I try to anticipate. I try to anticipate investment trends, my dog's needs and my wife's wants. Sometimes I'm successful, and sometimes I'm not.

In trying to anticipate investment trends, I was thinking about nuclear power plants. Are we going to get some, and if so, how many? If we do build more nuclear, what companies should I consider for investment?

Everyone knows there are huge dangers in nuclear energy, and that is why we don't have many of those types of power plants. That last sentence is a perfect example of what an idiot I am occasionally. Dangers: don't have many?

If you draw a line starting in Minnesota south through Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas and then look east, it is almost an incredible sight. There are nuclear power plants almost everywhere.

Of all of those states from the Midwest east, only Maine, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Oklahoma do not have nuclear power plants. I had no idea.

How about this: Almost 75 percent of the states in the United States have at least one nuclear plant.

There are nine nuclear power plants in Pennsylvania alone. There are 103 nuclear power plants in the United States. If you had asked me, I would have guessed there were maybe four or five nuclear plants in the U.S.

That number, 103, really struck home with me. I believe they supply about 20 percent of our electricity needs.

But even if we targeted 50 percent as a goal for nuclear, I really don't think my friends in the coal industry need to be selling their second homes quite yet. It will take years to build more nuclear plants, and the question is, are there investment opportunities?

Right now I'm betting on coal for at least a little while longer. But folks, I imagine those numbers above were as surprising to you as they were to me.

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Another anticipation is China and India.

Now, the thing about an anticipation is that you don't know whether it will be right or wrong. I believe China and India are coming, India being our friend right now, and I want to be invested in both places. Both those markets have had substantial corrections, but they certainly could go lower.

China is down about 55 percent year to date, and India is off about 28 percent.

I am taking a very long-term view of the opportunity.

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As we move to the end of the third quarter, this is what the markets looked like at the end of August, month number eight. When I talk about year to date, I mean through Aug. 31.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down about 13 percent through August. The other indexes include the Standard and Poor's 500 down also about 13 percent and the NASDAQ Composite down 10.7 percent.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies was down only 3.5 percent, and the S&P Midcap 400 index of middle sized companies was down about 5 percent.

I like to look at the broad market, and using the Wilshire 5000 Index of most stocks traded, I noted that it was down 11.5 percent.

Obviously the Wilshire is helped by the performance of the NASDAQ and the small and mid-sized stocks.

In the foreign markets, the news is a good bit worse. The Dow Jones World Index and the EAFE are both down about 20 percent year to date. Foreign markets have had substantial corrections as shown by the numbers I listed for China and India, just to mention two.

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Things have lightened up in the commodities market. Crude oil is still up about 20 percent for the year but has been coming down, as you know. Natural gas, which was up 30 percent or so, also has corrected and now is up only 6 percent. The DJ AIG Commodity Index is up only 2.6 percent for the year.

The EURO per dollar is actually down 7 percent as the dollar has strengthened somewhat. Gold is almost flat for the year up less than 1 percent.

What does all this mean? I'm not sure. What I think it means is that both inflation and commodity prices have been easing.

I hope I am wrong, but I think all these corrections in commodities are temporary. I think that inflation is not through rearing its ugly head.

I hope I'm wrong.

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If you have any questions for me, you can e-mail Howie.Pentony@uvestfinancial.com or check me out at www.nextierwealth.com.

I am normally in my capitalism mode when I see one company being bought out by another. However, you might know that a foreign company is buying American icon Anheuser-Busch, the maker of Budweiser. Please join me in boycotting this transaction.

Go to your local beer distributor, buy all the Bud your car will hold, deliver it to my house, and I will dispose of it.

We're not going down without a fight.

Howie Pentony is a Butler financial adviser, UVEST Financial Services and member FINRA/SIPC.