There are only seven weeks left in the year, so it is time to start thinking about 2010. If you have been keeping up with my 2009 picks (see: Chasing Value: 2009 blazing picks -- Q3 review ) than you would be aware that the group is up 40% through the third quarter.

This year I bought all of my picks so that I would be riding in the same ship as anyone that might have considered my suggestions.

I will be breaking up my potential picks into three categories; contender, on the fence, and out of the running, until I finalize the list in the last week of the year.

The market continues to befuddle the bears as the third quarter earnings and stock prices continued to move in a positive direction.

During this period Washington has taken charge of the auto industry and helped prop it up with the "cash-for-clunkers" program. They continue to subsidize the real estate market with first-time home buyers incentives, and very low interest rates. The banks are being refueled by the Federal Reserve with interest rates as low as zero, while all the time currency stability has been sacrificed. This has driven gold prices to new highs.

This is the third review of my 2009 stock picks through September 30 (see: Chasing Value: 9 picks for 2009 -- APC, GE, ISRG, WFC and more). This years picks have annihilated index comparisons, so much so that I must attribute some of my good fortune to luck. However, I do believe the original reasoning was sound and the outlier nature of the gains certainly a result of an oversold market living in fear.

Last week shareholders were surprised to find that Anglo American (OTC: AAUKY) had moved from the Nasdaq to the OTC "pink sheets" with no press release, news or explanation on the company website (see AAUK: Now you see it, now you don't).

After a few inquiries to the company, I received notice that the site had been updated with a full explanation. What I learned is that the Nasdaq listing was not done by Anglo but by several banks that held unsponsored ADR shares and were trading the stock.

Finally I was able to find the smallest crumb of news regarding Anglo American's (OTC: AAUKY) move from the NASDAQ to the over-the-counter (OTC) exchange often referred to as the "pink sheets."

After searching all day yesterday under every rock I could find for an answer to the puzzle and coming up empty, I concluded that this mystery could only be the work of Sherlock Holmes's evil and brilliant nemesis Professor Moriarty. And fitting to the good professor's habit of only leaving the most meager of clues, the following is all I could find to date:

This morning I looked up Anglo American ADR and could not find it. What I found was: "No listing under this symbol". I checked another financial site and nothing. I check the company web site and I found under investor information USD NASDAQ 0.00. Now it was getting very strange.

There was no news anywhere, how could that be?

It turns out that the company is now listed on the "pink sheets", "over the counter" as Anglo American PLC ADS (OTC: AAUKY). There was no news Friday, no news over the weekend, no news this morning, no information under the old symbol, the new symbol or the web site, and no broker knew why there was a change, just that it happened.

The second quarter is now behind us and for the most part it was a positive one in terms of the market pushing higher almost 40%. This is the second review of my 2009 stock picks through June 30 (see: Chasing Value: 9 picks for 2009 -- APC, GE, ISRG, WFC and more). There was a lot of talk about green shoots this past quarter as Wall Street was looking for any small bit of optimistic data to support the market.

The federal printing presses continued to run at full speed pushing the dollar lower and oil prices higher. While the feds were printing money to cover their deficits, the States do not have that same luxury and many of them are having trouble balancing their budgets to the tune of billions of dollars.

This is a continuation of a theme I have been writing about this year involving stock options referred to as naked puts.

This allows investors to take a position in a stock, most often below its current price, but depending on market sentiment. That sentiment remains relatively negative so the spreads are attractive.

I have been following BHP Billiton Ltd ADR (NYSE: BHP) the largest mining company in the world, with headquarters in Australia, for a while but I do not own the stock today. I view all mining companies as an opportunity because I think the diversified raw materials they control are the best hedge against inflation. I do not think inflation is imminent, but with the extreme increases in money supply and debt being created I do not think it will be avoidable a few years out.

It was reported on Sunday, June 21, that Anglo-Swiss mining company Xstrata has proposed a merger of equals to the board of Anglo American ADR (NASDAQ: AAUK), hoping to create a new, more competitive mining giant. Rumors have been milling about for a while.

Together, Anglo American and Xstrata would have a market capitalization of approximately $68 billion, (AAUK's $35 billion + XTA.L's $33 billion) and be larger than Rio Tinto plc ADS (NYSE: RTP), which ended the trading day last Friday with a capitalization hovering over $42 billion.

