March corn futures jumped 24.25 cents a bushel on Wednesday to $6.98. Corn contracts have risen 97% since June. You may be wondering why all this activity in the corn market in the middle of winter. The answer lies in a USDA report that said corn supplies are dangerously low. In fact, they are near the record low set 15 years ago.

What that means is that the corn stocks we have must last until our harvest starts in mid summer. Of the 12.4 billion bushels harvested last fall, we will have only 675 million bushels by Aug 31.To add more fuel to the problem, this new report is 9% lower than the USDA"s January projection, as reported in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

For investors, the emerging markets have been a great place to find profits. No doubt, there are certainly risks, such as seen recently with the market turmoil in Egypt, but a diversified portfolio should solve these problems. Of course, it also helps to have lots of exposure to markets like China and Brazil.

According to Societe Generale, emerging markets may pale in comparison to the growth in commodities. Interestingly enough, it is rising commodities prices that is putting inflationary pressure on these countries. In other words, it is getting tougher for companies to pass along higher raw materials costs. As a result, there has been a rash of interest rate increases.

"NetEase (NTES) fits right into the theme of rapidly expanding Internet revenues and profits in China," says Jim Trippon.

The editor of the China Stock Digest explains, "At least 450 million Chinese are now online. Online gaming has 265 million users and is expected to gross over $4 billion over the past year.

"This company has a wide offering of products, even though it is mostly known to western investors as a gaming platform. In fact, NetEase falls into all of the major categories of web revenue generation with significant ad sales, a home page service similar to Yahoo, email, search and a new online B2C (business to consumer) shopping presence.

In recent months we've heard a lot about rare earth elements. Rare earths are comprised of 17 elements used in high tech applications such as laser guided weapons and hybrid car batteries. The elements are often referred to as "21st century gold."

Why such concern about rare earth metals? First and foremost China controls 97% of rare earth production. Now China has embarked on a new program of stockpiling rare earths, as reported in the Wall Street Journal. In China, the Ministry of Land and Resources is managing this new program. New storage facilities are being built and managed by the world's largest rare earth government controlled Baotou Steel Rare Earth (Group) Hi Tech Co. Chinese state media say the stockpile may total 100,000 metric tons. To make things worse, China has been restricting exports of rare earths.

The world is screaming for copper. Demand from China, the U.S. and Europe is pushing prices to all-time highs. London copper traded at $10,000 a metric ton. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, copper hit $.4.58 a pound, as reported in the Wall Street Journal.

Traders are looking for "five dollar copper," which would push London's price to $11,000 per metric ton. Goldman Sachs (GS) forecasts that copper will average $10,230 a metric ton in 2011, up 15%. It warned that new mine capacity will not come to market for at least two years.

Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce, Wang Chao, led a business delegation that signed agreements with grain companies to buy just over 3 million tons of soybeans from the U.S., Reuters reported. The U.S. trading companies involved in the $1.8 billion deal are Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Bunge (BG). No details about price and delivery were given.

When dealing with state-run companies, there is a protocol that must be followed. In this case, a government official, Chao, was present to sign off the deal with the two state-run grain companies allowed to import agricultural products into China.

Editors note: Economist Gary Shilling has agreed to share with BloggingStocks his 18 investment strategies for 2011. But he will only be revealing them a little at a time, over the next few weeks, so check back often!

My investment strategies for 2011 are driven by my forecasts for the economies and financial markets here and abroad. In my view, the overarching reality that will dominate 2011 and, indeed, the next decade or so is financial deleveraging, as spelled out in my new book, The Age of Deleveraging: Investment strategies for a decade of slow growth and deflation, which was published in November 2010 by John Wiley & Sons.

One could argue that the U.S. equity market is getting a little frothy at current levels and that bullish sentiment is getting ahead of the fundamentals. The preponderance of the evidence, however, seems to suggest that this may continue for some time. If it does, it may be time to take some shots with high risk/high reward speculative stocks.

One of these names is recent Chinese IPO E-Commerce China Dangdang (DANG), which has been promoted as the "Amazon.com of China."

Mindray Medical (MR - option chain) shares are rising today after the Chinese medical devices company announced preliminary 2010 results, saying it now expects fiscal-2010 revenues to come in at $703 million, up from a previous forecast of $700 million. Analysts have forecast 2010 revenue of $703.56 million. If you think that the stock won't fall by too much in the coming months, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on MR.

MR opened this morning at $28.05. So far today the stock has hit a low of $28.02 and a high of $29.04. As of 12:15, MR is trading at $28.25 up $1.20 (4.4%). The chart for MR looks neutral and S&P gives MR a neutral 3 STARS (out of 5) hold ranking.

We have another crisis, this time in rare earth metals. China produces 95% of these metals and has said it would reduce exports by 35% in 2011. These moves are causing the prices of these metals to skyrocket, as reported in the The Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

Chemical refiners of gasoline use rare earth metals. The increased cost of the metals is being passed on to consumer and amounts to about a penny a gallon.

This post is one in a series in which more than 60 newsletter advisors share their Top Stock Picks for 2011. This special report is courtesy of TheStockAdvisors.com.

"Longwei Petroleum Investment Holdings Ltd. (LPH) is one of the leading diesel, gasoline, fuel oil and solvent oil distributors and wholesalers in Shanxi Province, China (near Beijing)," says Jim Trippon.

The editor of the China Stock Digest explains, ""The company sells its products mainly to large-scale gas stations, coal plants and power supply companies, and on a smaller scale to small, independent gas stations.

There is a big brouhaha in the rare earth metals sector. China, which produces 97% of these metals, has reportedly limited exports for 2011. Rare earth metals are necessary for everything from high powered wind turbines to iPhones.

As companies are scrambling to fill the gap, many have soared on the news. Here are some worldwide leaders, as reported by CNBC.com:

• U.S. Molycorp (MCP), which went public over the summer, is up 200%, and now trading at $49.90. Both Sumitomo (SMTOY) and Hitachi (HIT) have recently made deals with Molycorp. Molycorp plans to break ground on a new $500 million facility and expects to be extracting ore in late 2011.

The trends that drove gold prices higher in 2010 are still in place. In the U.S., the Federal Reserve is buying $600 billion in treasuries in an attempt to keep interest rates low. Low interest rates encourage higher gold prices.

In Europe, the situation is still unstable. The European Central Bank (ECB) has stepped up its purchases of member nations' bonds. Spain is still on the table as a country teetering on verge of a bailout. Until the European mess is settled, gold remains a surrogate currency.

Hoping to finish the year on a positive note, stocks opened slightly higher this morning, then gained a bit of steam from tech and energy shares. Silver closed a near-30-year high and gold topped $1,413. The US dollar has weakened against the euro and the yen, and oil prices have stayed above $91/barrel. No economic data was scheduled for release today, but high unemployment numbers still weigh on consumers.

Here are the numbers for late afternoon trading today:

Dow Jones 11,585.38 +9.84 (0.09%)
S&P 500 1,259.78 +1.27 (0.10%)
Nasdaq 2,666.93 +4.05 (0.15%)

This post is one in a series in which more than 60 newsletter advisors share their Top Stock Picks for 2011. This special report is courtesy of TheStockAdvisors.com.

"Yongye International (YONG) is a leading developer, manufacturer, and distributor of plant and animal nutrient products in the People's Republic of China," notes Jim Trippon.

The editor of the Global Profits Alert explains, "Its plant nutrient product can significantly increase the plant's output and nutritional value and improve its taste.