A Note From Bryan Ashenberg: Dec. 17

NEW YORK (Breakout Stocks) -- The Breakout Stocks newsletter operates under one key premise: only small companies can become large companies. The world of small and mid cap stocks is full of exciting opportunities, and our goal is simple, to help subscribers make smarter trading decisions and provide investment ideas that can make help them richer.

Our intensive research on all new ideas includes pouring over the company's' financials and filings, speaking with management and Wall Street analysts -- all to better understand companies' product offerings, their competitive positioning and the catalysts that will propel their stocks higher.

Smaller companies are exciting names which are unencumbered by the law of large numbers and are still small enough that many on Wall Street are not paying them enough attention -- which spells opportunity for investors. We look to discover the next hidden gem before the rest of the market. In general, these are more speculative stocks -- higher risk/higher reward, but we go to great lengths to ensure that our picks offer investors a high-quality way to participate in this speculative part of the market, so that subscribers can sleep at night. We are not making bets here!! We are taking calculated risks -- that's a big difference. We are looking for long term winners -- not fad type stocks that may flare up but then fade out.

Breakout Stocks is an alert-based service that provides updates on model portfolio holdings as well as a weekly summary to recap important events and our opinion on each holding. We plan to generally hold between 15 and 25 positions in the model portfolio at any one time. While we don't day-trade our positions, we are relatively active as we look to take advantage of what we perceive to be opportunities to make changes in response to market action. With that in mind, this service aims to be helpful both to long-term buy-and-hold investors as well as to active traders.

You can reach me any time via e-mail or on Twitter (@Bryan_Ashenberg).

Here is a recent sample of our weekly summary. It contains a recap of the past week's action and a brief investment thesis for each name:

http://www.thestreet.com/k/bos/11788507/thestreet-breakout-stocks--weekly-summary.html

Here is recent alert where I add to a position based on a recent event:

http://www.thestreet.com/k/bos/11777635/increasing-an-aerospace-position.html

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Bryan Ashenberg is a portfolio manager at TheStreet, where he writes TheStreet Breakout Stocks. Bryan Ashenberg has 15 years of investment experience. Previous to joining TheStreet, Bryan was an Associate Director at UBS Global Asset Management, where he was responsible for providing generalist research coverage for the U.S. Small and Small/Mid Cap Growth Equity Portfolios. Prior to working at UBS, he held technology analyst responsibilities at Columbus Circle investors and he had served as a generalist at Stechler & Company. Bryan graduated summa cum laude with a BS in finance from Yeshiva University. Bryan is a CFA Charterholder.