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Monthly Archives: July 2009

Announcing the Essay Contest Winners

July 12, 2009
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Announcing the Essay Contest Winners

Recently, we held our very first Cabot essay contest and the response was incredible! We received lots of insightful, well-written essays from you, our readers, and after selecting four finalists, we asked you to choose your top pick. The final results were too close to call, resulting in a tie between Essay #1 and Essay #4. Congratulations to the two winners! I’ve re-printed the two winners’ essays below with some comments written by those of you who voted. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as we did. Thanks to everyone who submitted essays and voted for their...

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Off-the-Bottom is a Tricky Game

July 11, 2009
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Off-the-Bottom is a Tricky Game

Now, with all that said yesterday, the recent worries about the economy have led to some weakness in the overall market, especially the commodity stocks.  As of mid-day today, the Oil Services Holders (symbol: OIH) is down 21% from its June peak, the Energy Select SPDR (symbol: XLE) is off 22%, and the Market Vectors Agribusiness (MOO) is off 15%.  And many individual coal and shipping stocks have been pummeled. To me, though, these stocks aren’t down because of economic fears.  Instead, I believe it’s just the “off-the-bottom” phenomenon–that is, when stocks that have fallen 80% or 90% during...

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Economic Recovery? Yes!

July 10, 2009
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Economic Recovery? Yes!

I am far from an economist, thank goodness, but with all the worry during the past week about the economic recovery coming unglued, I wanted to inject some facts (gasp!) into the conversation.  Twice before in Cabot Wealth Advisory I’ve touched on the lone economic indicator I follow regularly–the Economic Cycle Research Institute’s (ECRI) Weekly Leading Index. In brief, ECRI has a good track record of economic forecasting, and I like the group because they approach their task much as I approach mine–by using tools that have actually worked in the past.  In ECRI’s case, they looked at decades...

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ESRX: A Healthcare Stock for our Changing Times

July 9, 2009
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ESRX: A Healthcare Stock for our Changing Times

Last week, the market told us that investors in medical stocks are afraid that Obama will pull the rug out from under stocks in an attempt to reduce the country’s health care bills.  They’re dropping some of these stocks–especially drug stocks and medical device stock–just like they were dropping financial stocks a year ago! But there is one sub-sector of medical stocks that’s still attractive, and that’s the companies that are expected to help rein in those medical costs in the future. One of them is Express Scripts, the company that provides pharmacy benefit management services to managed care...

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Long-Term Trends of our Political Parties

July 8, 2009
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Long-Term Trends of our Political Parties

One of the dangers of life in our hyper-connected world, where electronic technologies keep us apprised of the latest developments all over the world, is that we lose a sense of perspective. We don’t take time to reflect, and to put into context the events of the moment. We grow to prize immediacy but in the process we lose our sense of proportion. What does it matter that we can learn of events nearly instantaneously (from the riots in Iran and China to the passing of Michael Jackson) if we do not take the time to evaluate them from...

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