The U.S. Housing Market: Three (More) Reasons Real Estate Isn’t Rebounding

by Louis Basenese, Advisory Panelist

Editor’s Note: Yesterday we heard from Martin Denholm, the managing editor at Smart Profits, one of our affiliate publications which will be joining us over the next few weeks. We’ll be adding their experts to our esteemed panelists to give you the best investing ideas and advice out there. Today we follow Martin with outspoken favorite, Louis Basenese, who also gives us his take and concern for investors, on the housing market.

If ever an off-the-wall indicator existed to predict the fate of the U.S. housing market, I found it… You see, business is booming in one particular niche of the real estate industry - shrink-wrap.

That’s right. Contractors and developers are wrapping mothballed building projects in plastic, literally - from single-family homes to 25,000 square foot commercial properties.

The beneficiary? Privately-held Fast Wrap

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Investing in the Pink Sheets: The Most Speculative & Lucrative Companies on the Planet

by Robert Williams, Associate Investment Strategist, The White Cap Report

Editor’s Note: Just over a month ago, Robert Williams, Chief Investment Strategist of The White Cap Report explained investing in the Pink Sheets - an unknown, but lucrative, segment of the market that most of Wall Street doesn’t even acknowledge - to his subscribers. We’re republishing his article below for your benefit…

Roughly 3,000 companies trade on the Nasdaq. Another 2,000 trade on the New York Stock Exchange. And the IPO market adds more companies to the mix each quarter (although the IPO market has been quiet of late).

Together, they represent the entire stock “universe” that most know and search through.

But many investors are surprised to know that there’s an entire market that’s overlooked - and mostly forgotten. A group of companies that may well be

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Edson Gould: The “Gould-en” Rule to Stock Market Investing

by Robert Williams, Advisory Panelist, The Oxford Club

To appreciate why we favor companies with consistently good earnings and discourage efforts to time the market, you have to consider the often overlooked studies of Edson Gould.

Gould is regarded as one of the best market technicians of all time, albeit his enviable track record was logged during the 1960s and 1970s, before the Dow had even cracked the 1,000 level.

All the same, he’s relevant because he was the first to suggest that economic fundamentals and monetary conditions alone couldn’t explain (or predict) stock market behavior.

He began his exhaustive studies as an analyst for Moody’s in the 1920s, intent on building a model that could accurately predict the movement of stocks.

Edson Gould had great difficulty finding a relevant pattern to the stock markets. In his frustration, he stumbled upon a principle that

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The Gone Fishin’ Portfolio: The Right Way to Invest

by Alexander Green, Chairman, Investment U
Oxford Club Investment Director
Thursday, January 22, 2009: Issue #920

At our Oxford Club Chapter Meeting in Managua last week, I offered members a few suggestions on how they can improve their returns with our recommendations.

The first suggestion was not to cherry-pick one or two stocks. It’s better to diversify widely. This doesn’t just reduce your risk. It also gives you more opportunities to have a big winner. Diversification is an offensive tactic, not just a defensive one.

Another suggestion was to stick with our discipline. Don’t just note that we recommend trailing stops, for example. Use them. Enter the orders with your broker. If you don’t, you’re prone to start rationalizing that your stocks will “bounce back eventually.” (Not always. Ask any Wachovia shareholder.)

Yet another essential component of successful investing is

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The Gas Prices Rollercoaster: Why Energy & Infrastructure Are Inextricably Combined

by David Fessler, Advisory Panelist, Investment U Friday, January 16, 2008: Issue #917

President-elect Obama takes office in less than a week’s time. While many will be watching closely to see how he handles the ongoing financial crisis, I’ll be equally interested to see how he handles a far more ominous one: our ongoing energy and infrastructure crisis.

Regular readers know I believe energy and infrastructure are inextricably combined. We need cheap energy to fuel sustained economic growth. And we need infrastructure in place to move and dispense the energy from its source to its destination. Today I’m going to give you a perfect example of how the two are intertwined, and how one can play off the other to create a positive benefit for all.

In the face of gas prices that are less than half of what they were only a

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