How We Made 20.5% In 3 Months With Carl Icahn

[John Thomas]

Fidelity, fresh from the embarrassment of having missed the entirety of the ETF movement?s formative years, is determined not to allow that to happen again.

And so they?re going to be very innovative going forward, no matter what kind of idiotic risks for their customers it engenders.

Here?s how they?re ?innovating? in the retirement investing arena (via MarketWatch):

Fidelity has partnered with SecondMarket?s Bitcoin Investment Trust to allow its clients to save for their retirement by putting the virtual currency in self-directed IRAs.

?If you are a Fidelity client, you can now invest in the Bitcoin Investment Trust through an IRA.?

Allow me to repeat that phrase because I think it?s important:

?to allow its clients to save for their retirement by putting the virtual currency in self-directed IRAs?

Are you out of your mind?

To be clear, I have nothing against Bitcoin and it may well become a widespread medium of exchange in the coming years. But what that has to do with speculating on its ?price? in dollars in the context of an IRA account, I have no fucking idea.

Edward Johnson II built Fidelity into a powerhouse financial institution in the 1940′s by instilling the principles of common sense and hard work. This stood out at the time; the culture of investing in those days, from Boston to Chicago to New York City, was essentially an amalgam of insider tipster-ism, naked speculation and outright theft. The success of Fidelity was due to Johnson?s overarching twin principles of deep-rooted respect for the customer and a first-class research process that became a model for the industry by the time Edward?s son Ned was given the reins in the 1950′s.

I don?t think the elder or younger Johnson would be particularly impressed with whatever this Bitcoin gimmick is meant to accomplish. It smacks of attention-seeking and is probably dangerous for even the ?accredited? Fidelity account holders who are dumb enough to bite at this trinket being dangled in front of them.

I?m embarrassed for this once-great investment firm. They may as well launch an online roulette wheel.


The Reformed Broker

[John Thomas]

I follow a broad range of unconventional, but highly useful leading economic indicators that gives me a decisive edge when predicting the future direction of global financial markets. One of them has started flashing a warning sign.

I fund an orphanage in remote Zhanjiang, in China?s southern Guangdong province, near Hainan Island called The Zhanjiang Kids Organization that catches the kids who missed out on China?s economic miracle.

Lacking America?s social safety net, child abandonment in the Middle Kingdom usually leads to a cruel death through malnutrition or disease at the few primitive public institutions that exist. With China?s one child policy now 30 years old, most families prefer their sole heir to be a boy, which means that girls account for the vast majority of orphan children.

Recently, there has been an upsurge of children dropped off at the orphanage and a sudden increase in the age of the kids. Twelve-year-old boys are being dumped because they cannot be fed.

For a Chinese family to give up a boy this close to working age is truly an act of desperation. As a trader, this is all proof to me that the Chinese economy is slowing faster than people realize, and that the global economy will take a deeper dip this summer.

I usually avoid organized charities like the plague. The great majority are scams where 95% of the funds raised go to ?administrative costs? that usually end up in someone?s personal bank account. As we all know, the corruption in China is rampant.

The Zhanjiang Kids Organization is a rare exception. I know the organizers personally, who originally got involved by adopting a couple of girls there, and they are saints. They carefully oversee the spending of every single dollar, assuring that it gets spent for its intended purposes.

Instead of doling out cash to local organizations, which often gets lost, as other organizations do, they undertake physical delivery of desperately needed food, books, and medical supplies. They also organize trips for volunteer pediatricians, educators, and administrators from the US.

As a result of my spring fund raising effort, I am told that the administrators were able to pay for a pediatrician and a dentist to fly in from the US. Kids were also given new toys. Initially, some didn?t know what to do with these, as they had never seen toys before. We take things like blocks, puzzles, and picture books for granted. Imagine what goes through a five year olds mind when he or she sees one for the first time.

Yes, I know that I am a hardened old ex-Marine combat veteran and am driven by the harsh reality of numbers, and not emotion. But when I hear stories like these, I melt. I know a lot of you have made a bundle following my advice this year, with some up as much as 500%.

