Another beaten-down stock, iron ore producer Vale do Rio Doce (NYSE:RIO), may be headed for its best performance in a decade. The Brazilian company's stock fell 31% this year, but analysts expect the stock to double in the next year – three times the expected gains for the world's biggest mining companies, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto.

Most analysts expect iron-ore prices to rally 20% in 2009, but Vale will see most of its growth as demand from Chinese steelmakers rises and freight rates fall. Vale ships most of its ore from Brazil, not Australia, where BHP (NYSE:BHP) and Rio Tinto (NYSE:RTP) are based.

Here's the 1-year chart with the 200-day moving average (source: Yahoo! Finance). It includes Thursday's 5% plunge down to a new 52-week.

This just in from Ian Davis who writes for Stansberry Research:

Berkshire Still Holds Loads of Cash

It's a bear market in Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-A) stock...[and evidently not just only because the stock is "on sale"].

Warren Buffett's holding company is currently 21.8% off the peak it reached on December 10, 2007. Investors have been fleeing the stock in droves.

This is because at the beginning of this year, Buffett himself said profits would decline. He said 2007 profits were unusually large due to some exceptional results in the company's insurance division.

In the first half of 2007, Berkshire Hathaway's net income was a fantastic $5.7 billion. The first half of this year, its net income fell to $3.8 billion.

Thing is, any way you slice it, Berkshire Hathaway is still making – and holding – loads of cash.

Having loads of cash right now is important for two reasons...

The obvious reason is the current liquidity crisis going on in the U.S. Many companies are finding it expensive, if not impossible, to find funding.

Just look at the current "junk-bond spread." The junk-bond spread is the difference between the interest rates on risk-free U.S. Treasury bonds and risky high-yield bonds.

Usually the spread is around 4.5%. Meaning smaller, less-established companies need to pay about 4.5% more than Treasuries to get financing. Today, the spread is just shy of 8%... almost as high as it was at the height of the dot-com crash.