If you want to hit a home run, you have to swing for the fences.

Josef Schachter, a man who wears a bow-tie and shuns the herd, is one of those players.

A year ago, when the so-called smart money was grimly pounding nails into the coffin of Nortel Networks (NT-TSX), the dapper president of Schachter Asset Management was calmly singing the praises of a stock that ranks as the biggest bust in Canadian history, having made paupers of widows and fund managers.

The herd? They had Nortel written off at a time when it turned out to be one of the best bargains on the TSX and there was cause for concern as Nortel had tanked from $124 to $1.66 in a two-year span.

It even briefly traded as a penny stock, as low as 67 cents.

When Schachter made Nortel, at $1.66, one of his top three picks for the Edge’s Pro’s 3 Stars feature, the writer swallowed his store teeth.

“Excuse me, Josef,” I mumbled. “I don’t think I got that, could ya please repeat that. I thought you said . . . ”

“I’m picking Nortel,” Babe Ruth said matter-of-factly. “I don’t think Nortel is going under and I do think we’re going to see a recovery for tech stocks over the next 12 months. I think Nortel has raised enough money now to survive.”

Schachter’s 12-month target? $4.

It took Nortel four months to hit that target and the stock recently surged 39 per cent in four days to $6.50, rekindling memories of that wild ride in 1999 and 2000 when tech stocks began to melt down.

Of course, for old time’s sake and to keep shareholders honest, Nortel gave stock-holders a spine-tingling flashback of the crash with a one-day 20-per-cent selloff to $5.13 on more than 100 million shares.

Over the past two years, Schachter has made Nortel a top pick in the Edge not once, but four times.

Overall, on his Nortel picks alone, Schachter is up 76 per cent.

The tape-measure home runs are struck in the throes of the deepest, darkest bear markets.

Those gutsy calls by the man with the bow-tie drive the point home.

* PENNIES FROM HEAVEN: Seven months ago, we introduced the Edge’s Dirty Dozen Canadian Penny Stock Index as a tribute to the wee stocks under $1 that get no respect.

During that time, Canada’s benchmark index on the Toronto Stock Exchange is up 15.1 per cent.

Our Dirty Dozen, an extremely high-risk portfolio of stocks, is up 39.8 per cent, courtesy of a few home runs.

We’ve had to boot three more pennies for breaking the dollar barrier – Bioscrypt (BYT-TSX, up 71.1 per cent at $1.42), Rubicon Minerals (RMX-TSXV, up 20.4 per cent at $1.18) and Quest Capital, formerly Viceroy (QC-TSX, up 50 per cent at $1.20).

We also graduated three pennies in the previous quarter.

To ride the current tide in junior mining companies, we are adding two mining companies – Nelson Resources (NLG-TSX at 68 cents) and Excellon Resources (EXN-TSXV at 17.5 cents).

The third new addition is a profitable manufacturer of snowboard equipment and accessories, Option NFA (OPN-TSXV at 13.5 cents).

Rounding out the Dirty Dozen are Versatile Mobile Systems (VMS-TSXV, +109 per cent); X-Cal Resources (XCL-TSX, +100 per cent); Maxim Power (MXG-TSXV, +44 per cent); DataWave (DTV-TSXV, +20 per cent); Thistle Mining (THT-TSX, +16.7 per cent); Twin Mining (TWG-TSX, +6.1 per cent); Imaging Dynamics (IDL-TSXV, -6.7 per cent); Mainframe Entertainment (MFE-TSX, -14.7 per cent) and International Utility Structures (IUS-TSX, -31.4 per cent).

Somehow, we overlooked Consolidated Gulfside Resources (CGL-TSXV), Canada’s hottest stock year to date.

This upstart player in the online music business has skyrocketed from one cent to 59 cents, a return of 5,400 per cent.

* SAGE WORDS: “The U.S. is inflating its head off and depreciating the dollar’s head off.”

– Richard Russell, legendary investor and editor of the Dow Theory Letters.



HOT ALBERTA STOCK: TESORO ENERGY
TOG-TSX 10 1/2 Cents
Up 2-1/2 cents (+31.2%) on 4,290,600 shares (for week ending Sept. 12).
Tesoro doesn’t even have a website but fans of the company could care less. They lit a fire under the stock on massive volume, including 3.3 million shares in one day. The last time Tesoro traded over a million shares in a day was back in January, when the stock spiked from five cents to 22 cents.



COLD ALBERTA STOCK: WESTERN FINANCIAL GROUP
WES-TSX $2.55
Down 60 cents (-19.0%) on 33,900 shares (for week ending Sept. 12).
Western’s recent chart is about as appealing as a shareholder’s fingernails. After this big dip (on no news) following a sharp spike upwards (on no news), the chart for the owner of Bank West and other financial services interests looks something like the Calgary Tower. For a company based in High River, wouldn’t a
grain-elevator chart make more sense?