Page 486 - How to Make Money in Stocks Trilogy

356 INVESTING LIKE A PROFESSIONAL

the last 4-week, 8-week, 12-week, and 16-week periods. The medical field
shows well in the longer, 39-week table.

Issues & Insights
At the back of the first section, you’ll find our editorial pages, titled “Issues &
Insights.” We have an outstanding staff of a half-dozen highly experienced
writers turning out up to six editorials a day. I do not write these. Wes Mann,
our distinguished and talented editor, who has been with IBD from the
beginning, is in charge of this key area and is assisted in the important role it
plays for IBD readers and the nation by Terry Jones, who has also been with
IBD since its start-up 25 years ago. Terry came to us from BusinessWeek. I’ll
normally read two or three of the editorials after checking the headlines and
summary paragraphs to see if I’m interested in the subject.
We also have columns from guest writers plus syndicated columnists “On
the Left” and “On the Right,” so you get different points of view. On the
right, I always respect the work of Thomas Sowell and Victor Davis Hanson.
Both are older, experienced observers with great insight. Sowell, from Stan-
ford’s Hoover Institute, is in my view the best, most accurate economist and
historian in America. He has a book out entitled Applied Economics: Think-
ing beyond Stage One, one of 42 books he has written. From Washington,
we run columns by conservative Charles Krauthammer and liberal David
Ignatius, who is well informed on international issues.
But the first thing I look at each day in “Issues & Insights” is the cartoon.
We have the best editorial cartoonist in the nation, Michael Ramirez. He
won a Pulitzer Prize for Investor’s Business Daily in 2008—the second time
he had received this prestigious award.
IBD also has an extensive public polling operation, conducting monthly
surveys on economic confidence, presidential leadership, and major
national issues year-round and daily tracking polls in election years. In 2008,
for the second presidential election in a row, the IBD/TIPP poll not only
came closest to the final margin between Barack Obama and John McCain,
but was right on the money. These feats, tantamount to hitting a bullet with
a bullet, have earned the IBD/TIPP poll, conducted by TechnoMetrica
Market Intelligence, the honor of being America’s most accurate.
Making Money
In the “Making Money” section, starting on page B1, we try to cover the rel-
evant facts, skills, and rules you need if you are to be a successful investor.
We view Investor’s Business Daily as an educational medium. We don’t tell
people what to buy. We don’t recommend stocks or tout “10 stocks that are
going to go up tomorrow.” We just explain time-tested rules based on mod-