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Monthly Archives: November 2011

Buying the Mouse

November 17, 2011
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My stock pick today is Walt Disney Company (DIS), a media giant that has its fingers in every corner of the entertainment business. Disney owns ABC TV, ESPN, A&E, theme parks and resorts, produces movies through its Disney Studios and Pixar divisions, owns comicbook giant Marvel and licenses its products for toys, clothing and every other product that can have a picture of a princess affixed to it. Disney is a formidable presence in the media business, generally growing revenue in the single digits (revenue growth was positive in eight of the last nine years) and paying a small...

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Two Plays on Natural Gas

November 15, 2011
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For almost the entire time I’ve been editing the Dick Davis Digests, experts have been predicting that natural gas prices would rise. Their reasoning is that, per dollar, you can currently produce much more energy from natural gas than from oil. Since the energy produced by each is indistinguishable, the experts argue that the cheaper fuel should gain popularity, even driving its price up into parity with oil’s. Economically, of course, their argument makes sense. But due to a variety of real-world factors–existing infrastructure for using the two fuels, and the relative growth in the supplies of oil and...

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Toyota Prius, Tata Nano, Tesla Roadster and More

November 14, 2011
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Toyota Prius, Tata Nano, Tesla Roadster and More

These are exciting times for observers of the automobile industry … and for a small percentage of investors in it. The Toyota Prius has become the poster child of the hybrid car movement, leading a growing range of hybrid offerings–including the massive Cadillac Escalade– from nearly every manufacturer. Pure electric cars are just beginning to emerge, with the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf targeting the mass market and Tesla aiming higher. And as these technologies improve and gasoline and diesel-burning engines are gradually displaced from our roads, the result will be lower pollution, better health and lower oil prices,...

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Silicon Laboratories (SLAB): A Hot Stock

November 9, 2011
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One of my favorite stocks today–for aggressive investors only–is Silicon Laboratories (SLAB), a key player in the highly cyclical semiconductor industry.  The stocks in this industry act like rockets; they zoom to the sky, and then they fall to the ground, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can get hurt.  But if you do know, you can make big money fast in this group, especially if you know when to walk away. Silicon Laboratories has been recommended in Cabot Top Ten Trader in 2003 and 2006 and 2009, and investors who stayed on their toes made...

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Recipe for a Bull Market

November 8, 2011
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Recipe for a Bull Market

Remember the crash of 1907? Probably not. Everyone talks about the Crash of 1929, but no one talks about the Crashes of 1937, or 1907, or 1873, or 1857 … or others. And why not? Because we like our lessons familiar and simple.  And the lesson of the Crash of 1929, in simplified form, was that the Roaring ’20s had fostered a time of excess wealth and market speculation–much of it on margin; and that as buying dried up and sellers took control, the domino effect brought a big long crash, the eventual evaporation of billions of dollars in...

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