A big crop report released this morning is once again bringing a lot of attention to corn and the global demand for ethanol. It all makes sense. With democracy and capitalism flourishing around the world, the demand for energy will boom and ethanol is a viable way to provide lower emissions fuel.

Even President Bush in his State of the Union address called for the United States to become less dependent on foreign oil. His solution: corn-based Ethanol?

However, as a reminder, investing is about "skating where the puck is going to be" as hockey great Wayne Gretsky used to say. Or as legendary John Templeton would say, look for points of "maximum pessimism."

There is little that is pessimistic about the outlook for corn today. Farmers throughout the U.S. are going to be planting it this season. Why? Because corn prices are approaching 10-year highs and the wide-spread belief is there is money to be made.

Conversely, the argument to invest in cotton might be more compelling. In a Barron's interview (subscription required) in January, Art Samberg of Pequot Capital said while cotton consumption in the US has been in decline, China's consumption, which has been growing nicely, is picking up more steam. Cotton consumption in the U.S. has fallen from 12 million to 5 million bales a year due to the growth of polyester and other materials. However, Textile spending is on a big upswing in China -- up 27% in '06, after jumping 36% in '05. Chinese consumption, which had been growing 4% to 6% per year, is now growing 15% per year.

Samberg said go long the December '07 cotton contract. Strong corn and soybean prices means U.S. farmers are going to remove acreage from cotton to earn better profits in corn and soybeans.

Supposedly, there have only been four times since 1913 when cotton was this cheap relative to grains like corn and wheat, with the last time being 1974. From 1974 to 1976, cotton tripled in price.

After peaking at $98 a share in June 2004, Apollo Group' s stock has headed straight downhill and now trades at about $41.

After a great bull run that began in 1995, the industry began to mature and these stocks rolled over.

We blogged earlier today about how Pequot Capital's chief, Art Samberg, likes cotton. He also is looking for a turnaround in publicly traded education stocks. The stocks he likes are Apollo Group (NASDAQ: APOL), Career Education (NASDAQ: CECO) and Corinthian Colleges (NASDAQ: COCO).

Apollo has been putting a lot of money into its on-line community college program, Axia College, which it hopes can accelerate Apollo's growth rate. Management is hopeful Axia will be a feeding tube for its four-year on-line college, University of Phoenix.

Samberg also believes Career Education, which has been a real bloodbath, could be ripe for a turnaround under new management.

Publicly traded education stocks, as an industry, have stayed away from using leveraged balance sheets. Samberg notes that if current valuation persists and if fundamentals start improving, private equity firms could find these companies very attractive.

Art Samberg, of Pequot Capital fame, provided a compelling argument to go long cotton in this weekend's Barron's investor round table (subscription required).

For you commodity traders out there, Samberg said go to long on the December '07 cotton contract. His reasoning is while cotton consumption in the U.S. has been in decline, China consumption, which has been growing nicely, is picking up more steam.

Cotton consumption in the U.S. has fallen from 12 million to 5 million bales a year due to the growth of polyester and other materials. Conversely, Textile spending is on a big upswing in China - up 27% in '06, after jumping 36% in '05. Chinese consumption which had been growing 4% to 6% per year is now growing 15% per year.

According to Samberg, China's cotton consumption has increased from 25% to 39%-40% of world cotton consumption.

Because of strong prices of corn and soybeans -- corn being used for ethanol production, US farmers are going to remove acreage from cotton to earn better profits in higher priced corn and soybeans. Supposedly, there have only been four times since 1913 when cotton was this cheap relative to grains such as corn and wheat. The last time was 1974. From 1974 to 1976, cotton tripled in price.