Perhaps this (totally ignored by the media) snippet will pique your attention: on December 18, 2007, nearly 50% of all Investment Grade Value Stocks were down an average of over 30% from their 52-week highs... the Dow and the S & P 500 had fallen just 7%!

One would think that there would be a pretty clear distinction between Value Stocks and Growth Stocks. But an hour or less research, and some non Wall Street analysis, will muddy the waters significantly. In the back of our minds, most investors think of Value Stocks as more conservative investments than Growth Stocks, mostly larger, proven, and profitable companies that are quite a bit safer than their Growth Stock brethren. Value stocks, you will determine, are those that:

There are two fundamental problems with long-term financial planning under the regime of irredeemable currency. First, and most obvious, it is impossible to forecast the future purchasing power of money. Irredeemable currencies don’t float, they sink. At what rate, though, is unknowable. Second, and less well understood, is the systemic reliance on intermediaries. Hold financial assets, for instance, and you are beholden to the leveraged broker or dealer with which you have an account. Eliminating risk means eliminating the middleman, but this has become increasingly impractical by design. An individual’s future financial well-being depends to a large extent on dealing with these two problems successfully.

By choosing novel types of indexes, PowerShares has widened the range of options available for sector and thematic investors.

Starting off with two ETF offerings in 2003, PowerShares is emerging as a strong player in the sector ETF arena. The company introduced 22 sector and industry ETFs in 2005. This was followed by another 21 sector and industry ETFs in 2006. PowerShares is expected to expand the lineup of these ETFs further in the current year.

David Morgan
Ask almost anyone to define million in terms of thousands and you will get the answer that a million is a thousand thousands. Although the word millionaire still connotes a degree of financial freedom in today’s world, as the saying goes, “she ain’t what she used to be”—meaning a million today is not as valuable as a million 10, 20, or certainly 50 years ago. An area that I would like to explore is that of distinguishing the meaning of the word millionaire in terms of silver and in terms of “dollars.” If we do a quick search on the Internet, we find there are roughly 2.6 million millionaires in the United States alone. This of course is in terms of net worth as expressed in U.S. dollars. So there are literally millions of millionaires in the United States. In fact, according to this 2005 article from MarketWatch, 8.9% of Americans are millionaires. Again, that translates to roughly 2.6 million people.

Vinny Yip

The Science of Getting Rich is a timeless classic written in 1910 by Wallace D. Wattles. It is a bold title for a book and suggests that getting rich is a predictable outcome if one can master the principles outlined in the book. Here is how Wallace D. Wattles puts it in his own words, "The ownership of money and property comes as a result of doing things in a certain way. Those who do things in this certain way, whether on purpose or accidentally, get rich. Those who do not do things in this certain way, no matter how hard they work or how able they are, remain poor. It is a natural law that like causes always produce like effects. Therefore, any man or woman who learns to do things in this certain way will infallibly get rich."

An unstable monetary system
David Morgan

I was asked to reenact a dramatic scene from the movie Rollover (1981), which is a rather frightening worldwide currency crisis, depicted when oil money is withdrawn from the banking system. Although a total hypothetical scenario, it brings into crystal clear focus what systemic risk is all about. To put this into the proper context, we might visit something seldom talked about today and something I have not used in the past several years at any of the conferences that I present at—namely, the Golden Pyramid, which is attributed to Mr. John Exter.

by Gary Foreman
gary@stretcher.com

This month on our two credit card statements are notices informing us that as of Oct. 1st we may be charged "more than two" late fees or over the limit fees" per month. What's going on?
Gwen

It's estimated that Americans charged $1.8 trillion in 2005 on the 690 million credit cards outstanding. According to a Government Accountability Office study released in September, 2006, 13% of credit card users were assessed over-limit fees and 35% were assessed late fees in 2005. So Gwen has a lot of company.

The HUI finally closed above our key resistance level of 353, albeit just barely. A beautiful ascending triangle has nearly completed and the RSI turned up nicely. We will still wait for next week's open to confirm, but this very well could be the time we have been waiting for. If 353 holds, we don't expect any resistance until at least 420. That move represents a gain of 20% and could happen in a hurry.

If you are a trader and you have tried to find a forex trading system that might work for you and have curiously looked up the words “forex trading system” in Google, haven’t you been surprised and annoyed at the amount of rubbish and useless material on this subject out there? I know I have. It seems everybody is a forex expert these days. Or a Internet Marketer? – difficult to decide.

Rising prices from years of inflating the money supply are finally seeping into the highly doctored core consumer price index. To hear some of the leading economists debate the inflation issue on TV, with remarks such as asset price inflation being good inflation versus product inflation being bad inflation, should tip us off as to just how far from a solution we are. If this is what we have come to expect from those trained in the field of economics, just imagine how hopeless it would be to try to explain the dangers inherent in today’s economic model to your average investor or consumer. We have currencies worldwide that do not hold value for any length of time in the hands of stewards that merely wish to project the illusion that they are concerned with maintaining purchasing power. Meanwhile, they put on a big show of slowly ratcheting up short-term interest rates to demonstrate monetary credibility while at the same time flooding a reckless amount of money creation into the system to offset the higher rates which are still below actual inflation. Surprisingly, this sleight of hand has well in excess of 95% of the masses so easily fooled, demonstrating their economic illiteracy.