web analytics

Monthly Archives: January 2010

NBTY: A Great Simple Investment

January 21, 2010
By

As for the stock market, the good news is that the market was up 3% in the first five days of 2010, and history tells us that’s a positive omen.  Since 1950, when the stock market has risen over the course of the first five trading days of January, it’s finished the year with a gain 86% of the time. The average gain was 13.7%, which I think most investors would find satisfactory. With Cabot’s growth-oriented advisories, we aim to do better, through two techniques. The first is market timing, the practice of taking cash out of the market...

Read more »

Johnson & Johnson Follow-Up

January 20, 2010
By
Johnson & Johnson Follow-Up

Last week, I wrote about Casey Johnson, the great-great granddaughter of the founder of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ).  Among your insightful responses was this one, from a reader who’s a Financial Advisor in the Northwestern Mutual Financial Network. “If Casey Johnson was single at the time of her death–and I think she was–and with no current federal estate tax in 2010, she may well be the first famous “name” to entirely escape federal death taxes. (Her estate would still be exposed to state of California inheritance or California estate taxes). “And while Congress will supposedly resurrect the federal estate...

Read more »

Google vs. China: Round Two

January 19, 2010
By
Google vs. China: Round Two

Last week Google (GOOG) threatened to pull out of China, explaining that it has had enough of the government’s interference (both open and clandestine) with Google’s efforts to serve its markets while doing no harm.  Whether the company will actually pull out or not remains to be seen. The immediate beneficiary of the announcement was native competitor Baidu (BIDU), whose stock climbed 20% over the next two days.  Baidu is in the portfolio of Cabot China & Emerging Markets Report, and subscribers are happy about that.  (Interestingly, Baidu’s Chief Technology Officer resigned yesterday … coincidence?) As for Google, I...

Read more »

Investor Sentiment and Stock Market Timing

January 18, 2010
By

2009 is now in the books, and it was a year of high drama.  Investors should have the date March 6, 2009, underlined in their diaries as the day U.S. stock markets completed the retest of their November 2008 lows and put in a definitive bottom.  Since the S&P 500 bottomed at 667 on that date, the Index shot up as high as 1,130 (December 29) to register its 2009 high and roared to new highs on Monday, January 5. It’s worth noting (as I have read somewhere) that the sentiment index of the American Association of Individual Investors...

Read more »

Join us on Facebook and Twitter!

January 17, 2010
By

Last April, I wrote to you about our new initiative on the social networking Web site Twitter, where I can be found under the name IconoInvestor (a nod to Cabot’s blog name, The Iconoclast Investor, which is in turn a nod to our iconoclastic approach to investing). In the months since I introduced you to Twitter, I’ve found lots of insightful investors to follow and made connections with some really smart people I would have never “met” without this social network. If you haven’t tried Twitter yet, I invite you to give it a whirl; you never know what...

Read more »