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GROWING RICH WITH GROWTH STOCKS<br />
using the concentric circle (or bull’s-eye) method is a great way of<br />
<strong>com</strong>piling one.<br />
SHED POUNDS, MAKE A PROFIT<br />
Sometimes good investment ideas are staring you in the face, even<br />
though you don’t immediately realize it. Perhaps you have been trying<br />
to get in shape and lose weight. You probably didn’t know this laudable<br />
effort can not only trim your waistline, but also fatten up the<br />
profits of many corporations in the physical fitness business. “This is<br />
a theme I picked up on some time ago,” Stovall notes. Nevertheless,<br />
part of your job as an investor is to decide whether your bull’s-eye<br />
observation is a long- or a short-term trend. “For instance, there has<br />
recently been a resurgence in the use of cigars and cocktails,” Stovall<br />
observes. “I haven’t invested in this trend, because I think it is transient<br />
and won’t last long.”<br />
This doesn’t mean investors can’t profit from a short-term trend.<br />
You can, if you’re quick to spot it and react accordingly. Since you<br />
never know how long a short-term trend will last, however, you must<br />
always stand ready to pull the trigger, to avoid getting creamed once<br />
your temporary bull’s-eye gets clobbered. Therefore, the pursuit of<br />
such quick gains doesn’t much interest Stovall. He’d rather concentrate<br />
on enduring themes that can remain intact for months or even years<br />
to <strong>com</strong>e.<br />
So would Shelby Davis. “Since I am a long-term investor who<br />
stresses ‘research, research, and more research,’ I look for secular investment<br />
themes that will drive a decade, not five weeks or five years,”<br />
he says. “My research wouldn’t do me much good if I owned stocks<br />
for only five weeks. The market is a discounter that’s paid to look<br />
ahead - it’s a barometer, not a thermometer. If you take a longer time<br />
frame, that creates opportunity.”<br />
Short-term trends also make it much more difficult to spot which<br />
specific <strong>com</strong>panies are destined to benefit from them. If, as in Stovall’s<br />
example, cigars remain popular for only a short time, it’s hard to tell<br />
which cigar makers will get the brunt of the business before this craze<br />
is extinguished. If the fascination with puffing on rolled leaves continues<br />
for some years, however, many <strong>com</strong>panies will have a chance<br />
to capture a piece of the action by creating a continuous stream of<br />
new and improved cigars.<br />
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