In about three weeks I will be reporting the results of my 2010 picks through the first quarter. One of those picks and the leader of the pack Grubb & Ellis (GBE), a real estate brokerage and investment company, reached a new 52 week high yesterday of $2.20, topping the previous high of $2.17 set last October.

At the time I initially wrote about the stock, in December, it was trading at $1.33 a share, the lowest priced stock I have ever included for consideration. The 65.41% gain, to date, will most assuredly help my annual batting average. Grubb & Ellis is besting the 2.93% YTD gain of the Standard & Poors 500 by more than 60%. Absent some unforeseen black swan, I expect it to finish the year higher still.

Baidu.com (BIDU - option chain) shares are rising today on reports that Google (GOOG) advertisers in China have been advised to switch to its rivals, including Baidu and Sohu.com (SOHU). This is on the heels of this weekend's report that Google will shut down its Chinese search engine rather than bow to the countries strict censorship rules. If you think that the stock won't fall by too much in the coming months, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on Baidu.

BIDU opened this morning at $570.48. So far today the stock has hit a low of $563.20 and a high of $628.50. As of 12:35, BIDU is trading at $581.05 up $30.81 (5.6%). The chart for BIDU looks neutral and S&P gives BIDU a neutral 3 STARS (out of 5) hold ranking.

Late Tuesday, an advisory panel of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) voiced its approval for pirfenidone, the experimental lung drug from InterMune (ITMN). The panel voted 9-3 in favor of recommending pirfenidone to patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

The FDA is expected to follow the advice of the advisory panel, although it's not required to do so. The regulatory agency is due to issue its final ruling on the drug's fate by early May.

Industrial metals like copper, aluminum and iron ore are basic to economic development. China, with its explosive growth needs these metals.

Word of this has spread around the world, bringing speculators into the markets. China is the world's biggest consumer of aluminum and copper. Armed with that knowledge, speculators drove the price of copper up 48% in the second half of 2009.

Between March and the start of December 2009, the U.S. dollar fell 17%. Why the drop? With interest rates near zero the dollar is being used in the so called "carry trade." The carry trade is used when investors and traders sell US dollars and buy riskier, higher yielding securities.

The result of the falling dollar has sparked a rally in commodities and stocks. Now, if traders unwind large chunks of their dollar trades, the markets can sell off. The rebound in world economies after the meltdown is based upon rallies in commodities and stocks. Yes, this does create inflation but the Fed is more worried about deflation than inflation. The Fed is willing to accept a measure of inflation to jump start the economy.

Garmin Ltd. (GRMN) topped analysts' fourth-quarter earnings expectations this morning, but the GPS guru opened with a thud after warning that it expects both gross and operating margins to decline in fiscal 2010. "The margin declines will be primarily driven by an ongoing price decline of approximately 10 percent in the [personal navigation device] industry and increasing R&D investment across our segments," said the company in a statement.

Aside from that cautious note, Garmin's fourth-quarter results and forward-looking guidance were actually much more robust than Wall Street expected. The firm swung to a quarterly profit of $1.43 per share, excluding items, compared to analysts' consensus forecast of 95 cents per share. Gross margin ticked four percentage points higher to 46%, while revenue arrived at $1.06 billion.