So while most investment managers are out touring their Bentleys and Rolls Royces around Bevery Hills or the Hamptons right now, our team of overly-ambitious analysts are hard at work finding the most undervalued names in the hard asset space for Hedgephone.com readers and letting investors and money managers know about our top picks in the mining and hard asset space. Here are our 7 very best ideas for hard asset investing:

FCX — Freeport is dirt cheap on net assets in the ground with over 4 billion pounds of copper and gold and silver deposits that are worth more than the company’s enterprise vale. FCX is trading for less than ten times operating cash flow and for a forward PE ratio of around 9X. The stock is cheap, but we like selling the January 2012 $50 put options for an additional margin of safety

VALE — Vale is our favorite idea in the mining space at just 6X earnings. Brazil is crashing with the rest of the Brics right now, but we think the stock is oversold and offers investors solid upside potential. Like FCX, we prefer selling the $30 January 2012 put options against VALE to capture theta decay and option premium while we won’t be “put” the stock unless VALE drops significantly from current levels.

NEM — Newmont is too cheap to ignore on a Net asset value basis with gold in the ground worth significantly more than the company’s current market capitalization. We like NEM and again recommend selling January 2012 at the money puts here.

TOT — Total is dirt cheap while paying a solid dividend. Covered calls look the most interesting to us for a longer term position and we think that at 8X earnings the stock is a true bargain.

STO — Priced in Norwegian Kronors, we think STO is a cheap name at under 9X forward earnings while helping to diversify investors out of U.S. Dollar denominated assets. STO offers a rare blend of currency hedge, oil assets below intrinsic value, and a strong management team with proven assets.

COP — too cheap to ignore here with a price to operating cash flow of less than 8X… COP is truly cheap here and again we like selling the January 2012 $72.50 puts for around $6.60 for a return of roughly 10% between now and january of next year, or an approximate 1% per month return. If the stock shoots up, we are happy with our payout of 1% a month and if the stock drops we are happy to own the name at a cheaper valuation.

CVX — Chevron is another cheap oil and gas name here and again we like the idea of selling a longer dated at the money put option against the name. The stock has run a bit from our initial buy target of $100.50 but we still think the name has a long way to run given the boost in oil prices we expect from the summer driving season and the last month of QE2.