With President Obama at the helm it seems as though the light might be shining on the economic horizon. If you're of this opinion then now might be a good time to invest some of your hard earned savings in the banking industry.

But what banking firm do you decide to go with? Rather than selecting just one bank, how about hedging your bets by investing in many diverse banks from all over the country? An exchange traded fund (ETF) is a great way to do just that. By investing in the ETF PowerShares Dynamic Banking (PJB) you get shares of several different banks. PJB seeks to replicate the Dynamic Banking Intellidex index and invests at least 90% of assets in common stocks that comprise that index. Among their holdings in the PJB ETF are BancFirst Corporation(NASDAQ GS: BANF) BancFirst's holding company, Capital Federal Financial(NASDAQ GS: CFFN) the holding company for Capitol Federal Savings Bank, and Northern Trust Corporation(NASDAQ GS: NTRS) Northern Trust Company's holding company.

"Investing in food is a simple story: expanding supply and demand fueled by rising global urbanization," says Yiannis Mostrous. In Personal Finance newsletter the global advisor looks at Monsanto (NYSE: MON).

"The global population is expected to surpass 9 billion by 2050. Wages are rising in emerging economies--led by India and China--and more people are moving into cities where the consistent and better paying jobs are.

"That means greater demand for protein-rich foods, especially meat and dairy consumption. The consumption of both has a strong correlation to urbanization. The result will be a permanent increase in demand for crop grains for feeding.

Last year global stock markets lost $29 trillion in value -- falling 42%. And although it does not get much media attention, there is something that investors can do when the stock market moves against them. They can set stop losses on their stocks which limit how much money they can lose. Specifically, if an investor buys a stock at, say, $20 a share, he or she can issue a limit order which requires the broker to sell the stock when it declines to a lower price, say, $18. Such a limit order would limit the investor's loss to 10%.

This comes to mind in considering why the average stock in my investment newsletter gained 15% in 2008 when the S&P 500 fell 38.5%. My monthly newsletter analyzes broad economic trends and bores into specific industries. It also picks three stocks each month for subscribers to consider. During the first half of 2008, the energy and commodities stocks mentioned boosted its performance to +29% through the end of June. Then the bottom began to fall out as commodity prices tumbled and the financial services industry collapsed.

Thanks to the 2% stop loss rule -- which automatically sells any stock that falls 2% below the price at which it was mentioned in the newsletter -- the low point for the year was -1% at the end of October. By the end of 2008, only four of the 36 stocks mentioned remained in the portfolio. However, thanks to a surprising boost in one stock mentioned at the end of October and the three stocks picked at the end of November, the average stock was up 15% by the end of 2008. What were the three best performers?

Helping people with troubled mortgages is supposed to keep them in their homes and , over time, stabilized the housing market. The FDIC and Congress have urged that more money from the TARP be used for the purpose of propping up home loans instead of improving bank balance sheets.

The conventional wisdom about helping homeowners make payments may be wrong. According to The Wall Street Journal, a report from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision shows that "More than half of loans modified in the first quarter had slipped back into delinquency after six months, and were 30 or more days past due by the end of September."

Not very promising progress. The theories from federal officials about why this is happening were not very helpful.

A look at the average troubled mortgage-holder may be more useful. This is a man who may lose his job as unemployment rises from 7% to, perhaps, 9%. He has little prospect for his income to rise. He may have large amounts of credit card debt but no access to additional credit. He may have an expensive home equity loan. And, perhaps worst of all, the value of his home may be way below the value of his mortgage. He may be facing the fact that he will never get a dime of equity out of his house.

The idea that helping troubled mortgage-holders may break the fall of housing prices could be deeply flawed. That would mean that pouring tens of billions of dollars into the home mortgage market may have very little effect. Better to make people fell that their jobs are secure and that they have access to credit at reasonable costs. Maybe then homeowners will fell that paying their mortgages makes some sense.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (NYSE: LEH), the sale of Merrill Lynch & Co. (NYSE: MER) and the strain on American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG) have put an unprecedented strain on the financial system. Investors looking for a way to recoup their losses are probably out of luck.

If you lost money owning shares of financial services companies, odds of getting your money back are remote. To prevail in an arbitration hearing, investors need to prove fraud such as the broker bought stock without their knowledge, bought stock just to generate commissions (churn), bought it knowing that it was unsuitable, or misrepresented the risks of the investment. These claims are all difficult to prove and even if an investor is victorious, there is no guarantee they will get a full refund.

According to New York securities attorney Mark Astarita, arbitration cases take between 14 and 18 months to resolve. Investors win about 50% of the time. "Stocks go down every day," he said when we spoke earlier today. "There needs to be wrongful conduct" to win a case.

Many individual investor trade on hope, fear, greed and gloom instead of strict self-discipline. How many can sell without having remorse as the share price goes higher? How many have it in them to sell at loss without hoping for a rebound?

