7 www.taipanonline.com likes of IBM and AMD. This company has proven its
ability to grow quickly by acquiring and integrating
competitors’ technologies and making them its own.
In November it acquired Advanced Imaging, a com-
pany that makes equipment for thin-film magnetic
head data storage.        VECO is the biggest supplier of atomic
force/scanning probe microscopes—  a must-have for
any nano research.        The company recently hit a new 52-week high at
US$30.25 before selling off and falling back to its
trendline at US$25. It has since bounced back and
broken through this resistance. It is time get in on
the next leg up. It also provides a nice stop-loss
point at US$30—  just in case things get hairy.        Semiconductor equipment can be a tricky,
volatile market, but this company has managed to
stabilize its returns. With a market cap of US$855
million, this nanotech leader will capture the invest-
ment world’s attention and has a good chance of
becoming a market darling.        Nanotech has all the necessary components to
create a market bubble: n Experts are predicting huge revenues ($1 trillion) a decade hence. n There is only a small number of nano companies (20 on my watch list), and many
of them are bulletin board stocks or large caps
like IBM and NEC, in other words not pure
plays. n It is a difficult and complex science that few people understand, so it can easily be spun. n There is an incredible number of possible products that will change the way we live.
Each will generate media and Wall
Street hype.        The nanotech boom will be similar to the
Internet boom only more so, because it has
a high barrier to entry and very real products.
You must own the core group of pure nanotech
stocks while values are reasonable. By this time
next year they won’t be. Buy VECO today. You should be able to get in under US$35. n FEBRUARY 2004        Having proven many times—
with such plays as Varsity Group,
the Dogs of the Dow, the Turkish
Investment Fund, and Plug
Power—  that the price change in
a stock is a measure of market
sensitivity to news, we’re still
looking to bypass the convention-
al theories of value and price. That’s the cornerstone idea
behind the Extreme Volatility Speculator  system.        In fact, if you’ve read McCurdy and Maheu’s
“News Arrival, Jump Dynamics and Volatility
Components for Individual Stock Returns,”  you
know that the most important process affecting
price moves may just be the news arrival process
itself.        The sooner you uncover the sources of news dis-
semination to the masses, the sooner you can act
and profit from the news. EVS has already proven
this by pulling in 64% on ALTI, 25% on SUNW, 18%
on IPXL, 24% on PBY, and 100% and 15% playing
LEXR in December alone. Sure, the news arrival process has been mocked by some of today’s leading investment gurus. But
the profits mentioned above speak for themselves.
And, really, who cares what the supposed “experts”
have to say, anyway? If you listened to them and
chose not to follow the news, you’ve already missed
out on the current 24% gain from our VSTY play, a
company from which we’ve been raking in profits
for the past two years, and the gains on the famed
Dogs of the Dow stocks that we released to you
prior to its “formal”  release to the masses.        But we’re not here to toot our own horn…   we’re
here to make you maximum profits from anywhere
in the world. Buying into Israel’s hardship Whether it’s political turmoil or civil unrest nail- ing recession-ravaged Israel, there are always oppor-
tunities lying beneath the wreckage. That is what
helped trigger our latest buy opportunity. Well, that
and an attractive dividend of US$1.18 per share. We’re talking about Blue Square Israel (BSI:NYSE). With a sizeable 35% share of Israel’s retail food market and the aforementioned dividend,
we recommended that followers of EVS buy into this Ian L. Cooper Profiting on the flow of news Next…