There is one way to consistently and reliably make a fortune in the stock market.

It has nothing to do with buying options or shorting stocks. You don’t have to time the market. And it doesn’t involve finding the “next big thing” or the latest technology. Without a doubt, history shows that the biggest and most reliable returns in the market come from the safest and most mature companies.

Specifically, the key is to buy the highest quality companies you can find – companies that pay dividends and have a history of raising those dividends over time. Buy these shares when they are cheap and reinvest the dividends. That’s it. The combination of rising dividend payments and reinvesting those dividends invokes the magic of compounding.

Let me show you what I mean. Market research firm, Ibbotson Associates, has calculated U.S. stock market returns going back more than a century. Their study shows that if you invested $1 in large U.S. companies in 1925, you would have had $98 in 2005. Had you reinvested the dividends, your $1 would have become $2,658.

The same $1 invested in 1824 would have become $374 in 2005… or more than $3,000,000 with dividends reinvested.

But by no means do you have to invest for a century or even a quarter of a century to capture the power of compounding reinvested, rising dividends.

Had you invested $10,000 in Johnson & Johnson in 1989, you would have purchased 126 shares. After splits and by reinvesting your rising dividends into more shares, you would have 2,868 shares today, worth $150,862. That is a return of 1,408%. And your initial investment would now provide you with more than $5,621 a year in dividends… the equivalent of a 56% annual yield on your initial investment!

This is how Warren Buffett’s original shares in Coca-Cola (purchased in 1988) now provide a yield of 32% on his original investment… the equivalent of several hundred million dollars per year.

Opportunity is Knocking…

With many of the best dividend-raising companies trading at a significant discount to their true value, there has rarely been a better time than NOW to build a portfolio of these stocks.

Companies that have a long history of raising their dividends are the strongest and most stable companies in the market. That means they not only provide the safest shelter in the storm, many of them actually benefit from a recession.

Companies can respond to a severe economic downturn in one of three ways. They can:

1. Die. Many companies have already declared bankruptcy and many more will before this downturn is over.
2. Survive. These are the companies that downsize, cut expenses, lower prices, close factories and stores, sell assets and cut dividends.
3. Grow. These companies may cut expenses and become leaner, but they also increase their market share by swallowing the minnows and beating up the weaklings. They fill in the competitive gaps that retreating companies have left behind.

Surviving is better than dying. But you want to invest in companies that can continue to grow and increase their competitive advantage.

While other companies play defense, protecting a diminishing pile of cash and by getting smaller and slashing assets. Other companies become bigger by buying assets (heavily discounted assets, at that). Recessions and downturns actually make these companies stronger.

As an investor, you shouldn’t fear a bad economy and a bear market. You should embrace them. If your retirement is more than a few years away, the crash in asset prices is not a crippling blow. It is a gift that comes along rarely. It takes bad times to push the price of great stocks down far enough to make huge returns over time.

And great stocks have rarely been as cheap as they are today.

If you have a time frame of 5 to 20 years and you’re looking for investments that can provide you with 1,000% to 10,000% gains, consider investing in companies like Wal-Mart, Proctor & Gamble, Verizon Communications and Emerson Electric.

Average into your positions over time, continue to invest, and then reinvest the dividends back into more shares. There is no more reliable way to become wealthy in the stock market.

Source: The Stock Market’s Greatest Secret

This from Taipan Publishing:

’Tis the season of too damn many cocktail parties. I simply don’t have the stamina for so much small talk and gossip, and don’t much care for finger food – or weak drinks.

But this time of year they are simply unavoidable (i.e., my wife makes me go). And so, all too often, I am forced to put down my tumbler of 12-year old single malt and my dog-eared edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, abandon my armchair, and trade the comfortable sweater and slippers of the misanthrope for the sport jacket and slacks of the supposedly social.

Fortunately, human beings are unable to recall the sensation of pain (it’s true: look it up). And so most of these events are immediately forgotten. However, I attended such an odd gathering the other night that is has stuck in my mind.

It wasn’t exactly seasonal per se. Nor was it another of those “buying parties” wherein we are feted with Vienna sausage and crab dip while a dowager of indistinct age pitches time shares in Boca, jewelry or Tupperware party bowls. (I’m told that one such get together saw the demonstration of a line of risqué undergarments. However, I was not invited to that one. And it’s probably just as well.)

