Ten of the foreign fixed-line telecom stocks offer yields of more than 5% as of December 31, 2009 as shown in the table below.

Fixed-line telecom companies in foreign countries tend to be monopolies or hold a dominating position in the market even if other carriers operate. Many of them are also the largest telecom service providers in the country and have expanded into other related areas such as mobile, internet services. Though they are highly regulated, these firms have a solid customer base and continue to push other services to existing customers.

Riding a wave of positive corporate announcements — among them, CISCO (Nasdaq: CSCO); The Blackstone Group (NYSE: BX); Coca Cola Bottling (Nasdaq: COKE); and Dynergy (NYSE: DYN) — and a number of positive economic releases, the market bullied its way through resistance to make net gains every day last week for the S&P 500. The result was a 3.2% gain for the S&P and consistent strong market action through all cap/styles and all sectors.

The strength continued Monday with the S&P 500 up over 2% without even a hiccup. I have to admit that I’m impressed with this market right now.

The complete list of ADRs from Argentina that are traded in the U.S. are listed below:

Here is a list of 32 stocks which traded higher Friday on unusually higher volume. I have added all 32 of these stocks to my watch list (and invite you to as well), but chose only a couple to write about in detail in this post. This post requires the knowledge of stock options. To learn more about the option strategies outlined in this post, risks, pricing, calculations, other strategies, and options in general, click here.

The table below shows the company, ticker, Friday's per share % increase, and Friday's volume increase (% increased compared to 50 day average). For your convenience I have ranked the stocks in order from greatest to least volume % change.

Emerging markets are the best performing markets this year. In these markets, the main market indexes of countries like Brazil have skyrocketed year-to-date (YTD) relative to other countries. For example, the MSCI Brazil Index ETF (EWZ) is up an incredible 99.42% as of September 30, 2009. Some of the Latin American ADRs have also had great runs.

The list below shows the Latin American ADRs which are up 100% or more as of Oct 6, 2009:

As of July 31, 2009, the S&P 500 Index and the Dow Jones Composite Index are up 10.97% and 2.47% respectively. But many of the ADR indices have gone up much higher. The Year-To-Date (YTD) performance of some of ADR indices are as follows:

• BNY Mellon ADR Index: 21.44%
• BNY Mellon Asia ADR Index: 27.54%
• BNY Mellon Dev Mkts ADR Index: 16.65%
• BNY Mellon Emg Mkts ADR Index: 43.22%
• BNY Mellon Europe ADR Index: 15.59%
• BNY Mellon Lat. Amer. ADR Index: 53.96%

So far this year, the developed markets are lagging the performance of emerging markets.

Many foreign stocks that trade as ADRs in the US have fallen heavily in-line with their home country’s market performance. In order to identify the ADRs that are down more than 80% year-to-date, I ran the screener and ended up with the 38 stocks listed below.

Foreign ADR Stocks Down > 80%

Just as the South Africa disinvestment movement decades ago caused companies to terminate operations there, the theory is that terror-free investing will cause companies to stop doing business in or with countries considered to be state sponsors of terror.

The Missouri State Treasurer gave birth to the movement in June 2006 when she set up a terror-free investment fund within the Missouri Investment Trust. Provisions are being made in Missouri for college 529 savings plans to have a terror-free investment option.

Miriam Metzinger submits: Stocks discussed in the lightning round session of Jim Cramer’s Mad Money TV program, Wednesday January 31. Click on a stock ticker for more analysis:

Bullish calls:

Data in table version:

Ticker	Stock	PE TTM

ATALLTEL CP 16.6
BCEB C E INC 13.5
BLSBELLSOUTH CP 17.5
BTBT GROUP PLC ADS 14.4
CHACHINA TELECOM CP LTD 9.9
CNCHINA NETCOM GRP LTD 11.0
CTLCENTURYTEL INC 14.8
CZNCITIZEN COMM CO 22.6
DTDEUTSCHE TELE AG ADS 8.4
FTEFRANCE TELECOM ADS 8.3
NTLNORTEL INV SA ADS B 58.2
NTTNIPPON TELEPHONE ADR 7.7
SSPRINT NXTEL CP 27.8
TAT&T INC. 19.7
TARTELEFONICA ARG NEW 5.0
TEFTELEFONICA SA 18.8
VZVERIZON COMMUN 12.7