The Iconoclast Investor

My investing idea for today goes back to the Simplified Cabot Market Timer I wrote about a few days ago.  It’s also a simple idea, but it should do well for you as the market deals with a stagnating economy and takes the measure of the new administration.
This idea is this: When you get a [...]

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The U.S. stock market has been showing a few signs of life recently, which is good.  I hope the period of catastrophic declines we’ve been going through hasn’t hurt your portfolio too badly (although I suspect the pain has been pretty widespread).
I have been telling the subscribers to the investment advisory I edit, Cabot China [...]

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“XYZ stock is up 15% today!  The story is great!  And the market was up 10% on Tuesday!!  Should I load up on XYZ?!?”
This is a common question I’m getting this week–many just can’t stand the sight of some stocks roaring ahead 10% or 15% without them.  But that’s what you should do.
First, because the [...]

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I’m more of an intermediate-term investor than anything else, but there’s no doubt the market (a) might have hit a sustainable low last week, and (b) could easily rally 10% to 20% and still be in a downtrend.  Thus I’m getting a bunch of questions talking about profiting from this bounce.
Well, I’ll show you two [...]

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Every time a bunch of investors think they’re smart, the market teaches them a lesson.  Fertilizer stocks are the example du jour.
Last night, Mosaic (MOS), which is a huge seller of phosphates and potash (more phosphates than potash), released earnings … and they weren’t good.  Earnings came in at $2.65 a share, way up from [...]

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Here’s a relatively simple sell rule you can apply to your investing: If, after a multi-week advance (preferably at least two or three months), your stock suffers a huge down day on the biggest volume of the entire advance, it’s usually best to sell.
The latest, greatest example of this came with commodity stocks back on [...]

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One of things we try to do each and every day is remained focused on the market’s leading stocks and sectors.  In a bull market, that means those stocks that are the apple of institutions’ eyes, which are being bought up day after day.
In a bear market, it’s just the opposite–identifying the handful of stocks [...]

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“Beware the Ides of March!” was a warning to Julius Caesar in February of 44 B.C. Unfortunately for him, he ignored the warning, and was unmercifully killed on March 15 of that year by a group of Senators opposed to his position of dictator for life of Rome.
According to Wikipedia, Ides was simply a [...]

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Energy prices down, retail stocks up.  Goes together like America and apple pie.
As oil and unleaded gasoline have fallen more than 20% since peaking four weeks ago, money has been moving into many retail names.  But what caught my eye was the monstrous volume seen in many retail chains on Monday, August 11.  Just check [...]

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While they don’t offer anything revolutionary, I’ve always been interested in what we at Cabot call “bull market stocks”–those companies whose businesses are directly tied to the fortunes of Wall Street.  Thus, in a bull market, their sales and earnings are almost guaranteed to grow dramatically … in a bull market, that is.  Examples include [...]

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