a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_T9VXVyuEITg/SUNq1diWT3I/AAAAAAAAAmk/bSjmELRaRnY/s1600-h/Cigarette.jpg"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 231px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_T9VXVyuEITg/SUNq1diWT3I/AAAAAAAAAmk/bSjmELRaRnY/s320/Cigarette.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5279180654902660978" //abr /Now that Barrack Obama is the president-elect, the United Stated will have the first smoking president in many years. Although he has made plans to quit smoking, he admits that he still hasn't yet stopped entirely. Will this have an effect on the consumption of cigarettes and tobacco? If you think so, and you have no objection to investing in cigarette stocks, you may want to consider the tobacco companies, especially because of their extremely high yields.br /br /Vector Group Ltd. (VGR) is a Florida based company that has numerous brands of cigarettes including Liggett, Grand Prix, Eve, Pyramid, USA and nicotine-free Quest. The stock has a PE of 15 a PEG of 1.25, and pays a yield of 11.7%.br /br /Reynolds American Inc. (RAI) makes and markets cigarettes and other ...

There has never been a correction that has not proven to be an investment opportunity. While everything is down in price, there is actually less to worry about than when prices are historically high. More money has been lost by people who bought into last year’s markets than by those who will buy into this one, at this stage of the correction. When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.

Every correction is different, the result of various economic and/or political circumstances that create the need for adjustments in the financial markets. This correction is worse than most that I’ve experienced, but the doom and gloom scenarios many have been pushing are unlikely to come to fruition. Once the media elects a new president, they’ll just have to start reporting better news: 96% of all mortgages are current sounds a whole …

By Keith Fitz-Gerald Investment Director Money Morning/The Money Map Report One of the things people don’t understand about buying gold for diversification is that it doesn’t work all the time. It works over time. That means that you can’t simply switch from one asset class to another when the going gets tough and expect miracles. Nor can you expect higher returns. And that’s the really cruel part. Many so-called alternative investments, gold being the most notable, are being sold right now on the basis of recent high returns to salivating investors desperate to stop the bleeding in their portfolios. No question, the yellow metal offers diversification; but near all time highs, its “protection” is debatable at best, when viewed against the harsh light of historical data. Which is why, at the risk of receiving some very testy email, we have to point out that if you bought ...

Fellow Stockmasters, just came across this great article on the Motley Fool about Analyst estimates. Good read: It is a pervasive myth that has left the savings of countless small investors in ruins. More likely than not, it is a piece of information you've relied on while making ...

I went on to do a few more indices, namely KOSPI, HSI, Nikkei 225, BSE, FTSE, JKSE and plotted them on the following chart together with STI and S&P 500.

JKSE and KOSPI are the two best performing market indices on a 10-yr annualized basis and Nikkei 225 and FTSE are the two worst performers. For simplicity sake, if $1,000 is invested in every of the above indices, the portfolio would be something like this:-The $8,000 portfolio would have grown to $24,769 today (since 1998), an annualized returns of 11.96%.

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Latin America internet player Mercadolibre (MELI) is one volatile stock... every time it weakens we get commentary about a coming secondary (which they tried to price in the past, but withdrew) - eventually I assume it will happen. But for now, we just like to layer in on dips, and layer out on strength. The chart is quite poor as the stock has broken all major key support levels but with the stock down 15% from its peak Friday (and 30% from its peak), I made some purchases this morning in the $40s/$41s, taking the stake up from 0.7% to 1.5% of the portfolio. Due to the bipolar nature of this stock it is hard to tuck this away as a buy and hold; not to mention a very pricey multiple. So we'll pick our spots and when some of our holdings, especially ones we've cut ...

By Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Dissident investor Carl Icahn escalated his attacks on Yahoo Inc.'s beleaguered board Wednesday in an acerbic letter demanding the directors scrap an employee severance plan that drove up the potential costs of a Microsoft Corp. takeover.If Yahoo's board clings to the severance plan, Icahn indicated he will follow through on his 3-week-old threat to ask shareholders to fire the board at the Sunnyvale-based company's Aug. 1 annual meeting. That move would also target Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang, who co-founded the Internet pioneer 14 years ago and pushed for the adoption of the severance program. The plan could trigger $464 million to ...

I am not going to do any commentary tonight as I need to take a break from the market chit-chat for a night. I am pretty disappointed by my portfolio today and am very surprised I have so many “hot” charts doing so poorly. On top of that every beautiful chart that sets up in a perfect buy pattern just takes off without giving us ANY good entries. I still have not scanned my charts yet but it appears everything that was a significant position of mine either held up today or fell on lower volume. The problem with some is that some of these longs show me a small loss or a small gain but still look very nice. My first instinct is to sell them and take what I can get. But if I sell them here, without actually getting a sell signal, I will have been undisciplined and ...

Steve Reeves' return on his portfolio is at a positive 8.73% as of May 29th, 2008.  Reeves is our OTC specialist and never pulls the trigger on a stock that costs more than $5.  Review his portfolio of stocks and decide for yourself if you'd like to become a subscriber. Fellow Masters, my articles and stock recommendations are now available on www.WallStNewsletters.com. I look for undervalued securities and the cheaper the price the better.  OTC stocks are my favorite hunting grounds and I never pull the trigger on a stock that costs more than $5 and is worth holding for at least ...

AFSI was by far my largest long position in 2007 as this chart was about as near-perfect as they can get for an IPO. It was a very easy decision to load up on this one (It only got to 15% of the portfolio due to the low VIX and low volume in the overall market). However, it was still big enough to make a strong impact on my accounts. From the start to the finish, AFSI gained 89%, 85%, and 73% respectively, from each of my longs, in three months. It wasn’t a huge Monster Stock but considering the horrible low-VIX environment that we have been in since 2006 it was definitely a big winner. This is the difference between a Monster Stock at the start of a bull market (TASR ‘03) and a Monster Stock near the end of ...