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Today’s main topic is a hot one and a big one ... the question of whether it might be a good idea to reduce the legal drinking age in the U.S. from 21 to 18. The background: a group of 129 presidents and chancellors from colleges and universities have signed the Amethyst Initiative, which states simply that the current legal limit of 21 is not working and asks for an open unbiased discussion of the issue.

Most investors, even those with lots of experience, usually do the wrong things and avoid the right things. And the reason isn’t because they’re dumb and I’m smart--it’s because the market is a totally contrary animal, so it works the exact opposite of how any intelligent, reasonable person would expect.

I’m concerned about the lack of progress made by our elected officials in Washington on the major issues of the day. Where are the solutions for our energy crisis, social security funding or a cost efficient health care system? We have been patiently waiting for decades to solve each of these, and other, problems.

The high price of gasoline is one of the biggest concerns of Americans today. Everyone wants to know whether the price will decline, stay up here at $4 a gallon, or climb higher. Well, at Cabot, our very successful growth stock investing system works because we DON’T try to predict the future. Instead, we simply observe trends and invest on the expectation that they will continue.

When saving for retirement, most investment gurus tell you to start young, live a disciplined life, diversify and take the long view. But some of us are too old to start young. If you fit into that category, the best way for you to approach investing for retirement might be to allocate some of your portfolio for growth stocks. But make sure you have a system to follow if you choose that path.

Legalizing marijuana would not only create a great new source of revenue, it would also bring quality control to the industry, create thousands of new legal jobs, and - best of all - stop the practice of imprisoning people who were only working to make a buck by filling the market’s demand ... which could save us many billions of dollars a year, reduce ancillary violent crime, return people to the labor force and make families whole again.

Earnings update from a company that recently reported and comments on other recommended stocks. And, an on-the-ground view of globalization.

Here’s the funny thing: I’m not describing 2007. I’m talking about 1998, a year that’s paralleling this one so closely I believe it’s prudent to look back before looking ahead.

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.

The Update includes comments on earnings from recommended companies, other updates and the Catalyst Report, a powerful tool that anyone can use for finding attractive turnaround stocks. In the April monthly edition we highlight three companies with new CEOs, and summarize our deep-dive into the cannabis industry including six companies whose shares look appealing for long-term investors. We also discuss a spin-off which is our feature recommendation.

The market is looking a lot better than it did a couple of weeks ago even though the Russia-Ukraine conflict continues and the Fed has become more vocal about the need to hike interest rates in order to battle inflation.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about a potential yield curve inversion (happened briefly on Tuesday), so I did some work earlier in the week to see what the data says about small- and large-cap stock performance around inversions.

I know that these trading fiascos are bad things ... and yet part of me is strangely pleased about them. I like having big object lessons that show what happens when people break the rules and refuse to cut their losses short. Rogue traders aren’t greedy criminals - none of the big ones have made any money for themselves on their dealings. But their mistakes remind us that anyone who reacts to losses by making increasingly riskier trades can parlay bad luck into a financial catastrophe of amazing proportions.

In 1931, Humphrey Neill, who later became famous as the Vermont Ruminator, wrote a book called “Tape Reading and Market Tactics - The Three Steps to Successful Stock Trading.” What are the Mr. Neill’s three steps to successful stock trading? The first step is familiarizing yourself with the methods of the institutions that move the market. The second step is learning how to interpret the actions of both these groups and the investing public. The third step (and hardest of all) is achieving mastery of yourself; of the “temperament, emotions, and the other variables that go to make up human nature.”

Here’s one of the biggest differences between successful and ineffective traders: The market can change its tune in a heartbeat but ineffective traders cannot...or at least they refuse to try. These traders think everything has to make sense, and rapid changes in direction rarely make sense, so they fight the new trend.

And if you’re trying to build an entire country, the materials you need might just be prosaic steel and copper, and that brings me to my investment idea for the day. The company is Rio Tinto (RTP), the U.K. mining giant that sells billions of dollars worth of iron ore, copper, aluminum and other minerals every year. The company is growing fast because of demand from China and the rest of the developing world, and that growth is having some unexpected consequences.

My stock idea for this issue stems from the “you can find good news among a heap of bad news” theory. It’s a company whose entire business stems from the airline industry ... probably the only industry that’s lost more money than the auto firms during the past few years. And today, the outlook would seem to be even worse, as businesses begin to cut back spending and oil prices flirt with $100 per barrel.

Now, this would be a natural place to write about a solar power stock, but I’ve done enough of that in recent issues. Instead, I want to write about a nifty little Brazilian company. And here’s why. In my mind, the world’s stock markets are linked by conduits that channel money this way and that, every minute of every day, always reacting to the latest news and the resulting changes in perception.

Why would you want to invest in a hard disk maker? Because historically, these companies have provided many opportunities to make big money quickly, and it looks like we’re entering one of those periods today.

Microsoft (MSFT) bid $45 billion to buy Yahoo! (YHOO) back on February 1. My investment perspective on these companies is two-fold. First, every investor in America knows these companies. It’s going to be very hard to beat the market by investing in them. Second, those companies are going down the same road traveled by IBM decades ago.