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Monthly Archives: March 2009

ChinaEdu: A Great Young Chinese Growth Company

March 5, 2009
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ChinaEdu: A Great Young Chinese Growth Company

Today’s investing idea is a small Chinese company, for two big reasons. First, it seems to me that the world’s crumbling debt structure is bringing down a lot of elephant-sized companies, and I know from experience that healing those companies will take time.  Small, well-capitalized companies, as I mentioned above, are more attractive today. Second, China will undoubtedly climb out of this recession faster than the U.S., so young companies in China will likely be some of the fastest out of the starting gate.  In fact, some are already running. One of these is ChinaEdu Corporation (CEDU), which was...

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How to Sell Your Business

March 4, 2009
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Today, I start with a serious story about business, which will be particularly interesting to owners of small businesses. I frequently get mail from business brokers who want to help me sell my business, and I always throw it away.  I consider Cabot to be a family business; we’ve been serving individual investors for 38 years and I expect we’ll keep on doing so for decades to come. But I recently took a phone call from a salesman who was very good at his job.  He invited me to an all-day seminar west of Boston that would provide attendees...

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A Mobile Phone STAR

March 3, 2009
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A Mobile Phone STAR

Back when mastodons still walked the earth, cell phones made phone calls, period.  So cave men could call home to say the hunt had been successful, but certainly couldn’t send a picture to illustrate their prowess. Now, of course, cell phones are high-powered multimedia packages that can access the whole world and everybody in it, posting tweets to Twitter, passing thoughts to Facebook friends and sending text messages to everyone.  The Internet, photos, games, GPS, email, TV and videos are all flowing into these handheld powerhouses. You probably take for granted that these different functions all work together despite...

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Charles & Colvard: A Lesson in Love

March 2, 2009
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Charles & Colvard: A Lesson in Love

For many years, the analysts at Cabot have had a running stock-picking contest that includes Paper Portfolios, a presentation from a different person each week and a prize of absolutely nothing at all. Each new member of the Wednesday Group receives a grant of $100,000 in hypothetical capital and invests it in any stocks that aren’t in the Cabot Market Letter’s Model Portfolio and that trade over a major exchange. The amount of cash in the collective portfolios was used to help calculate our sentiment indicator, and it did a good job of serving as an overbought/oversold signal when...

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Why Do Stocks Go Up?

March 1, 2009
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Why do stocks go up?  (I suppose I could as easily ask why they go down, but I’m trying to keep a positive attitude here.)  Here are a few popular answers. The company’s revenues and/or earnings have increased. A news story or economic forecast has brightened the outlook for the company’s products or sector. The company has announced a new product or service that will kick business to a higher level. Its stock is trading at a deep discount to its intrinsic worth or has a low P/E ratio. Some analyst or TV investing guru has given the stock...

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