Daily Posts Archive

There are two kinds of losers in the lottery. The first are those who play and don’t win. That’s the fate of the vast majority of participants in lotteries these days, and it’s not such a bad fate (unless you’re betting the rent money.) The second are those who win big. Yes! History is full of people who won millions in the lottery and ruined their lives.

Here’s my suggestion on how to survive this volatile market: “sell and tighten.” That means you should sell any stock in your growth portfolio that hands you an unacceptable loss and tighten your stops for the rest. As a rule of thumb, you should set a maximum loss limit of no more than 10% to 15% on any growth stock. The name of the game is capital preservation, and selling and holding the cash is the simplest and safest way to do that.

Given all that’s gone on in the market during the past couple of weeks, we thought it best to just get to the heart of what is on investors’ minds. In the following interview, I asked Cabot’s V.P. of Investments, Mike Cintolo, for his thoughts on the market, what scenarios he sees potentially playing out and, of course, his general recommendations for what to do now.

At the end of the year, I like to look back at what worked in small-cap stocks. The exercise is useful for reminding investors what to look out for. I’m also always curious to see what stocks made investors really rich, and which ones caused the tears to flow. Here’s my list of 10 best and worst small caps of 2015.

U.S. stock market volatility continues, related to a slowing Chinese economy and falling oil prices.