Could Iran Be The Next Emerging Market Investors Should Watch More Closely? + Lee’s take on MSFT, GE, WYNN, GOOG, PG, TGT, WMT, RT, F, SHLD, MCD, WEN, BKC, YUM, UPS, FDX, NKE, KO, and UN

So the markets have recovered quite a bit from their March lows and investors are starting to worry this recent rally might be coming to an end. A few down days can do that to people who lost over 40% earlier this year. They might actually start to think stocks like Microsoft (MSFT), General Electric (GE), and Wynn Resorts (WYNN) may not have the fuel to shoot up another ten or twenty percent before Santa slides down the chimney in December.   

Right about now smart people and desperate investors are looking for the next big thing to plunk their money into so they can make another 25% gains.  And fast.

A few ideas have been thrown around like clean energy, retirement home bonds, and Google (GOOG). How does Google always get on that list? Maybe it has something to do with their consistent mysterious ability to attract profits.

But just maybe this one time investors should take a closer look at emerging markets as a way to sidestep the hopefully temporary frailties of the US market. In fact I may have uncovered the next emerging market to explode onto the scene…

Read on for more of Lee’s insights on a potentially hidden emerging market gem...

A good indicator that you are in an
 emerging market

Iranian ice cream mixing tanks. They just look
like they could process nuclear bomb material.

There is also a little thing called accounting rules. All publicly traded companies here in the good old USA have a fairly standard, if not liberally interpreted, set of accounting rules to use. For the most part you can expect companies here to report something relatively close their actual income and expenses.  That is unless they decide to use things like; accruals, non-recurring expenses, write-offs, good will, stock options for the CEO and his immediate family, or something known in the accounting profession under the highly technical term of, “sandbagging”.

Be on guard because companies located in emerging markets have very few accounting rules. Some just make them up as they go along. In many cases the made-up rules may not be much different than how US  based companies prepare their quarterly reports for shareholders. .

Be very careful when you are considering an emerging market investment. With that said, over the years investors have racked up billion dollar gains when they discovered the right company, in the right country, at the right time. But you need to get in early. The wrong timing on an emerging market investment can just mean you locked in some other investor’s gains only to see your holdings sink or even just flatten out.  Not a good thing if your wife happens to open a stray brokerage statement you forget to hide.

So… I have done a little digging and I may have found the next big emerging market opportunity.

This country has a seemingly limitless supply of energy buried under it, a young dynamic population, and a leader so charismatic that he was recently elected back in as the supreme leader by a landslide that included more votes than voters in some districts. Now that’s a guy the people must love.

The famous Mahmoud of Mahmoud & Jerry’s
Thirty-Seven Flavors Premium Ice Cream

Mahmoud touring the ice cream
fat seperators – all the flavor and none of the fat or calories

If you haven’t guessed it by now… I’m talking about Iran!

You may not have heard about this secret ice cream project because they have cleverly thrown up an elaborate smoke screen that has slightlky alarmed a few people. All the while, hidden away in a secret complex, they are just making no-fat ice cream with the help of some pretty sophisticated equipment. My sometimes reliable sources (Boris from Moscow and Mr. Kim from Beijing) tell me they are using thousands of precision centrifuges to separate fat from the ice cream but ingeniously leaving all the flavor intact. Brilliant! Probably Russian smarts and Chinese technology no doubt.

To solve this global ice cream delivery problem they will not turn to United Parcel Service (UPS) or FedEx (FDX), they will be using rockets to deliver the fresh ice cold product to their strategically located global distribution centers. If you think this could be too costly then you haven’t bought a scoop of ice cream in a while. The retail price of premium ice cream is almost as high as the price of gold.  And this Iranian ice cream is certified fat free with nearly with no calories.

To tightly control product quality they have decided to manufacture the ice cream in a single plant so they needed to build a specialized facility out in the desert. They have a lot of cheap desert property in Iran. This worked out fine because the rocket delivery system might upset the neighbors if they located closer to town. It’s just more convenient to shoot rockets off from the middle of the desert. I’m not sure if they have the rocket landing thing figured out yet, but maybe that’s why it is still emerging.

Satellite picture of the Iranian ice cream plant. Heavy water is
a key ingredient for no-fat full-flavor ice cream, really!

Patented Iranian global ice cream delivery system

One of the best things this country has going for it is their great public relations skills. We all know how a viral campaign can really give any product promotion a big lift. Think about how companies like Nike (NKE), Coca Cola (KO), and Dove – a product of Unilever (UN) – have used viral campaigns to get free publicity and their products top of mind with consumers.

What better way to get people talking than to deny you are building nuclear weapons. These Iranians are brilliant marketers. You better jump on this one before it blows up.

If you have any other ideas on potential emerging markets or a lead on some new information sources for my future articles, email me at LeeAllen@InvestorsObserver.com.