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Monthly Archives: December 2008

The Year in Verse

December 21, 2008
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It’s been a dark year for equity investors, and everyone is stressed, so I’m going to lighten things up a bit and give you a little commentary in verse.  I wrote this the other day for our free email newsletter, Cabot Wealth Advisory. I hope you enjoy it.   When people recall the bad year of ’08 It’s doubtful the word that pops up will be “Great!” Investors endured a historical mauling– Economies slumped and the bear came a’calling– As bankruptcies, scandals and loss heaped their plate.   Now Lehman’s a lemon, a bear ate Bear Stearns! Detroit’s on...

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A Value Recommendation: Sanofi-Aventis

December 20, 2008
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Here’s an investment idea, taken from J. Royden Ward, editor of Cabot Benjamin Graham Value Letter.  The idea is Sanofi-Aventis (SNY). Headquartered in France, Sanofi-Aventis is the world’s fourth-largest pharmaceutical company.  It’s got 85 products in its drug pipeline, so you know it will have lucrative future.  The dividend yield is a plump 6.2%.  And just last Friday, a judge ruled that Sanofi-Aventis’ patent for Plavix, a blood-thinner that’s been the second-best-selling drug in the world for the past two years, was still valid, and that Apotex has no legal grounds to market a generic version of the drug....

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Reader Feedback on the Future

December 19, 2008
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Back on December 11, I reprinted letters from readers that predicted two contrasting visions of the future. The first, which claimed that democracies have finite lifecycles of 200 years, predicted that in the U.S. freedom is now waning, and that from apathy we will move to dependence on government and then to bondage. The second offered a glorious notion of a high-tech vehicle that would help us end our dependence on foreign oil and usher in a new wave of growth. Today, I have some of your responses. If you didn’t respond then, please leave your comments here. —...

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The Wisdom of Doing Nothing

December 18, 2008
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Yesterday’s New York Times Magazine brought the 8th Annual “Year in Ideas,” full of thought provoking, sometimes amusing, articles, patents and more.  One I found relevant to the current investing situation was the paper published by a team of Israeli scientists in the Journal of Economic Psychology earlier this year, titled “Action Bias Among Elite Soccer Goalkeepers: The Case of Penalty Kicks.”  The authors analyzed 286 penalty kicks and found that 94% of the time the goalies dived right or left; only 6% of the time did they stay in the center.  Yet the ball was stopped most frequently...

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Revisiting a Rant

December 17, 2008
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This year has certainly been a wild ride for investors, the volatility in the market has been extraordinary, we’re “officially” in a recession and the financial landscape has been dramatically altered. But we’ve been here with you through it all, giving you our best advice. Today, and in several other posts, I’m going to re-print some of the pieces we’ve written in the last 12 months both here on our blog and in our free email newsletter, Cabot Wealth Advisory. Think of it like reviewing before a test–while there’s no pop quiz at the end, there are always new...

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