“Buy Costa Rican real estate, short movie theaters!” That is the substance of a note I’d scrawled on a memo pad, intending to share with you, dear readers, some potentially rewarding investment themes of the day. Peter Lynch would approve, since both of these ideas come right from the gut.  Movie theaters first. I know something about the business because I’ve had friends who owned movies theaters. But it is my movie-junkie side that tells me that mall multiplexes are fated to die.  Why? See if you don’t agree with reason number one:  Today’s movies stink, and they are getting worse by the month. I say this as an inveterate movie junkie who used to see a hundred movies a year at theaters; now I see only about 25.

I’m no movie snob, either. I like classic and foreign films, including the highbrow stuff, but I am capable of thriving on cinematic garbage when there’s nothing better around. Trouble is, most of the films being released these days barely qualify as garbage. And although the studios used to be able to hype movies so relentlessly that you’d get sucked into seeing some real turkeys before word-of-mouth killed them, now there are reliable reviews all over the Web to keep would-be moviegoers from getting ripped off.  For instance, although the trailer for the recently released Hannibal Rising makes the movie look pretty appealing, one need search no further than Metacritic.com to get the lowdown from the New York Times critic: “Silly, slack and unforgivably tedious.” Even the populist New York Post critic puts Hannibal down as “dull and dreary.” In other words, save your money. Which I will.

Home Entertainment

The second reason movie theaters are a dying business is that home entertainment centers are delivering more and more performance for less and less money.  For under $1,000 you can now buy a decent LED projector, a 106-inch screen and a couple of speakers for your family room or basement. Since it costs at least $60 to take the family to a movie these days, one can easily amortize the cost of a home system in a year or two. And you’ll also be avoiding sticker shock when the Monster Bucket of stale popcorn pushes up to $10, and admission tickets to $15 in the big cities.  Plus, you won’t have to put up with the low-life Gen-xers for whom most movies are made these days, nor with their filthy habit of using your headrest as their footrest. Theaters deserve to die if only because they have done too little to rein in this problem, as well as other atrocious movie-house habits of the tattoo-flaunting, STD-spreading, genital-piercing, Mentos-eating Gen-X pond-scum slackers.

Costa Rica

As for buying Costa Rican real estate, we’ll take up that subject later. But the gist of it is that, because the world is becoming an increasingly dangerous place, more and more American tourists are going to be vacationing closer to home. This trend is as obvious as it is irreversible, and it is already making $600 hotel rooms quite common in the Caribbean. These hotels are also starting to offer different tiers of service – a sure sign that they are strained to the limit to accommodate those who might otherwise be seeking exclusivity in more exotic corners of the world.

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A Guru’s Best Tricks Revealed

“While perusing some of your posts chronologically from months back, I'm truly struck by the remarkable prescience of many of your fearless calls. The results are uncannily accurate. Thanks again for this opportunity to profit from your usually directionally correct analyses. The subscription is worth every penny - and then some.”

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Aloha Rick.  I just want to thank you personally for all of your posts in Comex Gold and Silver.  I have traded gold/silver futures for a decade and there is NO ONE who has identified prices as accurately as you do. FACT:  Your New Year's Eve call of a high at 643.10 call was dead-on (even if floor traders ran it up a few days later to flush the momentum traders.) But your subsequent forecast of a pullback low at 603.00 was mind boggling! I Sold my longs at 643.10 and covered my shorts at  603.00 -- the exact bottom.

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Want to learn exactly how I do it? Then click here for details concerning next month’s online Hidden Pivot Seminar on May 19-20 (Saturday/Sunday morning). Sign up now while there are still a few seats left. The goal of this course is nothing less than to teach traders and investors of all levels of experience how to forecast stocks and commodities at least as accurately and confidently as those who do it successfully for a living.

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Don’t Rely on ‘Experts’

The online class will be a particularly good opportunity for those who were unable to attend my classes last year in New York, Sydney, Vancouver, San Francisco and Denver. If you’ve visited the Rick’s Picks chat room and marveled at the forecasting skill of seminar grads, this course is designed to quickly bring you up to their level. While I cannot guarantee that the course will turn you into a fabulously rich trader,  I can promise, as implied above, that with a little diligence and practice, your ability to precisely predict price reversals in stocks, indexes, options and commodities will be at least as good as anyone whose forecasts you have ever paid for.

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