Cryptocurrencies have been red-hot in 2017.  Bitcoin, the most valuable cryptocurrency, with a market cap of $72 billion, is up 359%. Ether, the currency traded on the Ethereum platform and the second-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $33 billion, is up a mind boggling 4,231%. Even litecoin, with a market cap of $3.3 billion, is up 1,278%. These mind-blowing gains have not gone unnoticed. Everyday investors now want to learn how they can get in on the action. Google trends shows that searches for “bitcoin” just hit a new all-time high. Looking forward, I am bullish on… Read More

Cryptocurrencies have been red-hot in 2017.  Bitcoin, the most valuable cryptocurrency, with a market cap of $72 billion, is up 359%. Ether, the currency traded on the Ethereum platform and the second-largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $33 billion, is up a mind boggling 4,231%. Even litecoin, with a market cap of $3.3 billion, is up 1,278%. These mind-blowing gains have not gone unnoticed. Everyday investors now want to learn how they can get in on the action. Google trends shows that searches for “bitcoin” just hit a new all-time high. Looking forward, I am bullish on cryptocurrencies. I think there is plenty of upside left, even with the massive gains we’ve seen already.  However, as someone who has bought and currently owns bitcoin, ether, and litecoin, the reality is that buying and holding cryptocurrencies is still extremely risky. #-ad_banner-#Not only is it more complicated to buy cryptocurrencies than stocks, but both crypto exchanges and personal crypto wallets are vulnerable to hackers. For example, in early July more than 150,000 ether coins, worth more than $32 million at the time, were stolen from three ether projects being developed by Edgeless Casino, Aeternity, and Swarm City. That theft… Read More

I’d like to share a little story with you today. I’ve told this one before, so if you’ve heard it, please bear with me. But I think it’s appropriate for today’s issue… A newlywed couple is on their honeymoon in Las Vegas.  They had a sensible budget for gambling: a thousand dollars. However, by the third night that money was gone.  When the husband settled into bed for the night, he noticed something on the dresser. It was a $5 chip that he decided to save as a souvenir earlier in the day as their gambling budget evaporated. Then, suddenly,… Read More

I’d like to share a little story with you today. I’ve told this one before, so if you’ve heard it, please bear with me. But I think it’s appropriate for today’s issue… A newlywed couple is on their honeymoon in Las Vegas.  They had a sensible budget for gambling: a thousand dollars. However, by the third night that money was gone.  When the husband settled into bed for the night, he noticed something on the dresser. It was a $5 chip that he decided to save as a souvenir earlier in the day as their gambling budget evaporated. Then, suddenly, a vision appeared in his mind’s eye. The number 17. It had to be a sign. The husband quickly threw on his hotel bathrobe and went downstairs to the roulette wheel. He placed the chip on number 17. Sure enough, the wheel hit 17 and the 35-1 bet paid $175.  He decided to let his winnings ride, and once again it landed on 17, paying $6,125. And so it went, again and again, until the lucky groom was about to wager $7.5 million. The pit boss intervenes, claiming the casino would not pay out the winnings on such a large… Read More

The opening of gaming resorts in Macau (China) in 2004 was a boon to casino stocks. By the first full year of operations, Macau casinos were reporting $6.2 billion in revenue and more than twice the gaming receipts of the Las Vegas Strip that year. At its 2013 peak, Macau brought in $44.6 billion for the six companies with licenses to operate, dwarfing the $4.3 billion in gaming receipts for the entire state of Nevada. #-ad_banner-#But measures by the Chinese government to slow currency outflows weighed on Macau in the two years through 2015, and casino stocks got hammered. With… Read More

The opening of gaming resorts in Macau (China) in 2004 was a boon to casino stocks. By the first full year of operations, Macau casinos were reporting $6.2 billion in revenue and more than twice the gaming receipts of the Las Vegas Strip that year. At its 2013 peak, Macau brought in $44.6 billion for the six companies with licenses to operate, dwarfing the $4.3 billion in gaming receipts for the entire state of Nevada. #-ad_banner-#But measures by the Chinese government to slow currency outflows weighed on Macau in the two years through 2015, and casino stocks got hammered. With slow growth in the United States and falling revenue in Asia, investor sentiment fell to a point not seen since the 2008 crisis. Now a new market is opening, one that could rival Macau as a top global gaming destination. Estimates put gaming receipts as high as $25 billion in the initial years — and that could be just the beginning. On top of the upside from this new market, fundamentals are improving for the Macau market and for casino stocks themselves. Investor sentiment could be ready to come back to the industry in a big way. Place Your Bets… Read More

