Jan. 22, 2008

If you're getting this today, and you care about The Market, you'll find bullet points. I'm not a trader, and as I lay out in my latest book project, Actionable & LARGE: Cracking the Buyside Code , I use times like these to BUY cheap, to STEAL the dickens out of the big money merchants' lard-assed portfolios.

Thus:

• If you feel you must trade and are looking for ideas, then GO LONG. Everyone else is betting against this market. Take a look at a Europe turnaround (ticker: EFA), a computer chip rebound (USD) or a bank boost via preferred shares (PGF). I don't own any of these, but I believe we are way oversold on the overal stock market and way overbought on the Treasury bonds.
• If you must own gold at these high prices (I do, but then, I always have), you might want to look at the "juniors." Very few of the small exploration companies have benefited from the rising gold price.
• If you want to take a step toward cracking the buyside code and getting LARGE, read my new nonfiction book later this year, if ever I find a publisher. In the meantime, use these days and weeks to get tiny and small companies at some of the cheapest, most ridiculous prices I ever have seen. I still love life sciences, mostly genomic tools and drug discovery companies working on cancer and autoimmune diseases. The consumer companies, which I do not own, are probably ready to bounce higher after a half-year in the mud. These are food and restaurant companies, coffee, beverage and so on.
• One more thing, get LARGE, make it worth your while, and try not to trade too much. Oh, and if Apple shares go any lower, give Forrest Gump a call.

-- Thom Calandra, your friendly Tiburon writer and friend