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Monthly Archives: October 2011

Wearing Out the Weak Hands

October 4, 2011
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I hope you won’t take it the wrong way if I say that I hope you’re feeling bad about how the market is acting. It’s nothing personal, and I certainly hope you’ve been following our advice and have the growth portion of your portfolio heavily in cash. I hate to see anyone (including myself) losing money in the market. My hope that the market depresses you just reflects the reality of what it takes for a bear market to turn itself around, which is for a vast majority of investors to get discouraged and sell out. This is a...

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Judge a Stock on its Own Merits

October 3, 2011
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I wanted to quickly touch upon a topic that is likely to come up in the weeks ahead. That is, once we get a new, sustained uptrend, what stocks do you buy? Unfortunately, many investors go right back to the trough of the last uptrend. They’ll talk about Baidu (BIDU), Acme Packet (APKT), Riverbed Technology (RVBD) and Salesforce.com (CRM). After all, all are still good companies, all are still posting solid growth, and the underlying drivers of their growth are still in effect. So why wouldn’t they be good buys? The funny thing is that, when coming out of...

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A Great Time to Invest in Small-Cap Stocks

October 2, 2011
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Every fall, we celebrate the anniversary of Cabot Small-Cap Confidential and this year is no different. In honor of this occasion, I’ve conducted a Question and Answer session with the editor, Thomas Garrity. I’m bringing it to you in two parts; last week you read part one and today I’m bringing you part two. I hope you enjoy it! Where do you see the market, and small-cap stocks, going for the rest of 2011? What about 2012? Despite a rebound in the stock market in 2010, it’s evident that uncertainty about the economy and the durability of the recovery...

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ACT Not React

October 1, 2011
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ACT Not React

Now for this week’s Contrary Opinion Button. Remember, you can always view all of the buttons by clicking here. ACT Not React The capitalization of the first word on this button is quite unusual, as is the ungrammatical nature of the phrase; “Act, don’t react” would be proper. Nevertheless, the sentiment is clear. If we only react, we will always be followers. Contrarily, if we think intelligently for ourselves, we can anticipate and thus sometimes find ourselves at the front of the parade.

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