It’s on every investor’s mind…   “When is this bull market going to end?”   I wish I knew. But I can’t predict the future any better than you can.   What I can tell you is that I’ve been keeping a close eye on a handful of indicators that have historically provided signs of a looming pullback, correction and/or recession — and they’re telling me that we’re not quite there yet.   But the cracks are beginning to show…   Back in June, I told readers of my premium Maximum Profit service about how my system can identify underlying… Read More

It’s on every investor’s mind…   “When is this bull market going to end?”   I wish I knew. But I can’t predict the future any better than you can.   What I can tell you is that I’ve been keeping a close eye on a handful of indicators that have historically provided signs of a looming pullback, correction and/or recession — and they’re telling me that we’re not quite there yet.   But the cracks are beginning to show…   Back in June, I told readers of my premium Maximum Profit service about how my system can identify underlying trends on Wall Street and in the market. I covered how it spotted the feverish pace of share buybacks, the soaring number of stocks with high nominal prices and, of course, how my system had 60% of our portfolio in cash before the market fell as much as 9% at the beginning of 2016.   This week it flashed something a bit more alarming… Something that flies directly in the face of what all the major financial news outlets are telling us.  —Recommended Link— The Best Thing That Ever Came Out Of Washington You know what IRAs and 401(k)s can… Read More

Recently my team and I have been telling my readers about a quiet revolution that’s taking place thanks to eccentric billionaire Elon Musk and his band of scientists at Tesla Motors (Nasdaq: TSLA). You see, for years they’ve been working feverishly at their lab in Fremont, California on a battery that could provide enough energy to power a house. Last year, news came along that they’d finally broken through. And now, for the first time in decades, we could see the entire utility sector turned on its head as a result — leading to massive gains for early investors. As… Read More

Recently my team and I have been telling my readers about a quiet revolution that’s taking place thanks to eccentric billionaire Elon Musk and his band of scientists at Tesla Motors (Nasdaq: TSLA). You see, for years they’ve been working feverishly at their lab in Fremont, California on a battery that could provide enough energy to power a house. Last year, news came along that they’d finally broken through. And now, for the first time in decades, we could see the entire utility sector turned on its head as a result — leading to massive gains for early investors. As you can see, Tesla’s battery storage device looks nothing like your old-fashioned AA battery. It’s a sleek, compact unit that you can mount on the wall in your garage. One single, stand-alone unit delivers enough power to take an entire home completely off the grid. Simply charge it with a solar panel, windmill or any other power source, and you’ve got all the energy you need. Thanks to Tesla, the world is about to see that an energy sea-change has been quietly unfolding before their eyes for several years now. And many of the world’s greatest investors are… Read More

The much-heralded “Trump Trade” has started to unravel. Despite our new President’s best efforts, the economic reality of implementing policies has begun to weigh on market sentiment.  Despite 2017 being a successful year for the stock market so far, investors are scrambling to locate the next hot sector and stock. It seems new highs in the major indexes are being hit on an almost daily basis without a significant pull back. At this point, professional investors are asking just how much more upside the market can offer. The small-cap sector, however, has not kept up with the rest of the… Read More

The much-heralded “Trump Trade” has started to unravel. Despite our new President’s best efforts, the economic reality of implementing policies has begun to weigh on market sentiment.  Despite 2017 being a successful year for the stock market so far, investors are scrambling to locate the next hot sector and stock. It seems new highs in the major indexes are being hit on an almost daily basis without a significant pull back. At this point, professional investors are asking just how much more upside the market can offer. The small-cap sector, however, has not kept up with the rest of the market this year. While the S&P 500 is higher by 9%, the small-cap-based Russell 2000 is only higher by about 1%. Small caps with solid fundamentals riding on developing trends may represent an untapped bastion of upside potential. 5 Small-Caps Poised For Gains 1. MACOM Technology Solutions (Nasdaq: MTSI) Shares of this analog semiconductor company plunged into the deep value zone on a third-quarter miss, setting up an ideal buying opportunity for forward-looking investors. Boasting a market cap of just under $3 billion, this Lowell, Massachusetts-based technology company specializes in telecom optical components and data centers. MACOM’s primary… Read More

On February 6, a group of 653 men and women from the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom gathered in a private conference room in Boca Raton, Florida. But this wasn’t just any conference. The average person’s net worth in this room was $75 million. All these rich people were there for the same reason: They were sick and tired of walking around with a bullseye on their backs. You see, banks, private equity firms, hedge funds, and brokerage firms see the wealthy as “easy targets”. These are people they can siphon fees off of — and make a… Read More

