LETTERS AND SERVICES
1. Everything by the Bank Credit Analyst Research Group (1002 Sherbrooke Street West, Suite 1600, Montreal, Quebec, Canada 3L6; 516-499-9706). Our two favorite publications are International
Bank Credit Analyst and Emerging Market Analyst, which do the best
job of any service we have found of covering the liquidity cycle for most countries around the world. They can provide an in- credible amount of data and models to readers. Also excellent are their Bank Credit Analyst and BCA Foretrends. While these services are a bit more expensive than most newsletters, they are much more comprehensive and a bargain for what you get. You may have a bit of learning curve to get through if you are not familiar with economic jargon and concepts.
2. Back and future issues of Nelson Freeburg's Formula Research, Inc. ($195 per year, 4745 Poplar Avenue, Suite 307, Memphis, TN 38117; 901-756-8607). The Heine Model as well as many of our gold models and other timing models come from the excellent market timing research done by Nelson Freeburg. For the technically or system oriented trader, this service is an absolute must. Freeburg scans the globe for new ideas to put into models that beat buy and hold in each asset class applied to with lower risk on a monthly publication basis. Freeburg is not afraid to use other people's ideas
356 RECOMMENDED BOOKS, SERVICES, DATA SOURCES, AND LETTERS
if they work. His service is like hiring a full-time research staff for an unbelievably low price. Highly recommended.
3. Larry Connors' Professional Traders Journal (Oceanview Finan- cial 23805 Stuart Ranch Road, Suite 245, Malibu, CA 90265; 310-317-0361). Particularly for technically and short-term oriented traders, this too is an unbelievably rich source of research and (computer and real-time) tested ideas to apply to improve your trading, published monthly. Connors has innovated some excellent ideas such as his classic volatility indicator comparing short-term and long-term volatility and looking for a return to the long-term mean. A real gem and bargain at $295 per year.
4. Dan Sullivan's The Chartist and The Chartist Mutual Fund Timer (P.O. Box 758, Seal Beach, CA 90740; 562-596-2385). Dan Sullivan is another long-time innovator whose work on relative strength and timing systems has put his services at the very top of all long-term systems and services in terms of performance both on a risk and re- ward basis. Sullivan has managed to beat indexes while sidestepping the bulk of most major bear markets for over 20 years. His timing model is excellent, utilizing technical and monetary
and his discipline is unmatched. He also has managed accounts available ($100,000 minimum, contact Bill Mais) which, although highly correlated with U.S. equities, offer a much lower risk and bet- ter way to participate in U.S. stocks than a typical mutual fund. The service is also a great bargain at $150 per year.
5. Jay Schabacker's Mutual Fund Investing (Phillips Publishing, 7811 Montrose Road, MD 20854-3394; 1-800-211-8558). Sch- abacker's "Business Cycle" which underlies his movement among different mutual fund groups, is essentially the Liquidity Cycle. This conservative and somewhat traditional manager has done an excellent job of steering investors into low-risk yet very profitable funds in a diversified approach. Schabacker always gives investors his favorite sectors, favorite bond favorite foreign funds, and favorite U.S. areas of investment with each issue. For the per- son who has very little time to donate to monitoring the markets and who is U.S. oriented, this is one of the best services around. Jay's book, Winning in Mutual Funds is highly recommended. 6. Top-quality rating services such as Value Line, Zacks, and
Investors should subscribe to at least one of these services (probably Value Line first, Zacks second, and Lowry's third) to help screen out the best potential stocks. Investors who can afford it, should sub- scribe to all three. Some services, such as Portfolio Strategy Letter, provide an initial screen of stocks by these services.
LETTERS AND SERVICES 357
7. Our own Portfolio Strategy Letter (Investment Research Associ- ates, 334 State Street #106-267, Los Altos, CA 94022; 650-233-9091), which follows the flexible asset allocation strategy and other strategies described in this book on a monthly basis. The letter also lists U.S. and foreign stocks on our watch list that meet our gives our global asset-class relative strength rankings, and allows investors to follow our diversified high yield ideas, which are more conservative yet have beat the S&P since 1992 with less than half the risk. Information on Midas Hedge funds is also available to accredited and non-U.S. domiciled investors. The Port-
folio Strategy Letter model portfolio has achieved an over 400 per-
cent (vs. 250% for S&P and 190% for world index) gain since March 1992 when publishing began, without sustaining a draw- down over 8 percent.
8. William services: Investor's Business Daily, and Daily Graphs, as well as classic book, How to Make Money in
Stocks. O'Neil is not only one of the great innovators in the field, he
has done more to popularize the concepts of relative strength, strong earnings and technical patterns than almost anyone on the globe. His paper Investors Business Daily is simply the best paper out there for investors in U.S. equities. Investors will note that we have borrowed many ideas from O'Neil's CANSLIM selec- tion criteria in our own selection criteria. That is simply because O'Neil's concepts work under rigorous historical testing. While we also try to buy decent value and place more emphasis on just dis- covered institutional accumulation than O'Neil, investors would be foolish not to utilize the research that O'Neil makes available to in- vestors for a bargain price. Almost every serious investor should not only read but also subscribe to Daily Graphs, O'Neil's bottom level service that looks weekly to monthly at 6,000 or so stocks and lists more factors in one graphics section than any other chart I have ever seen anywhere. Every investor should consider these ser- vices as the highest priorities for better investments. I simply can- not recommend them highly enough.
