Thursday, East West Bancorp (EWBC) reported earnings as summarized below:

Financial Summary

Just a few days after Vimpelcom (VIP) announced they are setting up over $1 billion of telecom ventures in Vietnam – which happens to be one of the hottest markets in the east/central Asian region- Bear Stearns Analyst Alex Kuznetsov comes out and downgrades them from outperform to peer perform.

According to Kuznetsov, "[Vimpelcom] is likely to benefit from its expansion into the Vietnamese Market…however there is low visibility into Vimpel Communication's prospects". He goes onto state that, "the downgrade was based off valuation".

As of yesterday, the 07 DEC 10 Calls I recommended are trading at a price of 8 dollars though it dropped a bit in the afternoon. If you bought anywhere from when I recommended it, you should be sitting on profits of around 70 to 100%. I think its time to take your profits and run.

I'm beginning to think that there is definitely a crowd of followers that pump and dump a lot of the stocks that get listed as Number 1 on the IDB 100 list and guess who just made their debut on Monday? IF the curse is true, then CRNT will be following the same steps as NGA and BTJ did right toward a haircut!

The countries/regions I will focus on in my reports will primarily consist of (though not limited to) the following: Russia, Eastern Europe, Near East and North Africa, Turkey, Israel, Emirates/Dubai, and Armenia/South Caucasus. Today, in light of the recent elections, we focus our attention on Turkey.

Turkey’s recent election has sent a global message stating that they are leaning toward democracy and not an Islamic regime. To the naked eye, this must be mouth watering to investors. They probably look at Turkey as the next “BRIC” or “Baltic Tiger” but if they do not know much about the culture or history of the region they might be setting themselves up for losses. I’d be very skeptical of sustainable economy growth and I will tell you why.

The only way us individual traders can really make a killing is when we find plays that are inaccurately priced before the institutional managers have a chance to exploit it. I am experimenting with a new method of playing the game which might give me just a slight opportunity to catch a wave before it gets on the radar of the big boys.

In a nutshell, I’m looking to target specific equities that have recently hit their 52 week highs on days with significantly increased volume and have limited exposure to the marketplace due the fact that they are small or mid cap stocks without the same coverage as others larger companies.

ValueClick, Inc. provides online advertising campaigns and programs for advertisers and advertising agency customers in the United States and Europe. It operates in four segments: Media, Affiliate Marketing, Comparison Shopping, and Technology. The Media segment provides a range of online media solutions in the categories of display/Web advertising, lead generation marketing, email marketing, search marketing, comparison shopping, and promotional and industry-focused online content to advertisers and advertising agencies.

It also sells consumer products directly to end-user consumers through its own e-commerce Web sites. The Affiliate Marketing segment offers technology and services that enable advertisers to manage, track, and analyze a range of online marketing programs. The Comparison Shopping segment enables consumers to research and compare products from online or offline merchants using the company’s technology.

What to do with the cash you’re sitting on?

As a result of the increased response to a higher uranium price, industry consulting service TradeTech raised its weekly spot price indicator to US$90/pound. Nuclear Market Review [NMR] reported ERA’s force majeure on uranium sales contracts had ‘stunned the market.’

Incredible. Whats more incredible is the fact that we have been harping about uranium since early November and the spot price, as you can see, has surged to records. Again you have many uranium plays such as Cameco Corp. (CCJ), but my personal pick is CanAlaska Uranium (CVVUF.OB) (I am a small cap and micro cap investor. That doesn’t mean I wont dip into other investments, but that’s my particular niche).