If you made $1 million, please donate $1,000. If you clocked $100,000, that should be worth a $100 gift. This is a rare example where $1 worth of generosity creates $1,000 worth of good. Talk about bang per buck!

To learn more about The Zhanjiang Kids Organization, please visit their website http://www.zhanjiangkids.org/. There, you can contribute directly through your PayPal account or credit card. If you have any further questions about this fine organization, please contact director Susan Doshier directly at susandoshier@gmail.com.

Checks should be made payable to the ?Zhanjiang Kids Organization? and sent to Zhanjiang Kids Organization, c/o Susan Doshier, 2 Abbey Woods Lane, Dallas TX 75248, USA. Print out a hard copy of your receipt. This organization is set up as a US 501 (3) (c), so all contributions are fully deductible on the 2012 Form 1040, schedule ?A?. There is no reason why Uncle Sam shouldn?t pick up one third of the tab.

Act in your own self-interest. You may be working for one of these orphans someday. If you don?t, your kids will.

[John Thomas]

One thing about the stock market is that it is never boring.

Just last month, casino operator Wynn Resorts (Nasdaq: WYNN) broke down below a rising trendline, and within days it changed its mind. This week, the stock not only moved higher to break out from a bullish flag pattern, but it is once again challenging all-time highs.

With Lady Luck smiling on Wynn once again, it is time to buy this recovered sector and WYNN in particular.

Last month's false breakdown below both the rising July trendline and the 50-day moving average did indeed look bearish. After all, the stock already failed at resistance supplied by its all-time highs set by the 2007 and 2011 peaks. And with momentum indicators also heading south, things did not look so good.

[John Thomas]

?We are one budget deal away from being the hot spot of the world. Europe is in the toilet, China?s growth has fallen down, and the Middle East is going backwards. We have a lot of potential for fracking and innovation. If we can prove our nation is governable, we will be the golden spot in the world,? said David Brooks, a conservative columnist for the New York Times.

[John Thomas]

The Chart of the Day is Altisource Asset Management (AAMC). I found the stock by sorting the All Time High List for the frequency of new highs in the last month and it was right near the top of the list. The stock is off the charts and in the last year went from 15.00 to 1005.00!

The company provides portfolio management and corporate governance services to Real-Estate Investment Trusts and other real-estate portfolio-driven entities. Altisource Asset Management Corp is based in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

This is a 1 year chart:

[John Thomas]

When the Dow Jones Industrial Average was reformulated in September, former technology leader Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) was quietly replaced. It was yet another tough blow for a firm that is on track for its third straight year of sales declines. CEO Meg Whitman, who was just celebrating her second full year at the company's helm, could not have been pleased.

But Whitman is surely getting the last laugh. Because against the odds, Hewlett-Packard has turned out to be one of the top-performing tech stocks of 2013. Shares have doubled in value, putting the S&P 500 Index's 25% gain to shame. More than $25 billion in market value has been added, and Whitman has less need to worry about job security.

[John Thomas]

Data sets are getting larger and larger, and there's a lot of useful information just waiting to be made sense of. Nowhere is this truer than in the health care industry.

Different hospitals have different platforms for managing data, which makes it exceedingly difficult to exchange information. Although it has been a slow process, the U.S. is moving toward a health care market that provides care more efficiently. Part of this includes implementing electronic health records and managing hospital costs.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allocated about $20 billion for electronic health records. This portion of the act offers financial incentives to hospitals and physicians to adopt and use health care information technology. The other positive is that many organizations face penalties for non-compliance, starting in 2015.

With all this "reform" coming to the health care industry, one of the best ways to invest in the coming health care data boom is Allscripts Healthcare Solutions (Nasdaq: MDRX).

Yet the stock hasn't been all that great to investors over the past couple of years. Thanks to a botched acquisition, MDRX is still down nearly 50% from its 2007 highs. The multi-year pressure was a result of the 2010 acquisition of Eclipsys that proved to be more trouble than it was worth.