9. Other suggested services or publications include: Mark Skousens Strategies and Forecasts (see Phillips Publishing, 7811 Montrose Road, Potomac, MD 20854-3394; 1-800-211-8558), (which gets my award for the best information at the cheapest price of any letter or service), The Wall Street Journal; Forbes; Technical Analy- sis of Stocks and Commodities Magazine; Anthony Robbins' Power Talk tapes and Date with Destiny Seminar; and the Invest- ment Psychology Seminars of Van
358 RECOMMENDED BOOKS, SERVICES, DATA SOURCES, AND LETTERS
DATA SERVICES AND SOFTWARE
For many small investors and just finding the data necessary to keep track of indexes and interest rates for many non-U.S. countries is a new and difficult process. Where can investors find such data? And where can investors find macroeconomic data on the United States and other countries?
1. Global Exposure (8800 Venice Suite 217, Los Angeles, CA 90034) is probably one of the cheapest (around $200 a year) ser- vices that provides an unbelievably complete set of macroeco- nomic, and index data on the United States. Almost all the macro models in the book can be monitored via this ser- vice's SCB database.
2. The cheapest source of information on international interest rates and stock index prices is in the weekend Financial Times, which can be purchased at most newsstands. The Times is also an excel- lent source of information on offshore fund prices.
3. A bit more but certainly worth it, are International Bank Credit Analyst and Emerging Market Analyst (1002 Sher- brooke Street West, Suite 1600, Montreal, Quebec, Canada 3L6; 516-499-9706), which are monthly reports that produce more charts and information on the
rate picture of over 40 countries around the globe, than any other pure data service we have seen. Considering the breadth of infor- mation contained in these reports, the services are a phenomenal bargain.
4. Portfolio Strategy Letter (Investment Research Associates, 334 State Street #106-267, Los Altos, CA 94022; 650-233-9091), although not a data service, produces a monthly following of the status of our models and allows readers to follow along via the dictates of our strategies for around $300 a year (with book-buyer discount). 5. For more sophisticated investors and managers, we have used the
services Bloomberg, Datastream International, and Worldscope, and believe that although these are expensive ($2,000 a month and up), they offer the most complete international coverage that is available worldwide. Investors wanting more information on hedge funds might also look into Nelson's Rating Service, and Managed Account Reports Guides.
6. We use a wide-range of services, but some of our favorites include Meta-stock, TradeStation, CQG, Ganntrader, GET, and a relative newcomer that has programmed some of my own work
BOOKS 359
and has O'Neil's relative strength pattern formulated into it is In- vestigator (Pinpoint Strategies, 650-969-MONY).
BOOKS
Trading
1. Bogle, John. Bogle on Mutual Funds. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.
2. Cappiello, Frank. Finding the Next Super Cockeysville, MD: Liberty Publishing, 1982. J
3. Connors, Larry, and Blake Hayward. Investment Secrets of a Hedge
Fund Manager. Chicago: Probus Publishing, 1995.
4. Connors, Larry, and Linda Raschke. Street Smarts. Malibu: M. Gor- don Publishing Group, 1995.
5. O'Neil, William J. How to Make Money in Stocks. San Francisco: Mc-
1995.
6. O'Neil, William J. The Investor's Business Daily Almanac of 1992.
Chicago: Probus Publishing, 1992.
7. O'Shaughnessy, James. What Works on Wall Street. San Francisco: 1996.
8. Schabacker, Jay. Winning in Mutual Funds. San Francisco: American Management Association, 1996.
9. Schwager, Jack D. Market Wizards. New York: New York Institute of Finance, 1989.
10. Soros, George. Alchemy of Finance. New York: John Wiley & Sons 1994.
11. Sperandeo, Victor. Trader of a Wallstreet Master. New
York: John Wiley & Sons, 1991.
12. Train, John. The New Money Masters. New York: Harper Perennial, 1989.
13. Zweig, Marty. Winning on Wall Street. New York: Warner Books,
1986.
Economics
1. Figgie, Harry. Bankruptcy 1985. Harry Figgie is a Grace Commission member.
360 RECOMMENDED BOOKS, SERVICES, DATA SOURCES, AND LETTERS
3. Paul. Unlimited Wealth. New York: Crown 1990. 4. Rand, Ayn. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. New York: Signet, 1967. 5. von Mises, Ludwig. Human Action. Chicago: Henry Regnery Com-
pany & Contemporary Books, rev.
6. Wilson, Bureaucracy. New York: Basic Books, 1991.
Future Trends
1. Drucker, Peter F. Innovation and Harper 1993.
2. Peters, Tom. Thriving on Chaos.
3. Popcorn, Faith. Clicking. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.
4. Popcorn, Faith. The Popcorn Report. New York: Doubleday Bantam Dell, 1991.
Personal Development
1. Carnegie, Dale. How to Win Friends and Influence People. New York: Pocket Books, 1964.
2. Covey, Stephen. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Fireside Books, 1990.
3. Hill, Napolean. Think and Grow Rich. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1960.
4. Robbins, Anthony. Awaken the Giant Within. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1991.
5. Van The Investment Psychology Guides. Institute of Trading
Mastery, 1986.
Other Sources
1. Investor's Business Daily. P.O. Box 6637, Los Angeles, California 90066-
0370.
2.
3. Value Line. 220 East 42 Street, New York, New York 10017-5891.
4. Zucks Research. 155 North Wacker Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60606.
FREE REPORT
For investors wanting more information on how to use sentiment tools
and incorporate its important signal into your please send us
(Investment Research Associates, 334 State Street #106-267, Los Altos, CA 94022) the following information:
FREE REPORT 361
Your Name, Address, Phone Number, along with any comments you may have on this book and the information in the book.
On request, we will also be delighted to send you a free copy of our
monthly letter to clients, Portfolio Strategy Letter, which follows the dic-