A year ago, when Santa gave Business Edge an exclusive interview, the old fella’s face turned redder than Rudolph’s nose when asked if he was carrying any books on investing in that bag slung over his shoulder.

Indeed, the investment and finance section of the bookstore has been mired in a gruesome bear market for several years. Investment books have been hastily thrust onto the market to capitalize on a hot trend by either promising the moon in a bull market or the next Great Depression. Too often they are written as if they were designed as a cure for insomnia.

But the biz book section has come to life this year just in time for Christmas with a few bullish offerings among recent releases featuring refreshing perspectives, hard-hitting commentary and timely advice.

If there’s a stock market contrarian on your gift list, you can’t go wrong with The Contrarian Investor’s 13: How to Earn Superior Returns in the Stock Market (Viking Canada, $34).

Benj Gallander, co-editor of the popular Contra The Heard investment letter, smashes a home run by trotting out 13 contrarian rules in highly entertaining fashion.

Gallander is also one of the more trustworthy pundits. He may be the only expert guest on ROB-TV’s Market Call who goes out of his way to let viewers know when he has screwed up. He has been known to confess buying a stock at 40 cents that has tanked to 20 cents and leaves the impression he is sincerely more interested in helping people beat the market than pitching his newsletter.

In the book, he trumpets the fact he is out to hit home runs and swinging for gains of 50 per cent to 500 per cent by searching for stocks, or “black swans,” that have fallen out of favour.

An extraordinary book hitting the shelves that is both non-fiction and fiction is The One Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth (Harmony Books, $29.95).

This is the brainchild of a prolific one-two punch – Mark Victor Hansen, co-author of the Chicken Soup For The Soul series, and investment guru Robert G. Allen.

These guys really know how to step out of the box.

The left pages feature practical one-minute habits for building wealth and ethical management of that wealth. Here’s an example of a one-minute tip: ‘Deduct 10 per cent off the top of your income and deposit into your investment account. Convert all credit cards except one to debit cards so it is impossible for you to go into debt. Then, live on what is left over. Invest your 10-per-cent surplus into investments that can earn at least 10 per cent. A dollar a day at 10 per cent interest becomes a million dollars in 56 years.’

The right pages are a fictitious novel about a waitress who must make a million dollars in 90 days or lose her two children forever.

If you’re looking for tax tips that won’t bore you silly, Canadian tax whiz Tim Cestnick delivers in the clutch with Winning the Tax Game 2003: A Year-Round Tax and Investment Guide for Canadians (Viking Canada, $26).

Unlike most tax guides, this one is both readable and enlightening.

For instance, Cestnick reveals something few investors are aware of, that some stocks listed on the TSX Venture exchange are not considered to be traded on a ‘prescribed’ exchange, which means they are considered private company shares for tax purposes.

Therefore, gains on those shares may be sheltered and losses may be eligible as Allowable Business Investment Losses. He advises investors to contact the companies to determine if they meet the criteria to be considered private companies for tax purposes.

Two other books deal with the investment scams and corporate shenanigans that have sacked investors in the past year. The most insightful one is penned by former U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt, who blows the cover off Wall Street in Take On The Street: What Wall Street and Corporate America Don’t Want You to Know – What You Can Do to Fight Back (Pantheon Books, $37.95).

This is a no-holds-barred look inside the U.S. investment community – brokerages, mutual fund companies and corporations – geared to give the ordinary investor a fighting chance.

And if you enjoy James Cramer’s mouth-frothing rants on CNBC’s Cramer and Kudlow, you’ll get a charge out of You Got Screwed: Why Wall Street Tanked and How You Can Prosper (Simon & Schuster, $31.50).

This one will not cure your insomnia.

In fact, the tempestuous Cramer may keep you up all night. Oh, well.

* CHEERS: To Calgary firm Mawer Investment Management for winning two mutual fund awards at the Canadian Investment Awards.

Mawer won analyst choice awards for best small cap equity fund with its New Canada Fund, managed by Martin Ferguson, a member of the Edge’s team for the Pro’s 3 Stars column, and best international equity fund for its World Investment Fund, managed by Gerald Cooper-Key.

The New Canada Fund has been Mawer’s standout fund, having gained 17.1 per cent year to date and 31.1 per cent in the past 12 months.

* JEERS: To the Canadian mutual fund industry as a whole for its horrendous performance in the past year. How bad was it?

Even the fund manager of the year at the investment awards, Jerry Javasky of Mackenzie Financial Corporation, had a losing year with the $5.1-billion Mackenzie Ivy Canadian Fund, which dropped 5.1 per cent (the TSX Composite was down 14.1 per cent).

A complete listing of the awards may be seen at www.investmentawards.com

* STREET TALK: “Staggering.”

That was the word gold guru John Embry used to describe the exploration results of Southwestern Resources’ Boka project in China.

So was the reaction by investors who boosted Southwestern (SWG-TSX) stock to $7.26, a 174-per-cent increase on four million shares in four days after the Vancouver company said it had struck a vein in China richer than any in Canada.

Embry, manager of the Royal Precious Metals Fund, had been touting the stock before the news and described Southwestern’s management as “honest as the day is long,” which may calm investors who are still smarting from the Bre-X scam.

* SAGE WORDS: “Self-doubt drowns your dreams, hesitation holds you hostage, skepticism scares you away.”

– Mark Victor Hansen, The One Minute Millionaire.



HOT ALBERTA STOCK: Ketch Resources
KER-TSX $3.71
* Up 71 cents (+23.7%) on 1,195,500 shares
(for week ending Dec. 6).
* Investors lit a fire under Ketch after the Calgary oil and gas outfit announced it was raising $4.95 million in a private placement by offering 1.5 million flow-through shares at $3.30. The stock has been on a tear since beginning trading recently after a restructuring by the former Ketch Energy that also created a new income trust, Acclaim Energy.




COLD ALBERTA STOCK: Tathacus Resources Ltd.
TTC-TSX.V $2.27
Down $5.05 (-68.9%) on 1,361,200 shares (for week ending Dec. 6).
Tathacus shares were suspended from trading on the Venture Exchange for 20 months and, once they resumedtrading on Dec. 2, investors showed no mercy.
Tathacus recently released a statement in which it said it was “clarifying ambiguities that may have arisen from
previous disclosure” about its confusing technology. When the stock was halted in March of 2001, Tathacus was one of the hottest stocks on the baby exchange,
spiking on its interest in Xogen Power, a private Calgary technology company.