Andrew Houghton & Nick Atkeson
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Barnes & Noble (BKS) is in the direct path of one of the largest, highest momentum and most successful retailers in history: Amazon.com (AMZN). Whether it's price, convenience or almost any other metric, Amazon is crushing its competition and aggressively taking market share.

The consumer today is very price sensitive and Amazon is one of the largest discount retailers on earth, with an incredible assortment of offerings. Barnes & Noble is neither a price or category leader. And to make this already difficult situation for the retailer worse, Amazon's Kindle is continually being upgraded and becoming steadily more popular.

The day after Thanksgiving is the official kick-off to the holiday shopping season, and this year the focus will be on bargains. According to our ChangeWave Research surveys, most consumers will be doing their shopping at discount stores and online.

Discount retailer Costco (COST) does one-third of its overall business in southern California and Nevada, where the unemployment rate is higher than the national average. Because a disproportionate amount of Costco's warehouse and distribution facilities are located in southern California and the supply chain is relatively more efficient, this geographic region has historically had the highest margins. Over the past year, though, this region suffered the worst of the economic downturn and has been a big drag on Costco's profits.

When Americans go to the ball park to watch the World Series, we eat hot dogs. It's a tradition. It is also representative of a developed economy to eat lots of protein.

China is a developing economy with 22% of the world's population. And 1.3 billion Chinese people are developing an appetite for more protein, just as the people of almost all industrialized countries have. To make meat, you need grain. What China doesn't have is a lot of land and water for growing grain.

Unfortunately, most of us can't attend the World Series in person. What some of us do, though, is get our scores in real time over the phone. The World Series is becoming more data centric, real time, and wireless, like almost all other aspects of our modern lives, and telecommunications company CenturyTel Inc. (NYSE: CTL) is an enabler of this trend. CenturyTel, which provides voice and data services operating in 22 states, is benefiting from long-term secular trends, and has yet to be fully recognized by the market.

We are at the start of a new and historic presidency. Americans tend to be optimistic and like to look forward to a better future. But before we get too far down the road, let's take one last look in the rear-view mirror.

How many times have we looked at the outgoing president and remarked at how fast the office aged him? How gray, old and tired he looks.

The presidency is a tough job. Living through this stock market seems equally tough.

One billion people will be watching the Super Bowl, but 5.7 billion others couldn't care less. In the United States, we love football -- the rest of the world, loves futbol (soccer).

Grupo Televisa SA (NYSE: TV) produces television channels that reach subscribers in 60 countries throughout Latin America, the United States (via Univision), Canada, Europe and Asia Pacific.

This company won't be blinded by the Super Bowl hype.

Last year, TV yanked NFL games, including the Super Bowl, off the air in Mexico for the whole season after a 35-year run because they felt they were overpaying for the broadcast rights. The NFL felt the Latin heat and entered into new deal terms for the season that began in September 2008.

TV has shown steady revenue and earnings growth during the past several years and is expected to keep growing through 2010. With its advantageous market position and growth characteristics, it is trading at a P/E of about 12.

Ay, caramba!

Nick Atkeson and Andrew Houghton are contributors to OptionsZone.com.

It's Super Bowl time.

This day of the year has almost reached holiday status where families and friends gather in front of big-screen TV to spend six hours watching a typically boring football game and stuffing themselves with nachos, wings and beer.

With all of the hoopla surrounding the event, this is a good time for investors to go for some Super Bowl profits.

Why? Looks like it's not just a pseudo-holiday -- it's a tradition: