Daily Posts Archive
Breaking news: Teenagers have stopped caring (as much) about brands and labels and are starting to shop based on savings and sales. Who ever thought we’d see this day? This week’s New York Times contained the story of how the recession has turned teenage shoppers, one of the most powerful spending groups, into penny pinchers. This, of course, has hurt some of the higher-priced teen shops, like Abercrombie & Fitch, while others, like A&F’s lower-priced sister Hollister, are benefiting from this change.
Note from Cabot Wealth Advisory Editor Elyse Andrews: Are you looking for a way to really grow your money? How about the opportunity to turn $25,000 into $88,994? This knockout return is available from a rare security that combines stocks and bonds. Only eight of them exist. In today’s issue, Carla Pasternak, editor of StreetAuthority’s High-Yield Investing, explains what these securities are and how they work. The only question remaining is this: Why aren’t they juicing the returns in your portfolio?
As someone with more than a decade’s worth of experience writing about individual investing for Forbes and now for the Cabot Green Investor--and investing for myself for longer--I’m excited by the profit potential not only from the companies capitalizing on the current regulations, but also the ones that stand to benefit from the $115.9 billion of U.S. economic stimulus money I calculate is going toward Green projects, from electric vehicle conversion funding to watershed protection projects to modernizing the electrical grid.
Every few months, I compile and read the results of our welcome series survey, which is taken by our newest subscribers. And while we get asked a lot of different questions on the survey, there’s one in particular that I see repeated frequently: “What are the differences between Cabot’s publications?” I’m going to explain our newsletters, one at a time in an ongoing series (similar to a series I wrote last year), to give you a better idea of how each one fits into your investing style and how you can take advantage of what we have to offer. Today I’m going to answer some of the most frequently asked questions about Cabot Market Letter. But first I want to introduce all of our publications.
One of the reasons I love the stock market is that it’s such a battle of the mind. Of course, few pundits or analysts will tell you that--to them, it’s all about number crunching, research, valuation and industry analysis. And all of those are important. But when you get down to it, with money on the line, buying and selling stocks becomes emotional. Really, though, it’s how you handle those emotions that will go a long way toward determining how much money you make and keep in the stock market. The investors that shoot from the hip and react to every wiggle in the market generally do poorly. Those that have a well thought out plan are usually the ones that excel.
The best stocks have a good stories, numbers, and charts.
What do you do if you want regular income? What do you do if you’re retired and looking for a new source of quarterly checks? Where do you go to find investments that are safe and pay regular, dependable dividends? I suggest you look at Dick Davis Income Digest, our monthly publication that’s chock full of investing ideas culled from the experts at the best investment newsletters. Every issue brings you dozens of ideas (some new, some follow-ups) on the best income-producing investments that are available to individual investors.
On a recent visit to meet Syracuse University journalism students, I expected long faces and a lot of pessimism. But instead I was greeted with excitement about online media and the way it will not only help continue the tradition of journalism, but will actually improve the craft. This gave me hope that while print newspapers may be on the way out (see the recent news of the New York Times threatening to shutter the Boston Globe), I have no doubt that journalism will continue in one form or another. And that’s a very good thing, in my book (or blog).
In trying to explain the Cabot approach to picking growth stocks, I’ve come up with an acronym. I call it the SNaC approach. That means that a great growth stock must have a compelling Story, excellent Numbers and a technically supportive Chart. Story, Numbers and Chart. Cute, ain’t it? But it’s more than cute; I think it really makes sense. And using it can make you a better stock picker for one big reason: it forces you to look beyond a stock’s story.
Last week’s G-20 summit was a bigger success than anyone imagined. Among other items, the group agreed to increase the loans available to struggling countries to $1.1 trillion. That boost in funding is a prime example of why I think investors should be looking toward gold--and gold miners, in particular. We’re seeing unprecedented global spending, and I think a wave of inflation may be just off the horizon. Central banks around the world have been stirring together all the right ingredients for a big batch of inflation--and last week’s G-20 summit was just icing on the cake.