Well, SmartStops.net helps investors do just that. While there are many advice sites for individual investors available today, this one seems sorely needed by many. It helps investors place easy, set-it-and-forget-it stop-loss orders to ensure profits don't fizzle into thin air. If you want to sell at a specific price without sitting around watching share price movement in real-time all day long, this site can help.

But it isn't just some automatic sell trigger. SmartStops.net has employed proprietary algorithms to make sure investors are advised -- well in advance -- of when to sell a stock or exchange-traded fund to ensure investing remains successful. At the conclusion of each trading day, SmartStops.net sends an email with stop points for both short- and long-term investing strategies on the stocks and ETF it covers.

The good news is that there is a free trial available from the company, and it's also in the process of partnering with online traders like TD Ameritrade to synchronize SmartStop with brokerage accounts.

It's worth checking out if you're into control of your own portfolio, but want the process to be taken care of at least semi-automatically. Besides, we all like a one-year free trial, right?

I've always sensed that women make better investors than men. Call me politically incorrect but when I talk to a woman about investing, she's focused on protecting her savings, not using it to make more money. Women don't think about "beating the market." They think about being safe. They don't want to make a mistake and avoiding mistakes is sometimes what makes all the difference in getting investment returns. And women are less prone to trading and more attuned to buying and holding. As Warren Buffett says, "Activity is the enemy of performance."

Maybe it's our testosterone that drives us to turn investing into a championship sporting event. I don't know. But I've felt that the male competitive spirit often is the very thing that drives us into stupid investments.

Until recently, I couldn't put my finger on how our male "Y" chromosome puts us at a genetic disadvantage to women. However, I recently discovered that Brad Barber and Terrance Odean of UC Davis validated my intuition. They published an article in the February 2001 issue of The Quarterly Journal of Economics titled "Boys Will Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment."

Barber and Odean obtained trading data from a discount brokerage for over 35,000 households and analyzed investing patterns for six years to test whether overconfidence leads to more trading and lower returns. Since in areas of finance psychologists have proven that men tend to be more prone to overconfidence, the genders were separated so that their trading habits could be studied individually.

This is the part of a series of columns called "The Naked Truth," by retirement expert Dan Solin. Please bring him your questions, in the comments box, and he will answer as many as he can.

Your broker talks. You listen. At least that is the way it is for most investors. You assume (and she definitely assumes!) she has an expertise that will help you maximize your returns. Sometimes, you almost feel like you should be taking notes.

Based on my experience, this is often not the case. Brokers are not required to have any background in finance or economics and their training is focused primarily on sales.

I thought it might be interesting to turn the tables. Here are some questions you should ask them.

Question #1: What is the most important factor that will affect my returns?

Answer: Your asset allocation, which is the amount of your investments allocated to stocks, bonds and cash. Not stock picking; not mutual fund selection and not market timing. If your broker gets this wrong, get a new broker.

I grew up in Miami. Yes, I was born and raised there and am under 40-years-old. One of the few. I love the city. I love the people. I love the Latin flavor of the town, its food and nightlife. I also enjoyed owning and selling a home there in the early 2000s.

Things are different now. Homeowners have been hit with the downside of a strong housing market and have seen prices snapback much greater than some other parts of the country. After seeing a pullback in net worth, Floridians have been tightening their belts this year in some creative and not-so-creative ways.

Today's Bloomberg has an article about how the changes in the Florida housing market are being dealt with by Dolphins fans. Floridians, and Miami residents in particular, are dining out less, seeing fewer movies, foregoing on travel plans, and in some extreme cases, drinking less expensive beer.

According to Bloomberg, Miami real estate prices fell 19.3% year-over-year in January, tied with Las Vegas for the largest drop among 20 metro areas. Some homeowners feeling the pinch are no longer drinking Guinness and Royal Extra beers, but instead buy something domestic and cheaper.

This change in net worth is real and is affecting consumption decisions. While it hurts everyone involved, the process of (trying!) to realign the split between assets and debts is ultimately a healthy one for our country and something, I believe, will help strengthen the U.S. dollar and regain respect for American ingenuity, strength and democratic values around the globe.

Zack Miller is the managing editor of IsraelNewsletter.com ,a former equity analyst for a leading multinational hedge fund, and a proud former Floridian.

"Buy bonds," says income expert Neil George, adding "More and more folks are heading for the door on stocks and are moving toward quality."

The senior editor of Personal Finance explains, "This means bonds-but not just any bonds: government and upper-tier corporate bonds." Here's a trio of favorites.

"We start with AllianceBernstein Global High Income Fund (NYSE: AWF). This fund owns a collection of government and government agency bonds, along with some selected high-quality domestic and foreign corporates that add to our stability.

