The holiday season has been about as hectic as usual. Everyone is busy! While doing my best to juggle priorities and participate in various gatherings of family and friends, I have been reminded of a few things.  Sometimes tough choices have to be made, and plans have to occasionally be changed.  All-inclusive things just can’t always include everything and everyone, but it is always nice to be invited.  Taking time to communicate is important, as we cannot assume that an email was read or a message got to its intended party.  Those are a few thoughts you can probably relate to.   

There are times when I wonder what more I can write to help investors, especially after 91 monthly "Investing for the New Millennium" issues have already been written. Hasn’t it all been covered before?  Well, even if it was, it probably wasn’t covered well enough, and most of today’s readers were not following along throughout the lengthy series of articles.  It is probably a good time to review what the mission of INM is and take some steps to make sure it serves its purposes.

This monthly letter started out as a way I could leverage the work I was putting into researching the best buy candidates and share it with my customers and prospective customers.  As long as I liked an idea enough to share it with one person, it didn’t seem fair unless I shared the idea with everyone else. 

But not every month do you see me suggesting specific ideas.  There is a lot more to successful investing than throwing a few promising names out there.  Dolby Laboratories Inc (DLB) and Morningstar Inc. (MORN) look good, so why not let everyone know about them?   By the time the reader gets the message things could change.  MEMC Electronic Materials (WFR) looked bad on October 25^th when violating its 50-day moving average (DMA) line, and I would have certainly argued for getting rid of it that day.  The next morning it looked a lot better, though, gapping up and forming what a few of us in the office discussed as a “continental reversal”, a spin on the “island reversal” pattern that is known to signal a change in trend.

Other things are of at least as much importance to mention in INM. Tactical matters.  Things like a reminder of the fact that you can now deposit your 2008 contribution to your retirement account, for example.  Get on that right away if you want to invest in the most tax smart manner!  What individual doesn’t?

My team in Lighthouse Point, Florida is still taking on new individual clients with considerable interest in equities.  I manage the branch, I didn’t retire! 2008 is going to be a year where more of the people I previously considered to be the competition (for the first 20 years of my career) become clients.  Investment managers who are interested in having meaningful assistance and worthwhile input will feel more welcome than ever conducting business through sub-advisor arrangements with Source Capital designed specifically to give institutional investors the much needed support required by active managers.  Those who may be interested are encouraged to call and begin building the necessary rapport.  More details will be circulated on this subject in the weeks and months ahead.