Getting Rid of Excess Baggage

In many ways, in fact, it was the harbinger either of a new age or perhaps the return to an older age. You see, the ladies were there not to buy, but rather to sell stuff. Specifically, excess gold jewelry.

Please keep in mind that I do not live in a poorer quarter. Our town’s historical Main Street has no pawnshops nestled amongst its antique dealers. (It does have a rather nice used bookstore, though, where I recently stumbled upon a lovely 1930 edition of Voltaire’sCandide.)

And yet, our hostess had invited an assessor of used gold items – a man prepared to dole out cash (checks really) for broken chains, undersized rings and mismatched earrings.

Having nothing to offer the gentleman beyond my wedding ring (and I am not that greedy – or stupid), I abandoned the living room to the ladies and joined the other spouses around the downstairs wet bar.

Have You Heard About the “Black Widow Trade”?

Here’s how you can turn Wall Street’s PAIN into a 146% GAIN in 12 weeks.

Read on now for detailed trading instructions…

The New “Rich”

Even here, I witnessed a marked shift in the conversation. Gone was the usual bragging about the size of one’s new house. So too, the crowing of recent market gains. (No shock there!) The horsepower of this year’s offering from Cadillac? Fuggeddaboudit!

Instead, the hot subject was the new frugality. One gent was touting how he could up his Honda’s gas mileage by coasting to stop lights. Another was alerting everyone to a large discount on driveway macadam from a building supplier in the next county.

A third fellow was all full of vinegar as to how he had just dressed down his teenaged daughter about her grades: “She won’t qualify for a college grant if she gets another B in economics.”

Even more disorienting: Suddenly, my hoary old scold (meant solely to discourage further financial inquisition) that “the best gain the average investor could hope to achieve could be had by paying off his credit cards” was the talk of the room!

Can it be that “cheap” is the new “rich?”

The American Wallet Snaps Shut

Certainly my neighbors are not unique. Gob-smacked by years of rising prices, the American wallet has finally snapped shut. Consumer spending in September fell some 0.3%, the largest single month drop in the past four years. Add in July and August, and you have the “worst” quarter in 28 years.

I have put quotes around worst, because the true historical value of this sea change has yet to be determined. We may be witnessing the demise of our great consumer culture.

This is disastrous news for those who are tied closely to the many endeavors that depend desperately on the American need for new crap.

Which companies might tumble when pointless spending falls from grace? Certainly the direct purveyors of chromed junk are already suffering mightily.

Detroit Still Can’t Buy a Clue

GM (NYSE:GM) and Chrysler are attempting to figure out which one has enough loose cash left to buy out the other. Borrowing for the deal in this ultra-tight credit market is simply out of the question.

Meanwhile, poor old Ford (NYSE:F) is still banking on selling one more generation of humongous pickup trucks to commuters and construction workers who aren’t even sure if they have a job to commute to.

And speaking of borrowing, GM’s once mighty (indeed sole) profit center, GMAC, is trying to redefine itself as a bank holding company so as to qualify for a piece of Washington’s trillion-dollar largesse.

The Only Profits in This Vast Empty Space

It appears that various other sellers of overpriced bric-a-brac and gewgaws are in the soup as well. The only players in the retail “space” who have shown any strength at all during this “season of saving” are Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) and the 99 Cents Only Store (NYSE:NDN).

The rest, from high to low, Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN) to Kohl’s (NYSE:KSS), are hemorrhaging red ink all over the New York trading floor.

Looking to the near term, most of American retail still looks like viable short candidates. My recommendation: Buy puts every time these guys poke their heads out of their little rat holes to spin their little tales of “better times coming in January.”

A Change in Values?

However, any old veteran of tighter times and previous ideas as to the value of thrift, might very well view the sudden decrease in spending, increase in wages, and spike in actual savings (Real savings! Remember them?) as a sign of better times to come.

Can you imagine a time when bankers were the type of men you could actually trust with your savings? Or how about a market that valued companies that actually made profits by providing genuinely valuable goods and services?

Goodness. The cherishing of True Value could even mean the end of shallow Technical Analysis!

Naaah: Never gonna happen.

Source: The Return of Real American Value?

The Dow logged its second best one-day point gain, 889 points, in its even more storied history yesterday:

Percentage wise, at 10.8%, the rally ranks sixth. The S&P and Nasdaq trundled alongside the old lady like puppies.

