Recap of August 17: Winning $treak!

Brenda Buttner was joined by: Gary B. Smith, RealMoney.com columnist; Pat Dorsey, director of stock research at Morningstar.com; Tobin Smith, founder and chairman of ChangeWave Research; Scott Bleier, president of HybridInvestors.com; and Mike Norman, publisher of The Economic Contrarian Update.

Trading Pit

It wasn't a big gain by any stretch, but a plus sign nonetheless. The Dow finished higher by a little more than 30 points last week, and that makes it four consecutive winning weeks for stocks. That's something we haven't seen since the winter.

Pat Dorsey has said there are a lot of cheap stocks out there, and he hopes investors will keep bargain buying this week because that is how you make money over the long run in the stock market. But Pat does have two concerns. One is if consumer spending weakens further. The other is that corporations can't get credit, which means business spending won't resume.

Gary B. is bullish! He charted the S&P 500, and showed that a downtrend since June has been broken, which means it's time to get long.

Tobin's not sure we're out of a bear market just yet. However, he doesn't see many stocks horribly over priced and that means there aren't many to short. He thinks once good news starts to hit the market, the cheap stocks that Pat has been talking about are going to move.

Scott thinks that the market will take rest, and trade around its current levels because it is not ready to break through resistance.

Mike said the market is going up and will head a lot higher. He believes that there is a tremendous amount of concern and nervousness about the economy. But Mike thinks that since the stock market leads the economy, and not the other way around, stocks are set to head higher.

Scoreboard

You've heard the old saying, "If it doesn't matter, why do they keep score?" That's exactly why we do: in the Scoreboard!

Back on September 1st, Mike said that gold prices would surge 50 percent within a year. Gold prices did that and more. The CBOE Gold Index was at $41.36 when he made his prediction. It went over $72 and has now pulled back into the low $50's. Mike sold his gold stocks in June, but thinks it's getting ready for another rally.

Scott picked ICOS Corp. (ICOS) on June 29th as a stock that was down in the first half of the year but was ready to make a comeback. And comeback it has! Up 62 percent since he recommended it a little less than 2 months ago. He thinks the stock will go higher, but use some discipline and take profits.

The planets were aligned with Gary B's charts on this one. In the beginning of July, he said Omnicom (OMC) would go up 20 percent in the next two months. In less time, the stock has made more of a gain, up 37 percent. Back then, he was long Omnicom. He still owns it and thinks it could run to the high $60s.

In the middle of July Tobin said if investors had some cash from selling their mutual funds they should buy Washington Mutual (WM). And anyone who bought it then, is sure glad they did, as the stock is up 13%. Tobin thinks there are still more gains to come.

And last, but certainly not least, it was Mr. Dorsey's turn. Last year around this time, he and the Chartman were looking at the fall fashions, and Pat said Chico's FAS (CHS) was tres chic. And tres chic it surely has been. Up 50 percent in just over a year. Pat said he values the company at $21, and it was at $16.82 as of Friday's close, so he'd only buy more if it got cheaper.

Nobody's perfect. No, not even the Bulls and Bears.

At the end of June, Gary B's charts seem to have betrayed him. At that time he wasn't too optimistic about IBM (IBM), predicting it would drop to $50 in a year. Now it's only been about 2 months, but IBM is up 16 percent in that time. He thinks IBM's chart looks terrific and he'd be long the stock now.

Toby was out in the Denver, so he could blame the thin air if he said something silly on this show. But there was no excuse a month ago when he said it was time to take profits on Lockheed Martin (LMT). He was bullish on the stock until then, and maybe he should have stayed that way because Lockheed is up 17 percent since his prediction. He's sticking to his guns and thinks the stock will head lower, due to lack of interest in Lockheed's new fighter planes.

Now Mike has only been bullish recently, so maybe this can be chalked up to inexperience. But back on May 11th, he said Disney (DIS) was a stock people could own and not worry about a dramatic loss. However, this was not true, as Disney has dropped 31 percent since Mike said it was a buy. He still thinks the stock will head higher, because tourism will have a boost, and Disney will benefit the most from it.

Now maybe Pat should've stuck to fashion stocks because on the same day he made that great Chico's FAS call, he said Qwest (Q) would be 30 percent higher in a year. Not quite. As a matter of fact, Qwest has been one of the biggest disasters on Wall Street, down 92 percent in that time. Pat said he was wrong because he underestimated how bad their local business could get and he thought the value of its assets would override a questionable CEO.

And then it was Scott's turn. A month and a half ago he said BEA Systems (BEAS) was a bargain and would be up 50% by the end of the year. Now it still could happen, but now it has a whole lot further to climb. BEA systems is moving more towards being down 50 percent, falling 31 percent since Scott's call. He is still long the stock and thinks it will still make the move up.