Young Research & Publishing Inc.

Investment Research Since 1978

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The Bear Market in Pork

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The PIIGS are deep in bear market territory, falling more than 37% since October of 2009. Our chart shows a break through key support, indicating that a drop to the March 2009 low now seems possible. … [Read more...]

A 500% Return in High-Yielders

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Do you invest in master limited partnerships (MLPs)? MLPs are publicly traded limited partnerships. They combine the tax benefits of a limited partnership with the liquidity of a publicly traded security. MLPs pay no entity-level tax. They are pass-through entities. MLP unit holders are allocated a proportionate share of the revenue and expenses of the partnership. Most of the publicly traded partnerships in the U.S. are in the energy transportation and storage business. These are the companies that own the pipelines and storage terminals that move oil and gas from the oil fields to the … [Read more...]

The #1 Investment in the World

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You may recently have read the outstanding, in-depth article from Sports Illustrated “Sports Genes,” by David Epstein, who points out that “good genes” don’t necessarily equate to athletic success. Take Ethiopian runner Haile Gebrselassie, the world-record holder in the marathon and perhaps the greatest distance runner ever, who, at age five, ran six miles each way to school because that’s how you got to school in Ethiopia. “Every day is running. Every job is running: working in the fields or just getting somewhere. Life is running,” says Gebrselassie. Just as Gebrselassie wasn’t born a … [Read more...]

Avoid Financial Ruin

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Did you know that the S&P 500 is down 5% since year-end 1999? That’s not just price; I’m including dividends here. What an atrocious return. And for the privilege of losing 5% of your capital, you’d have had to endure two of the most severe bear markets in history with peak-to-trough declines of 50% or more. Investors who retired at year-end 1999, at the height of the tech bubble, undoubtedly had too much invested in the stock market. The weekly asset allocation survey conducted by the American Association of Individual Investors showed that in January of 2000, investors were putting … [Read more...]

A Valuable Lesson

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If you have been following the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) civil suit against Goldman Sachs, you know the SEC is suing the firm for underwriting and selling a synthetic collateralized debt obligation (CDO) without disclosing to the buyers that a hedge fund taking a short position in the deal helped select the securities referenced in the CDO. The SEC is focused on whether or not Goldman made misrepresentations to the buyers. Whether or not the allegations against Goldman are true, there is a valuable lesson here for investors. The counterparties in the Goldman synthetic CDO deal … [Read more...]

A New All-Time High

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A $1 trillion dollar bailout of overly indebted euro-area governments has helped push gold to a new all-time high. The bailout in Europe greatly diminishes the credibility of the European Central Bank and the euro. Investors are rightfully fed up with paper money. The only credible alternative to paper money is of course gold. How much gold do you own? … [Read more...]

A Wake-up Call for Investors

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 5% this week. Up until this past week, U.S. stocks marched higher despite the increasing risks of a government debt crisis in Europe. This week’s sell-off indicates investors may finally be waking up to the significant headwinds the global economy still faces. If the debt crisis in Greece spreads to other Euro-zone countries, it would wreak havoc on the Euro-zone economy and neighboring countries as well. The global economy would also be impacted. The Euro-zone economy is almost the same size as the U.S. economy. If Europe dips back into a … [Read more...]

A Ticking Bomb

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On Monday morning while driving to Boston for a meeting, I was listening to the news while waiting for the start of the award-winning Helen Glover Show. Helen came on at 7:00 a.m. sharp, and even though she greeted listeners with the same energy as always, you could immediately sense that something was different this morning. Her opening emotions made listeners sit up and pay attention to what had happened to her over the weekend, which she spent in New York City at the Marriott in Times Square, right across the street from the failed Faisal Shahzad van bomb. We learned how, just like that, a … [Read more...]

Are Small Stocks Safer Than Large Stocks?

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A recent study in Financial Analysts Journal (FAJ) found that a portfolio of small-capitalization stocks is no more risky than a portfolio of large-capitalization stocks. And if the number of stocks in a small-cap portfolio exceeds 25 or so, that portfolio may be less risky than a large-cap portfolio. The authors compare volatility in two time periods, 1963 to 1984 and 1985 to 2008. In the earlier period, a portfolio of small-cap stocks was found to be significantly more volatile than the market, even for a portfolio of 50 equally weighted names, but in the more recent period, once a small-cap … [Read more...]