I just got finished teaching about the virtues of diversification to reduce risk. Meanwhile my students have been participating in an investment challenge and a bunch had returns over 30% in a nine week period. How'd they do it? By buying three or four stocks such as eBay, AOL, Microsoft and the like. To a student - none had done any "fundamental analysis" of any of the stocks they choose - even though they all have to hand in a 15-page term paper that presents a fundamental analysis of a particular company. (one just looked in Barron's a couple of times to see what was being pushed),
Ah yes - this time it is truely different!
Jason