After finding a new “credit crisis” low on Monday, traders on Wall Street snapped back with vengeance. But it’s not the higher highs we’ll be watching for the rest of the week — but lower lows. During each sell-off since extreme volatility began three weeks ago, we’ve reached all-new lows.

The Japanese market performed in a similar way through the entire decade of the ’90s. It rallied at least 30% higher five times since 1992, before finding new lows again, and again… and again.

Extreme volatility is a good thing if you’ve got the stones for it. “You do know someone who does seem like they know what the hell they’re doing, day to day,” Steve Sarnoff wrote to us after reading yesterday’s 5.

Steve included his gains sheet from Options Hotline, noting that his Intel calls triggered yesterday. Any of his subscribers with filled orders profited about 97% in a single trading day. Yawn… stretch… not as exciting as his 439% gains on QQQQ puts two weeks ago. But still…

On the short side, Dan Amoss told his readers yesterday to pocket 94% gains on their Fleetwood Enterprises short sale. Shorting a financially distressed manufacturer of recreational vehicles… who’d have thought that would be a good play?

If you’re interested in options or shorting stocks, let us remind you both are extremely risky ventures. But we’ve got a couple of ringers to help. Check out Options Hotline and/or Strategic Short Report for ideas. Both are included in your Reserve Membership. Or available a la carte.

Despite yesterday’s monster stock rally, the credit markets are still moving cautiously. The rate at which banks lend to one another (Libor) did decline again today, the 13th day in a row, but only by a little.

The three-month dollar Libor fell just 4 points overnight, to 3.46%. Considering an all-but-certain rate cut from the Federal Reserve today, commercial banks had every excuse to relax lending rates significantly… but guards are still up around the world.

“We are not going to say, ‘Yahoo, this is over!’” explained JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, “and extend credit like we did without fear. If you’re not fearful, you’re crazy.” That coming from the guy who was fearless enough to buy Bear Stearns with little more than a wink from Ben Bernanke over Sunday tea.

The Fed will announce its latest interest rate decision today around 2:15. Anything less than 75 point cut and we suspect a sell-off. 1% or lower, here we come. We’re turning Japanese… we really think so.

After a decade and a half of practically free money, the Bank of Japan is considering its interest rate again, too. It’s already at the 0.5%. How much lower can the Japanese go?

The reversal in the equity market yesterday reverberated in the currency world.

The dollar took a pretty good whack. The dollar index fell two full points from yesterday’s high, now at 85.5. Thus, the euro enjoyed a nice bounce, up 3 cents, to $1.27. The British pound is back up nearly a nickel, to $1.60. And yen traders took profits, bringing the Japanese currency back to 97.

“The eventual cost to the U.S. financial and economic system,” says John Williams, “will be much higher inflation.

“The monetary base has seen an unprecedented surge, reflecting total reserves of depository institutions jumping from an average of $47.1 billion (seasonally adjusted) in the two weeks ended Sept. 10 to $328.6 billion in the period ended Oct. 22.

“Using the St. Louis Fed’s adjusted monetary base (effectively total reserves plus M1 cash in circulation), the year-to-year growth in the latest period was an unprecedented 38%. In the period since 1919, the previous high growth rate was 28% in September 1939, as the U.S. was building up industry for the evolving war in Europe.

“Back in the days when the Federal Reserve targeted money supply growth, the monetary base was the measure it adjusted. The current surge in the base is a direct result of the ongoing, extraordinary actions taken by the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury aimed at preventing a collapse of the U.S. financial system. The higher monetary base growth will result in sharp spikes to domestic money supply growth and will intensify inflationary pressures in the year ahead, irrespective of wild gyrations and sell-offs in oil and of strength in the U.S. dollar, which otherwise should prove very short-lived going forward.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. government is beginning to advertise for new bailout money: “We are making it clear to sovereign wealth funds,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt said yesterday, while seeking help in the Persian Gulf, “that we are open to investments that are done on a commercial, not political, basis, and that do not raise security concerns.”

Kimmitt hinted he may have found some takers already: “We think that they are continuing to look very closely at opportunities in the United States. We have a number of cases before the Committee on Foreign Investment right now… Every investor that I’ve spoken with here and elsewhere had been in the United States within the past month, looking for opportunities.”

Who would have thought even three months ago — besides your cranky editors of The 5, I mean — that Wall Street would be holding a global garage sale this fall?

