For many years, when visiting Hamburg, Germany, I have stayed in a small hotel near my mother’s apartment.

The set up is unique and unlike anything you see nowadays when traveling in a world of mega hotels, poor service and employees who do not care nor do they speak your language. The Condi Hotel in Hamburg features a grand number of 35 rooms and has their own bakery and café.

Yes, you read that right; it’s a small place where you love to go because everybody knows your name. From the owner, to the waitresses in the breakfast room everyone is friendly, in good spirits and ready to help. The maids who clean up your room actually are natives and speak your language–a rarity in itself. A special request is handled quickly and efficiently by them without interaction with the front desk.

The breakfast buffet spread is something I look forward to all year. Freshly baked rolls and a variety of German meats and cheeses along with boiled eggs, juices and fruit make this a perfect way to start your day. Best of all, it’s included in the price of your stay.

Some things are still based on the honor system. Many business people frequent this hotel, usually only for a couple of nights. Despite the number of new guests passing through, you can enter the unattended lobby at any time of the night, where you may find some freshly baked cookies, a tray with clean beer and wine glasses and yes, open access to a refrigerator filled with adult beverages, mainly superb locally brewed beer and an assortment of small bottles of wine.

You take what you like up to your room and leave a note for the front desk advising them of your room number and what you took. They will then add it to your bill upon check out. It’s service at its best along with trust in the honesty and integrity of the patrons.

Too bad that in today’s society this is an exception and can’t be the rule for conducting business.

Mark Hulbert of MarketWatch featured a story called “Still Bullish,” in which he looks at the best long-term timing newsletters to see whether they had maintained their bullishness since early August or reduced their equity market exposure.

Interestingly, the bottom line was that nobody was bearish with the average equity allocation having reached 86%. He further mentions that the best market timers on average have more than double the equity exposure of the 10 worst market timers.

He makes a good point in that if you are betting on a bear market right now, you have to bet against the timers with the best long-term records and side with those whose records have been awful.

My view is that if you simply follow trends, as I harp on constantly, you don’t have to bet against anybody whether they have a winning record or not. Go with the uptrend for as long as it lasts, and get out when your trailing sell stops get triggered. It’s as simple as that, although many talking heads in then media like to make it far more complicated.

My latest No Load Fund/ETF Tracker has been posted at:

http://www.successful-investment.com/newsletter-archive.php

Profit taking pulled the markets down, but the bulls prevailed and the week ended up on a positive note.

Our Trend Tracking Index (TTI) for domestic funds/ETFs has moved to +6.42% above its long-term trend line (red) as the chart below shows:



The international index inched higher to +5.61% above its own trend line, keeping us safely on the buy side:



For more details, and the latest market commentary, as well as the updated No load Fund/ETF StatSheet, please see the above link.

MarketWatch had a piece called “Avoid Mediocre Funds In Hot Sectors.” Finally, it’s a story I can agree with because being in a great performing sector should be every investor’s goal. However, just because a sector is hot, does not mean that every fund/ETF in it is performing up to par.

The article states to sell a few funds that apparently are not great performers. In particular, they are recommending selling PRGFX (my M-Index rating is +10), VWUSX (+10) and DEFIX (no rating available).

Instead, you are supposed to be buying TMGFX (+15), JORNX (+18) and JAVLX (no rating available). While these funds maybe OK replacements based on my momentum numbers, there are some that are even superior performers.

If you utilize my weekly StatSheet on a regular basis, you would have known that, for example, funds like WLGYX (+20), BSMAX (+20) and TWHIX (+19) have stronger momentum numbers and have performed better.

While chasing performance is generally frowned upon by Wall Street’s talking heads, it’s a great way to grow your portfolio as long as it is used in conjunction with a clearly defined exit strategy to protect you from too much downside risk.

I am obliged to tell you that from the list of funds above, I and my clients have positions in WLGYX only.

Another good start to a new week had all of the major indexes moving higher. Below please find the link to the most recent ETF Master list, which has been updated with yesterday’s closing prices. This will enable you to work with more recent data. You can download the file at:

http://www.successful-investment.com/SSTables/ETFMaster100907.pdf

At this point, our Trend Tracking Indexes (TTIs) remain solidly in bullish territory with the domestic and international one sitting comfortably above their long term trend lines by +6.84% and +5.78% respectively.

If your personal preference is to use environmentally friendly ETFs whenever possible, there are a number of them which might be of interest to you. Of course, just because an ETF is exposed to that area, does not mean it is an appropriate investment at this time.

ETF Trends had a listing of 9 ETFs that are involved in that sector, of which 7 are listed in my weekly StatSheet. If the clean-tech sector is an area you are looking to invest in, you may want to check out this list, which includes my Momentum (M-Index) numbers as of 10/8/07:

PBW (+16)
PZD (+14)
EVX (+12)
GRN (+6)
PUW (+5)
GEX (+8)
PBD (+16)

While we currently have no holdings in any of the above ETfs, this may change if they move up higher in the sector rankings.