Of these stocks, only Phelps Dodge is on my Cara 100 list. Most of these companies are Canadian-based.

GICS 15 Phelps Dodge Corp. (PD) (PD) Financial Data

Falconbridge (FAL) would certainly never be in the Cara 100, and neither would Inco (N). These two Toronto-based companies (and their Toronto chef Brascan/Brookfield (BAM)) long ago cooked up a secret deal to merge, and to deliberately complicate the deal for legitimate mining company acquisitors like Vancouver-based Teck-Cominco and Switzerland's Xstrata, two companies I very much like.

The Falconbridge-Inco team and their backers have gone to the unions and the politicians and the media to bring about a result that is in the best interest of undisclosed parties. If this isn't evidence that the capital market in Canada is a set-up for powerful people, then I don't know what is.

I refuse to support the games of these backroom dealers, and I don't know any reason the public should either. In fact, if there was a legit securities regulator in Canada, their investigators would discover insider trading without much difficulty. Whether they would do anything about it, just ask some Gnome-appointed Senators in Ottawa " yes, Canadian Senators are appointed for life by their friends, and they work from within government to pull the strings for those friends.

Stuff goes on here that would be "outed" in a heartbeat in the U.S.

All the independent trader can do is beat them in the market, which drives their costs up and their deal scheming profits down.