Orders for durable goods, surprisingly, jumped in September. According to the Commerce Dept. today, orders for things meant to last more than a few years increased 0.8%, well above the expected fall of 1.2%.

Before you celebrate (we know how durable goods data get you percolating), the actual details weren’t so optimistic. The Commerce Dept. revised August data to show a 5.5% fall in orders, the worst month in almost two years. And all of this month’s improvement came from transportation equipment, a sector so depressed it hardly has any more room to fall.

Since the dollar has pulled back, commodities have pushed forward. Gold continues to inch up this week, and has now struggled back to $760 an ounce.

Oil is creeping back up, too. Crude is up $4 today, on a weaker dollar and the fleeting image of a stronger U.S. economy. A barrel goes for $66.

“Energy development is exploding in Africa,” reports Byron King. Our energy adviser made the long trip to South Africa for a conference on African energy development.

“In the past decade alone, the number of companies actively looking for energy deposits in Africa has soared from under 100 to over 500. By 2018, there may be 800 or so companies exploring for and producing energy in Africa. Expect to see $350 billion spent in Africa by 2020, just on energy development.

“There are over 100 billion barrels of discovered oil reserves in Africa. And there may be as much as another 100 billion barrels left to be found. And even more natural gas, in terms of energy content. Plus, heavy oil. And coal and coalbed methane. Which makes Africa more of an energy development target than Russia, or the even the Arctic — without the weather issues that we find up north in such frozen climes…

“For now, oil prices are down, but investment is still flowing into a lot of energy projects in Africa. Some companies are having trouble with short-term credit, but this is not the biggest issue for the energy industry and its efforts in Africa. When the economic logjam breaks up, among the first things that will happen is that worldwide energy supplies will tighten. And eventually, the world will confront its long-term lack of investment in the energy industries.”

Even though oil has perked up, gas prices are still plummeting. The national average is now at $2.58 a gallon. That’s a level unseen since March 2006. The national average has shaved off a full dollar and change in the last month alone.

The IMF officially bailed out Hungary today. The country is getting a $25 billion loan. That’s the third IMF nation rescue in this crisis, and bigger than the first two — Iceland and Ukraine — combined.

Six percent of U.S. employers have cut 401(k) contributions this year or plan to do so in the coming months. According to a study by human resources firm Watson Wyatt, that number is likely to grow, as many firms surveyed refused to comment, as admitting to a 401(k) slash stinks of fiscal weakness.

Notable companies that have already nixed their 401(k) contributions include Goodyear, Frontier Airlines, commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, Entercom and rental car agency Dollar Thrifty.

“I, for one — also a Reserve Member — am totally thrilled,” writes a reader, responding to yesterday’s inbox, “that not one word of ‘asset allocation,’ ‘time horizon,’ ‘risk tolerance,’ ‘cost averaging’ or other such drivel and pablum of the financial industry is to be had among the Agora publications. I hope it stays that way. If it’s advice on those subjects he’s looking for, well, it’s even more abundant than the rivers of worthless paper flowing out of the Fed. Just ask for it from almost any investment adviser.

“As Buffett aptly notes, those are all methods for how to be average — and average right now is downright scary. The degree of risk that one assumes is directly proportional to how much one understands the fundamentals of an investment, sees the obvious and acts accordingly. It was largely due to the steady stream of spot-on, if not conventional and frequently unpopular, commentary coming from the crew of Agora doomsayers, who often ran against the mainstream financial media and consistently pointed to the buildup of ugly economic data, that I became convinced to do the obvious.

“Last year, I exited nearly all long positions and loaded up on puts in the financials and in the consumer stocks and indexes and barricaded myself with inverse market positions, with many of these either recommended or inspired by Strategic Short Report and the late Survival Report. And yes, I even did this for my retirement account. I couldn’t be happier with the results.

“While I’m still waiting for gold to have its day, Mr. Bernanke and friends have been very hard at work ensuring my eventual returns there. Had I asset allocated according to my time horizon and risk tolerance (gag…cough…) I would no doubt be enjoying the wonderful returns on bonds and cash, instead.”

The 5: Nice work.

Cheers,

Addison Wiggin
The 5 Min. Forecast

Source: Can the Mega-Rally Hold? The “True Cost” of the Crisis, An “Exploding” Energy Market, and More!