"We aren't just locked into the US and the US dollar; we have exposure to the best of Europe, Asia and elsewhere, too. The average duration (measurement of price against changes in yield) is a conservative but attractive 7.4 years.

"The fund generates a yield just shy of 8% and has given us a positive performance of near 100% during the past five years. It trades at a discount of more than 6% to meltdown value.

"Alternatives may not be an important source of electricity, but they are the fastest-growing subsector in the energy space," says energy sector expert Elliott Gue in Personal Finance. Here, he looks at wind power.

"The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that wind power will grow by more than 7%, encouraged by generous government subsidies. Compare that to just 1.5% annualized projected growth in total electricity demand.

"The world's largest wind turbine producer, Vestas Wind Systems (OTC: VWSYF), fell on hard times back in 2005. It priced some of its turbines too aggressively and saw a surge in warranty claims because of defective components.

"But the stock appears back on track. Warranty provisions are down to 5% of revenues. Profit margins surged 4 percentage points year-over-year because of more rational turbine pricing. Vestas' current backlog stands at EUR4.1 billion (US $6.03 billion), up more than 30% year-over-year.

The Associated Press reports that Congress has reached an agreement on an economic stimulus package. The report does not estimate the total size of the package, but it says that taxpayers will receive rebate checks ranging between $300 and $1,000 per household. Businesses will get tax breaks as well.

And the devil is in the details. Under the tentative plan, families with children would receive an additional $300 per child, subject to an overall cap of perhaps $1,200. Rebates would go to people earning below $75,000 and couples with incomes of $150,000 or less. Workers would have to have earned at least $3,000 in 2007 to receive the rebates.

Businesses would receive $70 billion in tax breaks to invest in plants and equipment, and the plan would give small businesses more generous expensing rules and allow businesses suffering losses now to reclaim previously paid taxes. Furthermore, the plan would raise the size of the mortgages that Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) could buy from $417,000 to $700,000.

So what does this all mean to you?

Want to save for college, but not sure what type of account to use? State-sponsored 529 plans should definitely be your first choice. You don't have to pick one from your own state, but tax incentives might encourage you to do so. If your state doesn't off good tax incentives for colleges savings, then look for the plan with the lowest fees. Kiplinger's gives you an excellent overview of your options, as well as a state by state run down.

These state-sponsored plans can give you shelter from both federal and state income taxes, as well as give your child's grandparents a good way to chip in for their grandchild's education. In fact a grandparent can contribute up to $12,000 a year without having to worry about federal gift taxes (a couple can contribute up to $24,000 without gift taxes). If one grandchild decides not to go to college, just switch the account into the name of another child that wants to go. The money in the fund grows tax-deferred and as long as you only use it for qualified educational expenses you don't ever have to pay taxes on the gains.

You also don't have to worry about saving too much. The federal financial-aid formula assesses parent-owned accounts at 5.6%, while student savings can be assessed a whopping 20%. But, if you want to avoid taxes you must use the funds for qualified education expenses, so you don't want to save more than you think your child will need for college.

Consumerist.com is one of my favorite financial blogs. The site provides witty and down-to-earth commentary on personal finance issues and it's one of a handful of sites I try to read everyday.

But I found myself disagreeing with their post 'For those of you who are broke, 5 expenses you can't afford if you have credit card debt'. According to The Consumerist, people in this situation must cut out cable, eating out, recreational shopping, gym memberships, and expensive cars.

Here's why I disagree: If you're in debt and broke, you need to find ways to keep your costs down so you can pay off your debt and start to compile some savings. The best way to do that depends on who you are, and what kind of things give you pleasure and the ability to stay in the fight. Saying that everything should cut back on certain things is akin to saying that Jackson Pollock should have cut back on art supplies when he was broke.

Would any college student pass up a "free lunch" these days? Most of them probably do not know that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and instead would line up enthusiastically if one was offered. In prime fashion though, the latest example was hidden in front of the real deal: a prerequisite to a free Subway sandwich was filling out a credit card application at the head of the food line.

I understand the credit card companies and bank operations -- each has internal profit and customer growth targets to hit, so anyone and anything is game. From 10-year-olds to college students, credit card offers not only kill a load of trees each year, but they introduce the absolute worst financial way to purchase goods and services for consumers.

Unfortunately, most of us have to learn the hard way about credit cards -- paying those mounting balances. When taken fundamentally, credit cards are an abhorrent stain on personal finance strategies. Moral of the story: If you can't pay cash, don't buy on credit (save for bigger purchases like autos and homes). In this instant gratification society, this happens less and less frequently.

The demographic that should not be worrying about credit card balances are college students. I thought college was for developing a set of learning and networking tools, not slapping the plastic down for those Junior Mints? Although many universities are banning the marketing of credit cards on campus grounds, the snaky solicitors are, of course, finding ways to circumvent that prohibition. In this case, be wary of visiting a Subway location for a free sandwich if you're a college student.