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Blog Archives

Don’t Be Your Own Worst Enemy

January 19, 2012
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Seeing as this is my first Wealth Advisory since 2012 began, let me first wish you and yours a terrific, healthy and prosperous New Year. With the New Year comes a clean slate for investors–mentally, it’s a lot easier to ignore the tedious up-and-down action of 2011 and look ahead toward a year full of possibilities.  Personally, I am optimistic that 2012 will be a good year, but as always I’ll take my cues from the market itself. If you haven’t done it already, now is a good time to make a few New Year’s investing resolutions.  Don’t worry–I am not...

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An Interview with Mike Cintolo

December 21, 2011
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For my last issue of 2011–a very challenging and, in many ways, confusing year for investors–our fantastic editor Elyse Andrews thought it would be a neat idea to interview me and get my thoughts on the market, what the future might hold and address some of the knowing questions on everyone’s mind.  Here’s what came out over our 30-minute chat. As this is my last issue of the year, I want to first wish you and yours the very best of holiday seasons, and to thank you for reading my (and all of our editors’) musings this year.  We...

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The Math of Falling Stocks

October 31, 2011
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Changing it up a bit, I wanted to write a little about the math of falling stocks.  To many investors, if a stock is down 30% or 50% or whatever, it’s considered cheap.  After all, if a stock is off a huge 50%, how much further can it fall?  That is where the math comes in. Ask most people how many 20% drops are in a 50% decline, and the answer is two and a half.  Right?  50 divided by 20 equals 2.5.  Simple … but also wrong. In actuality, for a stock to fall 50%, it has to...

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The Market Teaches Bad Behavior

October 28, 2011
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The Market Teaches Bad Behavior

If you ask some professionals why it’s difficult to consistently make money in the market, you’ll get a variety of answers, ranging from complexity to emotions to the relatively recent advent of high frequency trading, which can push stocks around in the blink of an eye. But I think one of the biggest reasons it’s tough to make (and keep!) money in stocks is because the market itself teaches bad behavior.  The best explanation of this comes from William Eckhardt, who was interviewed two decades ago in the book New Market Wizards (written by Jack Schwager and available at...

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Does Ulta Salon Offer a Beautiful Set-Up?

October 27, 2011
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Does Ulta Salon Offer a Beautiful Set-Up?

As for the current market environment, it’s still not quite there yet.  Of course, the major indexes have bounced nicely, but most of the action has been in the off-the-bottom crowd … the stocks that fell 40% to 50% during the past three to six months like the financials, the transports, the oils, the commodities, the industrials and the semiconductors. Please don’t get me wrong–there is nothing wrong with the rally’s strength initially being led by these off-the bottom stocks and sectors.  But, in my experience, these names almost always slow down as all the unhappy shareholders who own...

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