On February 6, a group of 653 men and women from the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom gathered in a private conference room in Boca Raton, Florida. But this wasn’t just any conference. The average person’s net worth in this room was $75 million. All these rich people were there for the same reason: They were sick and tired of walking around with a bullseye on their backs. You see, banks, private equity firms, hedge funds, and brokerage firms see the wealthy as “easy targets”. These are people they can siphon fees off of — and make a killing. As one attendee — a former executive in five different companies — put it, “I felt the advice I was getting was always tainted.” Two others discovered they were using the same investment advisor, but one of them was paying more for the exact same service. Another one called stock brokers and wealth managers a “den of thieves” who want to “make themselves money first, then their clients.” So… with nowhere to go, and nobody they could trust with their money, they turned to each other. —Recommended Link— $1.3 Trillion In Cash For Folks Who Do Not Trust Wall… Read More

The classic buy-and-hold strategy is in decline. That’s too bad, because the strategy is a good one. So what explains the lack of support from investors and financial writers for the strategy that arguably set Warren Buffet apart from almost every other investor in history? Personally, I think it owes to a fundamental misunderstanding of the strategy. You see, buy and hold is a strategy that still works for stocks purchased at a discount to their intrinsic values. That means an investor must buy the stock at the right price. And if the investor does this correctly, a portfolio will… Read More

The classic buy-and-hold strategy is in decline. That’s too bad, because the strategy is a good one. So what explains the lack of support from investors and financial writers for the strategy that arguably set Warren Buffet apart from almost every other investor in history? Personally, I think it owes to a fundamental misunderstanding of the strategy. You see, buy and hold is a strategy that still works for stocks purchased at a discount to their intrinsic values. That means an investor must buy the stock at the right price. And if the investor does this correctly, a portfolio will contain stocks that will be held for a very long time.  You see, a long holding period is just a natural result of prudent stock picking.  For sure, the hardest part of this process is resisting the temptation to sell — especially in times of economic distress. But significant gains can be had when investors hold stocks for the long term.  And this isn’t just an academic exercise, either… Below is a brief overview of three stocks I own which I will likely never sell. The High-Tech Darling The first is Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA). For readers familiar with… Read More

Let me ask you a question. Do you like heavy, clunky cell phones whose batteries lose their charge quickly? Of course not. Nobody does. And that’s why manufacturers are constantly seeking battery designs that are more compact and powerful.  In the old days, the best we could do was nickel-cadmium chemistries. You can still find them in ancient cordless phones built in the early 1990s. But then lithium-ion made its breakthrough, and the world has never looked back.  Lithium has more uses than duct tape. You’ll find it in fireworks, airplanes, glass cookware, and medicine cabinets. It’s even a key… Read More

Let me ask you a question. Do you like heavy, clunky cell phones whose batteries lose their charge quickly? Of course not. Nobody does. And that’s why manufacturers are constantly seeking battery designs that are more compact and powerful.  In the old days, the best we could do was nickel-cadmium chemistries. You can still find them in ancient cordless phones built in the early 1990s. But then lithium-ion made its breakthrough, and the world has never looked back.  Lithium has more uses than duct tape. You’ll find it in fireworks, airplanes, glass cookware, and medicine cabinets. It’s even a key raw material for rocket fuel propellant and nuclear reactor coolant.  But that’s not why I like it. These are just niche applications.  The true utility comes from the fact that lithium is endowed with some curious properties. It is the lightest of all metals (it can actually float on water) and has twice the energy storage density of previous materials. That’s an ideal combination, which is why lithium is coveted by battery makers.  Last quarter alone, approximately 307 million smartphones were produced worldwide (about 140,000 per hour), most of which were outfitted with lithium batteries. And it’s not just phones. Read More

After a tough 2016 due to political pressure, drug-makers looked to be having a good year. The SPDR S&P Pharmaceuticals ETF (NYSE: XPH) reached a 2017 high of $44.32 in late July, up nearly 14% on the year.  Even the hardest hit among the group were finding new life, such as when Valeant Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: VRX) (which had suffered from seemingly daily negative headlines) surged 96% from its April low through July. But second-quarter earnings have not been kind. A chorus of poor earnings reports, especially in generics makers, has wiped 6.3% of the value off XPH in just 10… Read More

After a tough 2016 due to political pressure, drug-makers looked to be having a good year. The SPDR S&P Pharmaceuticals ETF (NYSE: XPH) reached a 2017 high of $44.32 in late July, up nearly 14% on the year.  Even the hardest hit among the group were finding new life, such as when Valeant Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: VRX) (which had suffered from seemingly daily negative headlines) surged 96% from its April low through July. But second-quarter earnings have not been kind. A chorus of poor earnings reports, especially in generics makers, has wiped 6.3% of the value off XPH in just 10 trading days. New fears around increased competition and high levels of debt are dragging the entire industry lower. At the same time, this is an industry with an immense amount of support from multiple demographics. This could force government regulation that could start to clear the way for faster drug approvals. That means a rebound could be in the making for the best names in the group — those pulled lower with the industry but with strong fundamentals and upside potential. I’ve found three drug-makers trading at attractive valuations, without the debt that overhangs much of the group, and that… Read More