This year is expected to be an ideal environment for both sales and earnings. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index’s operating earnings are estimated to come in at $16.21 for the fourth quarter, compared with a nine-cent loss in the same quarter a year ago. The switch from a modest loss to a huge profit like that is a simply amazing turnaround for the broader market.

In the first quarter, operating earnings are expected to “decelerate” to a 63.5% annual pace and then grow 33.2%, 24.9%, and 27.2% for the remaining quarters of 2010. Sales growth is also expected to be positive all year, aided by easy year-over-year comparisons, plus “windfall currency conversions” that help to boost sales for many multinational and global-based companies thanks to a weak U.S. dollar.

And Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold (FCX) will be the first of many commodity stocks to take advantage of the weak dollar.  

FCX is profiting from high copper and mineral prices. The company’s 91%-owned subsidiary, PT Freeport Indonesia, operates the vast open-pit Grasberg mine in Indonesia, where gold, copper and silver are mined. Freeport-McMoRan controls proved and probable reserves of about 100 billion pounds of copper, 40 million ounces of gold and 2.5 billion pounds of molybdenum. Freeport-McMoRan is the world’s second-largest copper company behind government-run Codelco.

What’s So Great About Copper in 2010?

Well for one thing, while the dollar remained weak last year and U.S. Treasury securities fell out of favor with investors, many nations like China increasingly stockpiled copper, gold and other strategic materials instead.

While gold tends to move inversely to the dollar and prosper during uncertain times, copper correlates more to the worldwide recovery, since it is actually used in industrial applications like wiring and pipes. That means copper demand is expected to continue rising throughout 2010. As a result, Freeport-McMoRan’s outlook is very promising.

Freeport posted powerful fourth-quarter sales that more than doubled to $4.6 billion, posting a Q4 profit $2.15 per share. This blew away Wall Street estimates of $1.76 with a 22% surprise. What’s more, this dramatic surge is over an 85 cent loss last year. That’s a stunning turn around and a sign that FCX is really firing on all cylinders right now.

The stock is a great buy to benefit from commodity inflation and the broader economic recovery in the months ahead.

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