems applications may be FLIR’s calling card, but they’re a small part of the whole story. The company also has a Thermography division that designs and manufactures temperature sensing technologies that can spot overheating machinery, leaks, flaws in buildings and gradients in scientific experiments.

And now one brief recommendation. It’s a gold stock, Freeport McMoRan (FCX). Freeport owns the Grasberg open pit mine in Indonesia, which is not only the world’s richest gold mine but also the world’s third-largest copper mine. And it acquired Phelps Dodge earlier this year, making it the largest publicly traded copper company in the world.

If I could buy any insurance company, I’d buy Geico. Unfortunately, it’s already owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. My second choice? China Life Insurance (LFC). China Life was a government entity until it was sold to the public in December 2003, in the biggest Chinese IPO to date.

Back on October 13, I penned a CWA titled “Finding Your System” where I wrote about finding a system that fits you. It’s a topic that’s frequently on my mind - money management-type topics are always worth some thought - and I was reminded of it just a few days ago when I was re-reading parts of Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, the fictional biography of Jesse Livermore, and one of the best investment books ever written.

And if you’re trying to build an entire country, the materials you need might just be prosaic steel and copper, and that brings me to my investment idea for the day. The company is Rio Tinto (RTP), the U.K. mining giant that sells billions of dollars worth of iron ore, copper, aluminum and other minerals every year. The company is growing fast because of demand from China and the rest of the developing world, and that growth is having some unexpected consequences.

It’s the largest provider of cell phone service in Turkey, with a 60% market share, and it’s named, appropriately enough, Turkcell. The firm’s ADRs (American Depositary Receipts) trade on the NYSE under the symbol TKC. With 32 million subscribers, Turkcell is the third-largest provider of GSM service in Europe. It has $5 billion in annual revenues; it’s expected to grow earnings 42% this year and 21% in 2008; and it pays an annual dividend of 3.8%!

Ideally, you want to invest in industries where the dominant factors are positive, where booming demand for products and services means revenue growth is rapid and profit margins are high. Trouble is, in the current market climate, the best growth stocks, which have enjoyed great advances earlier this year, are in retreat. Buying them is a high-risk proposition. But there is one exception, and it’s interesting enough to discuss here.

The moral of the story: Successful investors always consider risk when analyzing their portfolio, adhering to rules like cutting losses short (if you’re into growth stocks) or diversification (value stocks). I constantly talk to investors who fail to think of the downside, plowing a huge percentage of their portfolios into a few stocks ... and then failing to cut the loss short if things go amiss.

My stock idea for this issue stems from the “you can find good news among a heap of bad news” theory. It’s a company whose entire business stems from the airline industry ... probably the only industry that’s lost more money than the auto firms during the past few years. And today, the outlook would seem to be even worse, as businesses begin to cut back spending and oil prices flirt with $100 per barrel.

Eventually, when real estate prices fall low enough, the patient value-oriented souls who’ve been waiting for bargains will come out of the woodwork and start buying. They’ll buy individual houses, apartment buildings, entire condominium projects and more. Downtrends will end. The recession will end. And the U.S. of A. will return to its pattern of slow growth. But should you wait until then before you invest? No, as I explain in the next section.

Now, unlike Wellcare Group, Crocs still has an excellent growth business, and we still have high expectations for the company. But we don’t confuse the stock with the company, and we never argue with the stock. CROX, like WCG, is heavily damaged. Every rally from here will be met with selling pressures from investors who bought higher who will now be content to “get out even.” And thus it’s highly unlikely that this stock will return to its winning ways in the near term. So we say sell.

When we’re in a strong bull market, it’s like driving down the highway on a clear summer day. Visibility is unlimited and your tires grip as well as they ever will. You can go pedal to the metal and rack up the miles - and the profits - quickly. But a bear market, such as we’re in today, is more like the weather I drove in Friday. It’s far less tolerant of aggressive behavior. The effects of your mistakes are magnified. And if you make enough wrong decisions, it can ruin you.

Now, this would be a natural place to write about a solar power stock, but I’ve done enough of that in recent issues. Instead, I want to write about a nifty little Brazilian company. And here’s why. In my mind, the world’s stock markets are linked by conduits that channel money this way and that, every minute of every day, always reacting to the latest news and the resulting changes in perception.

The best way to make big money in growth stocks is to invest in fast-growing companies in fast-growing industries, and ride the major trends for as long as they remain up. In 2007, the biggest trend - still ongoing - was the rise in solar power stocks. And next year? Here are my five best guesses for the trends that will reward investors in 2008.

Crocs, the maker of the deliciously comfortable, horrendously ugly shoes reported its earnings on Wednesday, October 31 after the market closed. The good news is that the company’s profits more than doubled, reaching $0.66 a share vs. $0.25 for Q3 last year. This profit exceeded expectations by a few cents. Hurrah. But when the company issued its outlook for total 2007 earnings, raising its guidance by about a nickel over last quarter’s estimate, the Street wasn’t pleased.

Of course, I couldn’t finish this weekend’s Wealth Advisory without at least mentioning the overall market. In case you missed it ... the sellers have taken control. But the most important thing is that the sellers had taken control of most stocks before this week - I wrote two weeks ago about how there was a growing divergence between the few leading glamour stocks and the broad market.

SNaC stands for Story, Numbers and Chart, and it’s the method I use to pick stocks for the Cabot China & Emerging Markets Report. There’s nothing complicated about it, but it can be very powerful. Just because it’s simple, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to do, any more than the simplicity of “exercise more and eat less” makes that particular prescription easy. Here are the basic principles.

The industry is the realm of genetic medicine and the stock is Illumina (ILMN), currently trading in the low-60s. Illumina is one of two major public companies that make tools used for genetic medicine. The other is Affymetrix (AFFX). To say that they’ve been competitive would be polite; there have been lawsuits and countersuits about intellectual property in recent years.

After a rough year, Chipotle stock is back, catching the attention of activist investor Bill Ackman. Will the rally last?