Two weeks ago, we highlighted how The Cabot Market Letter — one of the best-performing newsletters of the past decade — was turning bullish on stocks. Now, in the newsletter’s most recent edition, editor Michael Cintolo writes that “every one of our market timing indicators has now turned positive. … In short, the stage is set for a great profit-making bull market.”
On the same day that Moody’s announced its credit rating downgrade of Berkshire Hathaway, Doug Kass — who’s made some hay by being short on Berkshire shares for the past year — writes on TheStreet.com that he’s now bullish on Warren Buffett’s firm. “When conditions change, as they appear to be doing now … opinions must change, and opportunities must be embraced,” writes Kass. “This is especially true in the case of Berkshire Hathaway as… Read More
In his most recent posting on Yahoo! Finance, Jeremy Siegel reiterates his belief that Standard & Poor’s flawed earnings calculations for the S&P 500 are making the corporate earnings picture look much worse than it really is — and he says he thinks the market did indeed bottom on March 9. According to Siegel, author of Stocks for the Long Run and professor of finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, S&P’s calculations are… Read More
How many stocks should you own? Rob Wherry of SmartMoney.com takes an interesting look at that question today on The Wall Street Journal’s web site. Wherry examines “focused funds” (those that own fewer than 50 stocks), narrowing the list down to 18 that meet performance, fee, sales load, and manager experience requirements. Among the funds with the best five-year track records: CGM Focus (3.9% average annual return) and Forester Value (3.5% annual return), run by… Read More
Very interesting piece from SmartMoney’s Reshma Kapadia in the magazine’s new May issue. (It doesn’t appear to be available online yet; when it is, we’ll add the link). With all the recent talk about whether the U.S. is headed into — or is already in — a depression, Kapadia interviewed three money managers who actually lived through the Great Depression, getting their insights about how it felt living through that terrible period, and what they… Read More
Nature vs. nurture — it’s an eternal debate, and, as Jason Zweig shows in his most recent Wall Street Journal column, scientific research shows it’s a question that can have a great deal of impact on your investment style and decisions. Zweig writes that he recently volunteered as a guinea pig in Dr. Ahmad Hariri’s lab at the University of Pittsburgh, undergoing several different DNA analyses and brain scans. Hariri’s tests measure a variety of… Read More
Charles Schwab Investment Management’s Chief Investment Officer Jeff Mortimer offered some interesting thoughts on the current market and keys to a good investment strategy in a Q&A with Washington Post readers today. One key thought from Mortimer, when asked whether his advice takes into account potential unprecedented events or situations: “The most dangerous words in investing are ‘it’s different this time.’ The world has had many issues before, and will again. It is important to… Read More
John E. Deysher, whose Pinnacle Value Fund has outperformed 99% of its peers year-to-date and over the past year, three years, and five years, tells Barron’s that he’s been putting more cash to work, and says to look for a big bounce from small-cap stocks as the economy recovers. “Current stock prices reflect pretty dire economic circumstances,” Deysher said. “But, in general, businesses have been very responsible. They are bringing down inventories. They are paying… Read More
In every other issue of my investment newsletter, The Validea Hot List, I look in detail at one of the computerized guru models I run on Validea.com. In this week’s issue, I outlined the growth/value strategy that James O’Shaughnessy found produced tremendous results over more than four decades. Below you will find an excerpt from the newsletter along with a handful of top-scoring stock ideas based on the O’Shaughnessy investment strategy. Taken from the April… Read More
In his latest Kiplinger’s column, former Under Secretary of State James K. Glassman says that — in spite of all of the troubling developments that have hit the economy and stock market over the past year or two — he still believes that the historical trend of the stock market producing strong long-term gains will continue. “Perhaps some profound change has occurred in the economic and social fundamentals that underlie financial investments, making history an… Read More