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Monthly Archives: March 2011

Harbin Electric: Two Catalysts for Action

March 10, 2011
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With blood on the tracks today, it’s hard to find a lot of attractive setups for new buying. But there’s one Chinese company that I’ve had my eye on for a long time, waiting for the chart to settle into a buyable situation. That may just have happened. Harbin Electric (HRBN) is a maker of electric motors, including rotary, linear and specialty micro-motors. Ninety percent of sales are within China, and revenues have increased by 85% annually for two years in a row. Earnings growth reached triple digits in three out of the last four quarters and the company...

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Investing in the Next Big Thing

March 9, 2011
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Today, the action is in cloud computing, social networks, smart phones and tablets.  Which brings me to the Apple iPad, a device that is changing the world faster than anyone—except perhaps Steve Jobs—thought possible. Apple sold more than 15 million iPads in the nine months of 2010 the device was available.  This year it may sell 45 million. And while Apple (AAPL) has been a fine stock, even more profitable have been some of the relatively unknown companies supplying the guts of the device. One of these is Polypore (PPO), which I’ve mentioned here four times since August. The...

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The Next Big Thing

March 8, 2011
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The Next Big Thing

Today I’m not going to beat around the bush.  I’m jumping right into investing, because I think the market is at a critical point here. On the one hand, the world is a mess. Arab governments are being overrun by crowds whose actions threaten to throw a monkey wrench into our oil-addicted economy. And here in the U.S., where only one new deep-water drilling permit has been issued since the moratorium was lifted last October (!), it’s becoming clearer day by day that our debts are excessive, and that we simply cannot continue to spend as we did in...

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Two Stocks for Our Energy Future

March 7, 2011
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When I wrote about e-readers last week, I mentioned how much I love to read. And just this week I finished a book about living off the grid. I’m not planning to abandon my city-supplied electricity, sewer services or water any time soon, but I wanted to learn more about this counter-culture, especially as oil prices rise daily. The author of the book, Off the Grid, Nick Rosen, was clearly in favor of off the grid lifestyles and in fact was conducting a search across the U.S. for the perfect off the grid location while writing the book. So...

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The Meaning of “Late-Stage”

March 6, 2011
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Switching gears, I’ve been writing in my publications (Cabot Market Letter and Cabot Top Ten Weekly) about many stocks-especially the popular leaders like Netflix, Baidu, F5 Networks, etc.-being “late-stage.”  And, as in the example above, I usually get a few emails pertaining to that comment. “Why would you say XYZ stock is late-stage if its story is so good and its earnings growth (even its earnings estimates) is so strong?”  The answer is relatively simple-history tells us that, no matter how good the story or earnings, growth stocks tend to have a shelf life.  Usually their greatest performance comes...

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