As for the Mining Boom III, the pick up in export volumes flowing from the surge in mining investment in iron ore, coal and liquid natural gas will start to get underway around 2014-15.

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Ricks, 52, a former accounting and finance professor at Duke and Columbia, draws on a research group of 21 analysts and programmers to pick stocks after mining data on 6, 000 companies in the U.S. and twice that number overseas.

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Kurnit took the metaphor of pick axes and shovels to heart, and formed The Mining Company, a human-curated web service that was dramatically different than companies like Yahoo that were building huge web catalogues by hand.

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The first pick we will look at is Caterpillar, which manufactures and sells construction and mining equipment around the globe.

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