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Monthly Archives: May 2009

Hubbell B: My Favorite Value Stock

May 18, 2009
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Hubbell B: My Favorite Value Stock

So what’s hot now? I can’t give you my recommendations from my May issue of the Cabot Benjamin Graham Value Letter as that wouldn’t be fair to my paid subscribers. However, here’s an idea from the April Letter. Hubbell B (symbol: HUBB or sometimes HUB. B or HUB/B) fully qualifies as an undervalued Benjamin Graham stock selection. The S&P Earnings and Dividend Rating for HUBB is A-, which is better than the minimum requirement of B. The company’s Total Debt to Current Asset ratio is 0.54, which is well below the maximum 1.10 required.  HUBB’s Current Ratio is 2.18–more...

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Imagining a Car-Free World

May 15, 2009
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Imagining a Car-Free World

Imagine a place where no one owns a car and everyone walks, rides their bikes or takes public transportation to work, to the store, to school or anywhere else they need to go. No, this isn’t some Star Trek-like fantasy world, it’s Vauban, Germany, a planned community where cars are largely banned in favor of other modes of transportation. A New York Times article this week detailed the particulars of this forward-thinking community; where a tram runs through the center of town, shops and houses are mixed together so no one has to travel far to do the shopping...

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How to Find the Hidden Values in Today’s Market

May 15, 2009
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How to Find the Hidden Values in Today’s Market

A lot has been written here before about how to pick a growth stock. The advice from my fellow Cabot colleagues is sound and, when followed, will lead to exceptional returns. The editors of the growth-oriented Cabot letters know their stuff, and can produce performance numbers that prove it. But I like value stocks, and I believe that value stocks should be included in your portfolio. In my opinion, your portfolio should contain half value stocks and half growth stocks and should not contain 100% value or 100% growth stocks. Value investing, perhaps more than any other type of...

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ETFs: A Way to Play the Rally

May 14, 2009
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ETFs: A Way to Play the Rally

Probably one of the best ways to have played the market’s recent rally would have been through ETFs.  The leading stocks I focus on simply haven’t gotten it done quite yet (more on that tomorrow), but the market has been a bargain hunter’s paradise, and one way to play that was through ETFs. If the blast-off indicators are right, then the indexes have some more gas left in the tank.  So I want to give a few helpful hints about this still-evolving world of ETFs. First, the so-called leveraged ETFs (Ultra S&P 500 ProShares (SSO), which moves twice the...

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Indicators May Signal Bull Market Blast-Off

May 13, 2009
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Indicators May Signal Bull Market Blast-Off

When it comes to market timing, I prefer to keep it simple, and that’s exactly what my Letters do.  For the most part, my timing is based on two things–the trend of the overall market, and the action of leading stocks.  One pertains to the overall market’s health, while the other tracks the stocks I usually focus on.  Simple. However, there is one category of indicators that I do track … though they generally give signals only every few years!  Thus, you can’t use these indicators to tell you when to get in or out of the market, and...

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