If You Can Make It There: Cracking Asia's Tough Markets
"If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere." No, no, not New York. Being successful in New York -- at least for an American company -- is child's play compared to grabbing the brass ring in Japan, a country notoriously resistant to business outsiders.
BACK PAGE
Money and the Subconscious Editor's note: As an investment letter, The Complete Investor is devoted to giving readers our best advice on how to make and preserve money -- on how best to balance risks and rewards from a purely financial point of view. But we thought it would be interesting, from time to time, to offer a different perspective. Below, Dr. Steven Rittenberg, a renowned psychoanalyst who has written on the intersection of money and the human psyche,…
INCOME PORTFOLIO
TIPS for Thwarting Inflation
As this issue's lead article discusses, once past the near term the economy will be pushed and pulled in conflicting directions. The upshot: we could have inflation, we could have deflation, and we most definitely will have a fair amount of uncertainty. For investors interested primarily in income, deflation generally isn't a problem -- in fact, it can be beneficial, as long as your investments are secure. After all, if prices are stable or falling and…
WHAT THEY'RE THINKING
Yale and Jeffrey Hirsch: Pattern Power
Here's something to mull over. From 1939 until 2001, in every odd-numbered year in which the S&P 500 ended January with a net gain, the market was up for the year. And each time stocks trended down in January, the market lost ground for the year. If you find this intriguing, buy the 2004 edition of Stock Trader's Almanac. The brainchild of Yale Hirsch, who published the first edition in 1967, this annual manual in calendar…
MARKET BITES
What's Next for Profits?
During the third quarter, corporate profits surged by more than 30 percent to an all-time record. Indeed, as the chart shows, profits now are well above the peaks reached in the 1990s. That's a good thing, right? After all, from an investor's standpoint, growth in real profits (earnings after inflation) is the key driver of gains in stocks. There's just one problem. The financial markets react very quickly to good news, and then if they don't…
FAST TRACK
A Sharper Focus
This issue we're adding a new stock to our portfoli InFocus Corp (INFS). A leader in digital projectors for both businesses and the home, it has been aggressively slashing costs with the goal of becoming the low-cost producer while introducing a range of cutting-edge new products. And it is compellingly cheap compared to its rivals. InFocus was the first company to introduce a multiuse projector for below $1,000, its top-selling product in the second and third…
FUND FINDS
What they're buying
Fidelity Pacific Basin, which joins our Fund Portfolio this issue, has an outstanding record. So when its managers really like a stock from its neck of the woods, it pays to listen.
MARKET BITES
Russia Update
The politically motivated arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former chairman of Yukos Oil and Russia's richest man, understandably has made a lot of investors in Russian stocks very nervous.
SECTOR SENSE
Good Sports
The best international soccer clubs can help you meet your investment goals
MARKET BITES
Golden Years
Ask investors -- including market professionals -- to identify the greatest bull market of the past 30 years, and most would probably cite the tech bubble of the latter 1990s, when between late 1994 and early 2000, the Nasdaq climbed more than sixfold. But they'd be wrong. In the four plus years between mid-1976 and the third quarter of 1980, gold stocks climbed nearly sevenfold. Now that's a bull market. And this is more than an…
FRONT PAGE
Be Prepared
Over the short term, things look pretty good. With corporate profits rising and perhaps having room to rise further and with inflation still a no-show, the economic waters appear calm. Even rich valuations aren't much of a worry given the low-inflation context. And since history shows that stocks tend to rise until either an inflationary or deflationary event triggers a decline, the odds favor continued gains in stocks in the months ahead. But that doesn't mean…
MARKET BITES
The Lesser Evil
As we discuss in our lead article, the Fed is likely soon to be walking a fine line between deflation and inflation. From an investor's point of view, which is worse?
FUNDFOLIO
Funds that Broaden Your Horizons
If you want to diversify -- and we hope you do -- a smart approach is to invest in an international mutual fund. True, as a category, international funds were hit particularly hard by the recent fund scandals. The different time zones in international markets made it easier to engage in late trading and market timing, hurting the average investor. But that's no reason to eschew the best international funds. When you invest in the international arena,…
