I'm always on the prowl for investment ideas. Hardly a day goes by that I don't run across something new and interesting that might be a new trend or idea that will turn into a real money maker. That's probably Peter Lynch's influence. I read his book oh so many years ago and it stuck with me.

If you're invested in big retail stocks this season I think you're going to be rewarded handsomely come next quarter's reporting period. That is if my weekend experience is any indicator.

I experienced a madhouse of buying in nearly every major retail outlet I visited. From electronics stores like Best Buy and Circuit City, to Target, always my favorite for finding just the right something to be returned or exchanged after the holidays.

The interesting thing was, almost everyone I talked to had the same frustration with their shopping. They were having problems finding the things whey wanted, and so were having to settle for an alternative. I got to wondering whether these big retailers might be implementing a strategy of limiting supply of the hottest items and up selling customers to alternatives as a way to drive profits.

Did you make money in stocks last month? It wasn't qute as easy in October compared to September. Average returns were down a bit from 2.3% in September to a -0.8% last month. Just think. It could have been a bit worse without yesterday's quarter point decrease in the Fed Funds rate. Overall the stock market was just about exactly as risky a place to be in October as it was in September. Volatility increased only slightly from September's 1.7% to 1.8% in October.

S&P500 Least Volatile
We had an interesting mix of stocks making up October's ten least volatile stocks in the S&P 500. Alltel let the pack of our least risky stocks to own in October. Alltel was fully 9 times less risky to own than the overall S&P500 index. The rest of the S&P500's top ten least risky stocks in October was dominated by stocks in the Consumer and Health related industries.

One of my mother's favorite sayings was that every cloud has a silver lining. I don't think she ever realized how true that can be in the investment game.

I was speaking to a man yesterday about some work I'm considering having done. He owns his own home remodeling business. Now that might sound a little more grand than the reality here. He's a carpenter. He owns a truck and a couple of trailers for his tools. His business employs as few as one person at a time, himself, to as many as 3 or 4 if the job is a big one.

I asked him how business was for him lately. He told me business had never been better. He's considering taking out a loan to expand his business. He thinks it's time to move away from doing the labor in the business and to become the manager of a larger operation. When I asked him why this plan, he told me business had never been better. He said demand for home remodeling work was higher than he'd ever seen it before.

alt="StockScouter investment returns chart" title="StockScouter investment returns chart" >It's been a while since we had a look at our StockScouter investments. Let's check in on how our investments are doing.

As you may recall, we're tracking Jon Markman's 2nd half of 2007 StockScouter portfolio. His system selects 10 stocks from the universe of stocks based on their timeliness and appreciation potential. I've been blogging about the StockScouter system since the most recent selection was made, tracking it's progress through the market's ups and downs.

According to Jon Markman. The StockScouter stock selection system has never had a six month period where it underperformed the S&P500. With less than three months remaining, the StockScouter portfolio has some catching up to do. Four of the ten original picks are down 10% or more. A fifth, Pride International, is down 8.8%. The worst performing stock in the group has been Hiland Holdings GP. Hiland is down over 20% since our hypothetical investment was made in July.

We had quite a turnaround in the S&P500 last month over what we saw in August

Overall I'd say you're just plain unlucky if you did not manage to make money in stocks last month. The average stock in the S&P500 returned 2.3% in September. Not only that, but that return came with little fanfare. Volatility was down from August, and significantly lower than average return. Remember the old song about the monkey throwing darts at the newspaper? In August the monkey made lots of money.

A while back fool.com put up another one of their sales pitches entitled "Don't try to beat the market". I checked it out. With a title like that how could I not?

What you get, in a nutshell, is a come-on for Fool's Hidden Gems newsletter. The pitch goes something like this:

1. You can beat your brains out and use up all your time picking stocks. It's a brutally difficult way to beat the market or...
2. You can buy an index fund and get the same returns as the market or...
3. You can go the smart route and let someone else recommend which stocks for you to buy

The Fool's Hidden Gems is their small-cap value stocks newsletter service. If you follow the link at the end of the "article" you'll find a very long sales pitch for Hidden Gems. You'll read several dreamy stories about fabulous returns, whetting your appetite for your first 100-bagger.

Last month wasn't exactly a great month for stocks. Overall, the S&P 500 wasn't even able to break even. The average return for all 500 stocks in the in the index was a negative 0.2%. And volatility, as we all would have guessed, has been on the rise. The average volatility for each of the 500 stocks in the S&P500 rose to 2.4%. I'll be interested to see what happens in September with volatility.

For the risk averse, here are last month's ten least volatile stocks in the S&P 500. There are no wild rides here. The S&P's tenth most volatile stock, Johnson & Johnson, was less than half as volatile as the overall average. The S&P's lease volatile stock, Biomet, Inc. was nearly 25 times less volatile than the average.

Are there any Dogs of the Dow fans out there? I admit, there was a time when I pursued this strategy. I'm no longer a follower because my investors intuition told me a formula so simple simply couldn't be successful over a long period of time.

For anyone not familiar with the Dogs of the Dow investment concept, it's a simple investment strategy based on the theory that large companies at or near the bottom of their business cycles will usually outperform as they regress to their mean returns.

The Dogs of the Dow strategy holds that large companies at the bottom of their business cycles can be identified by their high dividend yields. See, large companies almost never cut dividends, so when their stock prices are down compared to their dividends, the dividend yields are high.

It's been another three weeks already. It's time to take a look at how my StockScouter portfolio experiment is doing. You don't have to look very hard or long at the chart on the right to know things have not been so good lately. I'm burning a lot of red pixels. Looks like there's been a bear in here. Three weeks ago they charged out of the gate looking like winners. Now, if this were real money, I'd be getting a little worried.