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How to Play 2014's Most Profitable Trends Today - 3/14/14

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Best stocks to buy for the week ending Feb. 28, 2014: The S&P 500 Index finished February up 4.3% at 1,859.45, its best month since October and its best February since 1998.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended February 4% higher, trimming year-to-date losses to 1.5%. And the Nasdaq closed out the month up 5%. The tech-heavy index is up 3.2% in 2014 and sits at a 13 1/2-year high.

Five years ago this Sunday, on March 9, 2009, the S&P 500 closed at 676.58, its lowest level since the start of the 2008 financial crisis. Since then, stock returns have more than tripled.

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How to Play 2014's Most Profitable Trends Today - 2/25/14

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Best Investments for the week ending Feb. 21, 2014: U.S. stocks slipped last week as markets reacted to a string of disappointing data from housing to manufacturing.

For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.3% to close at 16,103.30. The S&P 500 Index lost 0.1% to end at 1,836.25. The Nasdaq tacked on 0.5% to end at 4,263.41.

Following is a recap from last week...

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Four Ways to Play the "New Gold Rush" in Materials

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Who would have thought that the new gold rush would be in material sciences?

We're talking about everything from rare earths that drive precision lasers to the cobalt needed for rechargeable batteries

Not to mention the advanced materials that make computer chips run faster. Or the "smart" materials that are driving the nanotech revolution.

Of course the big news in what I call the Golden Age of Materials Science came less than nine years ago when two scientists discovered graphene.

It's a revolutionary material that will yield flat-screen TVs as thin as Saran Wrap, nanotech supercomputers, and neural implants that combat brain disease. No wonder the two scientists who discovered it won the Nobel Prize.

Now hundreds of scientists have hit the lab to look for new ways to tweak existing molecules — or create whole new synthetic substances. They've already produced a steady stream of breakthroughs.

Today, I want to show you four ways you can profit from all of this radical change.

For most investors, that will mean focusing on the specialty chemicals sector, which is up about 22% in the past six months. That's more than double the market's overall move over the same the period.

Here are four material sciences stocks that have caught my eye thanks to their strong fundamentals and solid charts:

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Don't Let the Market Play You For the "Greater Fool"

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More than a decade has passed since the dot-bomb implosion, and many of us are still amazed that so many investors got sucked into such an insane speculative financial mania.

The thing is, it has happened many times before.

For instance, in the mid-1600s Holland literally drove itself to ruin over flowers – tulips, to be precise.

Referred to today as Tulip Mania, Tulipomania, or Tulpewoerde, it was the first recorded speculative mania in modern history.

Indeed, the financial frenzy that unfolded between 1634 and 1637 crashed so hard that it actually helped smash the Dutch economy, transforming one of the world's first superpowers into an economic backwater.

Writing nearly 200 years later in his classic work, "Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," historian Charles MacKay said:

"In 1634, the rage among the Dutch to possess [tulip bulbs] was so great that the ordinary industry of the country was neglected, and the population, even to its lowest dregs, engaged in the tulip trade. As the mania increased, prices augmented, until in the year 1635, many persons were known to invest a fortune of 100,000 florins for the purchase of 40 roots."

For some context, the annual income of a middle-class urban family in Holland was 200 to 1,000 florins. (University of Kansas Prof. Mark Hirschey estimated that peak prices for tulip bulbs ranged between $17,000 and $76,000 apiece in today's money.)

Tulip Madness Takes Hold

Like most manias, Tulip Madness took hold during a period of prosperity, when credit was easy to obtain. The Netherlands had the world's most powerful navy, accounted for half the world's shipping trade, was a center of science and, with artists like Vermeer, was also the cultural center of Europe.

The country was newly affluent and tulips, which had come to Europe in the late 1500s, were difficult to obtain and became a way to flaunt that wealth.

Naturally, the DeVries wanted to keep up with the Van Dijks, and tulip prices began their upward march.

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