The S&A 16 is here... Mega mansions on sale... Don't forget Barnes & Noble... Gems in the "garbage"...

Goldsmith comment: Porter's knee-deep in his monthly issue, so I'm taking over.

Our quarterly S&A 16 model portfolio goes out to Alliance subscribers today. Some of the major investment themes we're focusing on this quarter are lower interest rates and a booming commodities market. We think this is our best portfolio to date.

For those of you unfamiliar with the S&A 16, it is a quarterly portfolio made up of the best stocks in our S&A universe. We choose four stocks from each of the following categories: macro, income, value, and growth. However, this service is only available to members of the Alliance – our premium lifetime membership.

On top of receiving everything we publish for life (except Phase 1), our Alliance members also get early access to our new international letter and ETF letter. We'll make these available to the general public next year... for a price, of course.

If you're interested in joining the Alliance, we'll be opening membership soon. If you can't wait and want to get in on this quarter's S&A 16, please call Michael Cottet at 410-864-1709.

When I look at the carnage in the housing market, the mortgage market looks like Berlin after the war. It is a pretty big mess. One that, I think, will take a number of years to work our way through. – Lewis Ranieri, mortgage-backed security pioneer, as quoted in Investment Dealers' Digest

While things in the housing market may be rosier than mortgages, conditions are far from good. Homebuilders are now selling houses for almost any price, often discounting new builds up to 40%. It's crunch time, and the homebuilders just want to unload themselves of debt and get some income flowing through the doors.

Also, the real estate slump has seeped into another sector of the market... mega mansions. A 22,000-square-foot estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, just went on sale for $19 million, $3 million (14%) off the original price. Greenwich is the unofficial hedge fund capital of the world, and its hoards of wealthy residents are now seeing some uncertainty in their Christmas bonuses. Despite the recent slowdown, Greenwich real estate experts expect home sales at the highest end, $8 million and up, to rise.

In Wednesday's Digest, we reported that Borders Group (BGP) CEO George Jones bought 50,000 shares of his company. He's not the only one gobbling up bookseller stock. Inside Strategist editor Graham Summers told readers that Leonard Riggio, founder of Barnes & Noble (BKS), purchased 200,000 shares of common stock since August. Riggio has a rich history of calling bottoms in his company's share price. He loaded up with shares at four bottoms between November 2005 and today. Graham's readers are up 8% since last week.

But it doesn't end there. Activist investor Bill Ackman owns 6.5 million shares of BKS and 6.8 million shares of BGP.

Extreme Value pick Janus Capital (JNS) got a quick boost this morning. UBS upgraded the money manager, and shares gained close to 5% today. Dan's readers are now up 110% on the stock.

New high: Park Electrochemical (PKE).

Yet another week has passed in the mailbag. What will Monday bring? A resurgence of venom, perhaps? Whatever it is, send it our way... feedback@stansberryresearch.com.

"I'd like to add some thought regarding your free publications. Surely enough, they are at times stuffed with promotional forays, but you also publish some gems. Take Larsen & Toubro, the most prominent infrastructure play in India. Someone of your staff mentioned it a year ago, lamenting one could not invest in it. I did some research, got to love the company and found out that they are trading on the London stock exchange as a GDR. So I bought it. It's up 150% since. Thanks so much!" – Paid-up subscriber Philipp von Gottberg

"A lot of things can be bought through TDAmeritrade that can not be bought using the Web site. Buying these things requires calling a live broker. I have bought Canadian stocks this way before through TDAmeritrade. Also, the brokers can often tell people of a US listed equivalent."
– Paid-up subscriber Gerard Cotter

"Yes it is possible to make 15% in a month in FOREX. But more than likely that month will be sandwiched between 2 months of losses of say 15% or more – each. And there is a Federal Agency who regulates this. It's the SEC, but for the claims of 15% and the like, it's after the fact and it usually involves investigations into FRAUD." – Paid-up subscriber Hank

Regards,

Sean Goldsmith
Baltimore, Maryland
October 5, 2007

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