Today one of my picks for the year, Anglo American ADR (NASDAQ: AAUK), was upgraded from neutral to buy at the investment bank now regular bank Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS).

It was only yesterday that AAUK was downgraded from neutral to underweight by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM). No doubt they were responding to the news that Standard & Poors cut Anglo's rating two notches to 'BBB' based on it's 40% leverage and the potential for its cash-flow and income to be impacted by continuing soft markets throughout the year in many commodities.

I knew it would happen to some of my stock picks this year -- but ouch! -- Anglo American (NASDAQ: AAUK) has reported that it is handing out 19,000 pink slips world wide, oh, by the way, you can forget about the dividend -- that's gone too.

I made it through mid-year of tracking my 2008 picks from last December and then -- Wham! -- I went from a slight advantage to being humbled badly by the market. However difficult it is to display your failings, once again I will share all of the horrors since I posted the original story Chasing Value: Final list -- 8 stocks for 2008.

The master is still the master, Warren Buffett and his life's work Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B) beat me easily as well as the three indices I tracked.

For the most part, unless you started shorting stocks, there was no place to hide and most of my picks were big losers. There were two that beat Buffett and the market. The defense sector was the defensive sector it was supposed to be with Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) doing well on a relative scale. The other place you could have a morsel of stability was utilities and Huaneng Power International (ADR) (NYSE: HNP) lost less but not by much.

Anybody have capital gains to show this year? I didn't think so. Not unless you were shorting the market, and in particular financials. I got clobbered with everyone else. There were not many places to hide. Picking winners was like guessing where each piece of debris would land after the tornado moved through town.

The average crystal ball is looking quite foggy about now, nevertheless I have rummaged throughout the stock market to select nine stocks that I think offer more reward than risk. The market is priced for the worst in so many cases that I think the list could have included 50 companies without too much trouble.

In 2007 and 2008 I owned some but not all of the picks for the year. This year I own all of the stocks and they were all acquired in the latter part of the fourth quarter for a new portfolio.

Rampant inflation seems likely at some point in the future, as demand for commodities increases and the pain of running the government's printing press full time comes back to haunt us. So once again I am revisiting Anglo American ADR (NASDAQ: AAUK).

How can you protect yourself against the pain of inflation? One thing to remember is that although cash is king -- as we are told every day -- cash will not perform well in a highly inflationary environment. What usually performs well are things that you can hold in your hand, that you can touch and that other folks want.

Now that I want to buy things, what kind of things do I want to buy? How will I know what things to buy? Where will I put these things? What if I buy the wrong things?

From my perspective the answer to all of these questions can be found in AAUK, which I most recently wrote about five weeks ago Chasing Value: Anglo American on sale.

Since the company has mining operations on six continents and owns reserves in most every natural resource, precious and not, you will be diversified geographically and in breadth of resources -- things, that is, things people want.

Anglo American (NASDAQ: AAUK) owns a range of assets covering gold, platinum, diamonds, coals ferrous and base metals.

AAUK was up 34 cents to $33.09 in pre-open trading. AAUK has a market cap of $86 billion. Gold is recently trading at $905.90 according to Bloomberg.

AAUK overall option implied volatility of 47 is near its 26-week average according to Track Data, suggesting non-directional price movement.

Option Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com

After five months of tracking my 2008 picks, it is rewarding to finally have a breakthrough -- topping the three major stock indices and Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B) too. It has been painful to have to report each month that I was being bested. However, since I have not seen anything contradicting my original rationale for my eight picks I stood my ground.

This past month saw great improvement. For the first time since I posted the original story Chasing Value: Final list -- 8 stocks for 2008, five of the eight stocks are up:

Moving into positive territory by pennies was Loews Corporation (NYSE: LTR). Among its holdings is a 51% stake in Diamond Offshore Drilling, Inc. (NYSE: DO) that has been doing well as the world remains desperate for more oil and natural gas.

Bunge Limited (NYSE: BG) was the other stock to cross the line into the black, while Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE: VLO), although improving, remains my worst performer. It is still down almost 28% after five months.

The gap between the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Standard & Poor's 500 Index and the technology heavy NASDAQ Composite Index narrowed substantially so that the three are tracking each other very closely. Stocks like Apple, Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) continue to gain significantly and their outlooks have not been shaken amid overall pessimistic economic forecasts.