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I rarely ever delve into the murky, stinky waters of politics, and really, I’m not going to start now. If you’ve listened to the news, you probably know about the good and bad of the $800 billion (and growing) stimulus package that will soon be taken up in the Senate. I’m actually optimistic that the Senate will be able to pass a workable, bi-partisan bill. However, my rant today is based on policies that have been adopted by Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike. I’m talking about the various tax credits currently in the tax code, and the income thresholds that apply to them. Some aspects of the current stimulus bill include these thresholds.

In preparation for today’s Cabot Wealth Advisory, I went back and read our in-house recap of a recent survey we sent you. While it was expressed a few different ways, the most common response was some form of “Help me make money by helping me know when to buy, sell, be in and out of the market ... " and so on. Today I want to give you 10 nuggets to put in your investing toolkit.

The weather has finally turned nice here in New England, with a consistent string of 60-degree days and a couple of scorchers thrown in (we set records on Tuesday, with temperatures north of 90 degrees!). That means it’s nearly vacation time! And with vacation comes reading; I’m always on the lookout for good books, investment or otherwise, to help me unwind while I watch waves lap against the sand. Since this is a wealth advisory, of course, I’ll offer up some of my favorite investment-related book recommendations. Heck, I might even re-read one or two of these this summer. Here are some favorites …

A team of reporters from Reuters calculated how much the world’s investment banks had disclosed writing down from derivatives in the past year, from the third quarter of 2007 through the second quarter in 2008, ending July 31. The total? $404 billion. In just four quarters, Wall Street wiped out its previous 10 years of profits. Even the airlines aren’t that bad.

Every now and again I like to do a question and answer issue of Cabot Wealth Advisory--we editors at Cabot spend hours each week answering subscriber questions, so we have a large pool to choose from. I think it’s a good idea to share some of these questions with everyone, as much can be learned from a good question and a good answer.

Stock market old-timers will often tell newbies that “the market wants to take your money,” which, on the face of it, isn’t all that credible. After all, lots of people make lots of money on Wall Street. Still, there’s something to the warning, and the quicker you learn about it, the quicker you can start printing your yearly results in black ink, rather than red. So what can you do about it? As any of our longtime readers know, the answer is: have a system.

A couple of years ago, before we began writing Cabot Wealth Advisory, someone in our office came up with the idea of sending out a free monthly email that answered many of our subscribers’ most common questions. We named it Ask Cabot, but as time went on we stopped getting as many general investing questions, and we got busy with our paid publications. So we stopped that and started Cabot Wealth Advisory. Since its inception we have gotten a slew of questions and today some of our readers FAQs get answered.

Of course, I couldn’t finish this weekend’s Wealth Advisory without at least mentioning the overall market. In case you missed it ... the sellers have taken control. But the most important thing is that the sellers had taken control of most stocks before this week - I wrote two weeks ago about how there was a growing divergence between the few leading glamour stocks and the broad market.

One of my favorite stocks is in the technology industry, where we often find great growth stories in bull markets. Its name is Rackspace Hosting (RAX), and its business is simple; it delivers enterprise-level hosting services to businesses of all sizes all around the world. The company first came to my attention when our IT director selected it as the site for our Cabot server about two years ago, a choice that has proven wise. Rackspace differentiates itself from the competition--in an industry that risks commoditization--by promising “Fanatical Support” to its customers ... and delivering.

Cree Inc. (CREE) is a leader in the production of light emitting diodes.

Answers to readers top questions about how to handle the recent correction.

Tax-free bond funds yield peanuts these days, so if you’re trying to actually grow your money, there’s only one sensible course.

In football, too many scouts focus on how a prospect looked in the workout room or running drills in a T-shirt and shorts.

Suffice to say we are in a bull market. Areas of it are most definitely frothy. But stepping back and thinking about where we are in a bigger cycle I continue to feel as though we are entering a more sustained economic recovery and (hopefully) sustained market run-up broadly similar to what happened coming out of other major shocks, like the dot-com bubble and Great Financial Crisis.

Today, I’m writing on a MacBook Pro. This morning I did my morning crossword puzzle on my iPad. All day long, my iPhone is by my side. My home Wi-Fi comes from Apple AirPorts. And some nights, I stream entertainment through my Apple TV. In short, I love Apple products, and I expect to continue using them for many more years. But one of the most important market truisms is this: “The company is not the stock.”

The market took another hit this morning, but like yesterday, the major indexes have found support as the day has progressed—just after 3 pm EST, the Dow was down 70 points while the Nasdaq was off 66 points. Part of the reason for the recent selling is supposedly due to inflation fears and higher interest rates—indeed, the 10-year note reached north of 1.30%, which is low historically, but up 30 basis points (0.3%) since late January and 50 basis points (0.5%) from the start of December.

There were a lot of headlines over the last couple of days about the emerging small-cap rally.

That’s because small caps surged on both Tuesday and Wednesday after a somewhat cool CPI inflation report drove expectations for a 25bps September rate cut to 99%.

On Wednesday, the S&P 600 SmallCap Index jumped 2.0%, trouncing the 0.3% rise in the S&P 500 Index.

Explorer stocks were mixed this week as Asian stocks struggled amidst increased U.S.-China economic tensions and concern over Chinese economic growth.

Commodities are back but something to keep in mind was mentioned to me by a friend in the energy business: “America is running out of shale oil.” This has big implications for world oil markets and America’s energy mix since if we are running out of the shale oil that can be extracted at about $60/barrel, higher oil and energy prices are around the corner.

Small caps continue to underperform large caps in 2025.

The S&P 600 is up a mere 3.6% year to date, trailing the S&P 500’s 16.7% gain by roughly 13 percentage points.

The gap closes meaningfully if we strip out megacaps’ strong performance and compare the S&P 600 with the S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP), which is up “just” 10.3%.