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Monthly Archives: July 2009

Four Potential Earnings Winners Later this Week

July 21, 2009
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Four Potential Earnings Winners Later this Week

You should focus on the leaders–the stocks that held up well during the market’s five-week correction and have just bolted to new peaks on big volume.  But this is also earnings season, so even if you haven’t jumped on board some recent breakout stocks, there should be plenty of opportunity to get on board after some earnings gaps. To review, powerful gaps higher (10%, 15% or more) right after earnings reports usually lead to higher prices.  Most investors are afraid to buy a stock that’s just risen 20%, but if that gap comes after earnings, buying at that time...

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MXWL: A Stock Pick for Solar, Wind and Hybrid Lovers

July 21, 2009
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MXWL: A Stock Pick for Solar, Wind and Hybrid Lovers

All of the movement toward renewable energy and slicing carbon output represents a profitable opportunity for investors. One Green stock I particularly like because it has a dominant position in a product that is used in solar and wind power systems as well as hybrid vehicles. It’s Maxwell Technologies (MXWL), a San Diego company that has a long history of providing R&D services to the U.S. military and NASA. The product is an ultracapacitor, a handy little electronic device that stores and releases electric energy. The difference between ultracapacitors and batteries is that batteries actually generate power through chemical...

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Fixing Health Care: “The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All The Lawyers”

July 20, 2009
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Fixing Health Care: “The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All The Lawyers”

Today we start with healthcare, a subject that you’ve shown you care about deeply.  The reason for revisiting the topic:  our “public servants” in Washington are still wrestling to achiinvoeve consensus on the issue, while new data has come to light from the Massachusetts experiment. (And I’m not really advocating killing lawyers, but Shakespeare’s words do suggest some sentiments that stem from their involvement in the health care industry.) It was three years ago that our Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, signed a bill aimed at achieving universal coverage for healthcare. Since then the percentage of uninsured Bay Staters has...

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Gas Prices Don’t Predict Green Stock Performance

July 20, 2009
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Gas Prices Don’t Predict Green Stock Performance

Oil and gasoline prices, as you likely have noticed, have been easing lately, even as we’re in the midst of what energy industry hands call “the summer driving season,” the period in which people tend to drive a lot for vacations and weekend visits and in general give energy traders reasons to bid the prices up. It’s hard to believe that one year ago a gallon of gas averaged $4.06 nationally, according to the Energy Information Agency. That was the highest weekly average since 1990–the low being early March 1999, when gas cost a mere 89 cents. Last week,...

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Why We Shouldn’t Underestimate the Power of China

July 17, 2009
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Why We Shouldn’t Underestimate the Power of China

China is a country that, as we all know, is changing fast … but is still misunderstood. While writing the title of this column, I was tempted to use the word xenophobia, meaning fear or contempt of strangers or foreign peoples.  But the word I want (which appears not to exist) means, “underestimating the power of the people of a foreign country.” Because when it comes to China, I fear that’s exactly the mistake most Americans are making today. To the vast majority of Americans, China is, first and foremost, a Communist country.  Communists, as we all know, lost...

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