by Trefis Staff

Below is a summary of the activity on Trefis during the past week that we thought you would find interesting. Trefis is a financial community structuredaround trends, forecasts and insights related to some of the most popular stocks in the US. It provides the unique feature of allowing the user to model future valuation based upon projected changes in components of each business. It also provides communication capabilities among members, including concensus of member analysis compared to Trefis staff analysis and blogging opportunities for members.

Click on graphic for larger image and go to Trefis for interactive page.

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by Dee Gill, Y Charts

Congratulations to those lucky investors who saw their very own portfolio stocks on one of those Top Performers of 2011 lists.  Now might be a great time to get rid of them.  For if the curse of the winners plays out next year as it did in 2011, the also-rans will make better investments going forward.

The problem with A-listers is that they tend to look rather expensive when market conditions are less than ideal, like when Europe is swimming in debt and Congress can’t get its act together. Investors worried that stocks generally will fall often take profits, and where better to start than with the shares that just had a great run?

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by Guest Author Scott Sambucci, Altos Research

If you want to know if new home starts are going higher, watch the active market listings.

Residential housing reported higher numbers for November. What do homebuilders know about housing that surprised the stock market today?

Home prices are getting less bad:

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by Guest Author Elliott Gue

Few would disagree that cutting pollution emissions and reducing our dependence on expensive, imported fuels are noble goals. In the US, public discussion of alternative energy has been largely monopolized by two energy sources: solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind power. But the high-profile bankruptcy of solar power company Solyndra — shortly after the firm received a $535 million loan guarantee from the US Dept of Energy — reveals the dangers of the nation’s unhealthy obsession with green energy.

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by MacroTides

A Rising Tide of Instability

It's fair to say that since 2007, the overall level of instability has been rising. Like all things, there has been an ebb and flow, with periods of obvious stress, followed by windows of calm. But even during the periods of apparent calm, there has been an ongoing erosion taking place under the surface. The main protagonist has been an insufficient level of global economic growth. Although the global economy rebounded after the recession of 2008-2009, most of the developed economies were never quite strong enough to achieve a self sustaining recovery. The handful of countries that did reach healthy levels of growth (Brazil, China, India) were then forced to tighten monetary policy to offset inflation, which has slowed their economies in the second half of 2011.

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