MUST READ: Don't just buy good companies, sell bad ones (Christian Science Monitor)

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<SNIP> Where has it worked, and where hasn't it worked?

DeSantis: I think it works best by paying attention to what's happening in society. And one very big trend is the issue of obesity. On the long side, this gets a lot of investment play by people investing in companies that produce natural and organic foods – a Whole Foods or a SunOpta, which provides a lot of healthy ingredients to food companies. And yet, on the short side, there all sorts of other opportunities. You can short sugary, sweet, trans-fatty fattening products.

Like what?

DeSantis: We've shorted companies such as Tootsie Roll.

Tootsie Roll? An American icon?

DeSantis: It was painful. I like Tootsie Roll as well. But intellectually, a few years ago, we made the assumption that the square footage in selling space was going to expand in the areas of natural and organic foods and that it was going to contract in the checkout aisles for the sugary things.

Did the antisugar strategy work?

DeSantis: It was enormously successful.

MORE
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0205/p25s01-wmgn.html

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1. Does everybody understand that the article is about activism and not stocks?

These folks are talking in "code" directly to audiences like DU.

[Mojorabbit]

2. I did but

I love tootsie rolls :)

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3. LOL! Yep, better a Tootsie than a Mars Bar or a Snickers