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Something I’m always concerned about it how we’re communicating with our readers. One way that I stay informed is by reading blogs. While I was brainstorming about how we can better communicate with you and vice versa, I began to think that a blog might be the way for us to reach out to our readers, while at the same time hearing what you have to say. So after hammering out the details, I am pleased to announce the creation of The Iconoclast Investor (iconoclast-investor.com), a place for the Cabot editors to share their thoughts and you to share yours.

Cabot Small-Cap Confidential, a limited subscription newsletter, is one of our newest publications, launched just one year ago. Its focus is on finding undervalued and little-known small-cap companies that are poised to break out in a big way. The number one request Cabot has had over the years has been to find great stocks sooner and with Cabot Small-Cap Confidential, we’re able to do that.

Small caps are off ever so slightly over the last five sessions, though yesterday’s CPI data and Jerome Powell’s press conference/FOMC meeting helped the asset class bounce back from what was a fairly ugly looking four-day slide. The big-picture takeaway here is that the asset class is suffering from the same type of bad breadth malaise that’s keeping a lid on much of the broader market.

With the market bouncing around in the first two weeks of the year on more speculation about Fed rate cut magnitude/cadence (economists are now thinking slower and fewer of them) and mounting geopolitical risks, small caps as an asset class have begun to trail the broader market.

That said, on a stock-specific basis there’s been a lot of positive motion in small caps in the MedTech and software space, which is where we concentrate.

One of the eternal truths of our business is that every day we get to hear from readers who are just starting out as investors.

In my opinion, Warren Buffett is the best investor ever. But how did Mr. Buffett achieve such remarkable returns?

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.

I’ve chosen five great dividend-paying stocks from the latest issue of the Dividend Digest to tell you about today.

In honor of the two-year anniversary of Cabot Small-Cap Confidential, I’ve been bringing you a multi-part series with Editor Thomas Garrity. Today he’ll reveal some of his time-tested investing rules.

Tim Lutts’ list of five programs that aren’t working and five things that are.

Arrow Electronics (ARW) and Prudential Financial (PRU) should do well in 2010.

Today, one investment strategy that’s struggling a bit is the value strategy. While growth stocks in general have had a great year, and international investments have had a great year, thanks in part to the falling dollar, value investing strategies have lagged.

Microsoft wants to pay $44 billion - perhaps the largest technology purchase ever - to buy Yahoo! Why? To compete with Google! But does it make sense? Well, from a big-picture point of view, anything that can thwart Google’s dominance of Internet search and advertising probably makes sense for Microsoft, and if they’ve got the cash, there are worse places to spend it. But does this make for an attractive investment opportunity? Do you want to own a piece of Microsoft/Yahoo!, recognizing that the Microsoft part is eight times the size of the Yahoo! part?

So on to the stock. To refresh your memory, Force Protection is a South Carolina company with $340 million in annual sales that makes trucks for the military ... trucks that resist the force of various explosive devices. The majority of these vehicles are bought by the U.S. government, and they’ve proven quite valuable in Iraq. Some have been sold to Canada. And last Monday the British government, which has already bought 100, ordered 140 more.

In my mind, just as the failure of the sub-prime market triggered the collapse of the housing industry, the collapse of the housing industry will trigger the deflation of our debt bubble. Eventually, if all goes well, the end result will be a smaller debt load for the U.S. and a smaller debt load for American consumers as well ... which in my mind means living in houses we can afford.

The publication that would become Cabot China & Emerging Markets Report was first published in March 2004 under the name Cabot’s China Investor. The editors at Cabot saw the huge growth potential in China and it has paid off in the years since. In 2006, the name was changed to Cabot China & Emerging Markets Report and the publication expanded its focus to include other strong emerging markets.

On Thursday night, I saw the movie, “I.O.U.S.A.,” which focuses on the national deficit. It has been hailed as “An Inconvenient Truth,” without a celebrity-type lead like Al Gore, but I found it equally interesting. While it’s not a “sexy” topic (as one man in the film kept reminding everyone), unlike global warming, it’s something we can all agree on: Our nation is in debt up to its ears and way past that.

I recently received a question from a reader asking about some of the terms we use when writing about investing. I’ll bet the questioner isn’t the only reader who’s confused about some of our investing terminology. So today I’m going to rundown a list of terms that appear frequently in our writing.