For 25 years, Steven Halpern, editor of TheStockAdvisors.com, has surveyed the leading financial newsletter advisors asking for their favorite stocks for the coming year. This article is one of 100+ ideas in the Best Stocks for 2008 report.

"My favorite conservative pick for 2008 is the FUNDX Aggressive Upgrader Fund (NASDAQ: HOTFX), one of DAL Investment Company's mutual funds," says Tom Bishop, editor of BI Research.

"This fund consists of 50 of the top-performing, no-load mutual funds and iShares with focuses all over the world. In fact, this fund currently has 82% foreign exposure and 18% domestic. So there is a lot of diversification here in one fund.

"And if you are nervous about a recession in the US, here is a good place to diversify away from being totally invested at home. Face it, in any given year there are often much hotter countries than the US.

"DAL's Upgrader Funds are constantly monitoring mutual funds and markets worldwide for the top performing countries and mutual funds and endeavoring to stay invested in whatever funds are performing the best, rotating in and out as necessary.

For 25 years, Steven Halpern, editor of TheStockAdvisors.com, has surveyed the leading financial newsletter advisors asking for their favorite stocks for the coming year. This article is one of 100+ ideas in the Best Stocks for 2008 report.

"My favorite aggressive idea for 2008 is NutraCea (NASDAQ: NTRZ), a low-priced, speculative issue," says Tom Bishop, editor of BI Research.

"Rice is the most consumed food on the planet and NutraCea has found a way to process rice bran -- 60 million tons of which comes off the rice kernel during the milling process worldwide -- into an extraordinarily nutritious food ingredient/nutraceutical that is also loaded with more than 100 antioxidants.

"The milling process normally triggers an enzyme that makes rice bran quickly (within hours) go rancid and thus it is for the most part discarded the world over. So rice mills will gladly allow NutraCea to build one of its stabilization facilities on site.

This article is part of a 20 article special report on "Metals, miners and money".

Taseko Mines (AMEX: TGB) "operates the Gibraltar open-pit copper mine in British Columbia, which it is significantly expanding and upgrading," notes Tom Bishop, editor of BI Research. "One of the big advantages of investing in Taseko is that its operations are all located in North America, which removes a lot of uncertainty.

"An even bigger advantage is that with copper prices soaring (and sticking to the ceiling around $3.50 a pound), Taseko has actually been able to step up to the plate and relatively quickly (and inexpensively) essentially double production capacity.

"The Gibraltar expansion everything appears to be on track. A combination of higher grade ore and better recoveries, not to mention copper prices around $3.50, should spark some more earnings improvement in the coming quarters.

"Meanwhile, don't forget their giant Prosperity project -- one of the largest open pit gold-copper deposits in North America in development. It is estimated to have 4.5 million recoverable ounces of gold and 2 billion recoverable pounds of copper.

"The project cost is $800 million and production is expected to average 108 million lbs. of copper and 247,000 oz. of gold. Prosperity continues to move through the permitting process. I see earnings per share of $0.50 - $0.55 for 2008. Taseko has more than lived up to my expectations as my favorite for 2007 and I continue to rate the stock a buy."

What are the best speculations and investments among metals, miners, and other resource plays? To find out, I turned to 20 of the nation's leading newsletter editors, as well as speakers from the recent New Orleans Conference, a leading forum for resource advisors.

Their current top ideas cover a wide diversity of ideas, from gold and silver, from alumina and copper, to platinum and palladium. These picks cover markets from Chile to China and from Canada to Russia. These ideas also range from large cap, well-established, and diversified companies to small cap, development-stage junior speculations.

Readers should only consider these ideas as a starting place for their own research and should keep in mind the caveat that any stock you buy should only be considered within the framework of your own time horizon and risk parameters. Meanwhile, here are 20 different advisors assessing various aspects of the metals, mining, and resources sectors:

Each year Steven Halpern, editor of TheStockAdvisors.com, surveys the leading financial newsletter advisors asking for their favorite stocks for the coming year. This article is part of his 24th annual Top Picks Report.

Taseko Mines Ltd. (ASE: TGB) is the favorite speculative play for 2007 from Tom Bishop, editor of BI Research. He notes, "After living hand to mouth for five or six years during lean copper and gold prices, Taseko bought the Gibraltar mine, which it picked up for a song when copper was down in the low $0.60/lb range.

"Today copper is around $3/lb, the mine is back into production and now its cash stash, including proceeds from a $30 million convertible, is steaming towards C$100 million. The company just added about 38% to its mineral reserves, which now stand at 256 million tons (equating to a 15-year mine life) grading 0.32% copper and 0.01% molybdenum.

Note the molybdenum alone adds over $20 million to revenues annually. The company is upgrading and expanding its Gibraltar mill/production facility, and will be moving to a higher grade softer ore part of the ore body in 2007. Therefore, with mill improvements I expect production to increase 20 to 30% this year and generate about $0.65 to $0.70 of cash flow, which is not bad for a company trading at $2.60.