The following is Part 2 of my five-part series on the roles of angel investors and venture capital investors in emerging technology sectors with explosive upside potential, such as the nanotech, cleantech, biotech, information technology and new media sectors.

When it comes to energy, it’s hard to find two countries whose interests are more conjoined than the US and China.

Although most global markets performed poorly amid last year’s financial crisis, global economies didn’t follow the same path. And as credit markets began to heal this year, some countries have been far quicker to recover than others.

In a market where most income-oriented groups offer near record-low yields, investors are starving for income. All MLPs offer market-beating distributions, as well as attractive tax advantages, but fight the temptation to blindly reach for the highest yields.

In a market where most income-oriented groups offer near record-low yields, investors are starving for income. All MLPs offer market-beating distributions, as well as attractive tax advantages, but fight the temptation to blindly reach for the highest yields.

I’d like a company I recommend to post improved numbers every quarter. That’s not necessarily earnings per share, or even distributions per share, but a group of metrics I consider to be important in gauging the health of the business.

Friday’s sharp reversal of Thursday’s gain is a pretty stark reminder of how little (if any) conviction investors have about things getting better, and how willing they are to sell at any provocation. That kind of sentiment is usually a bullish sign for stocks in the longer term.

In the case of master limited partnerships (MLPs), focusing on earnings per unit--the MLP equivalent of EPS--not only provides an incomplete picture of a company's health but it's also downright misleading.

Korean National Oil Company’s decision to buy Harvest Energy Trust is curious on many levels. But the difficulty resource-hungry SWFs and SOEs face is that most of the plum assets--productive and located in safe jurisdictions--are already under the control of global resource heavyweights.

If markets have no major hiccups for the rest of October and into early November, expect them to move higher through the first few months of 2010, with November, December and January being the “money months.”