We strive provide the most inclusive, reputable, and timely content available for self-directed, individual investors. http://www.thestockadvisors.com Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:04:50 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.thestockadvisors.com/content/view/4302/33/ My goal is to eventually build this position until it represents 20% of my personal portfolio. Here are 10 reasons for making Activision Blizzard a core holding.Activision released the highly anticipated game Call of Duty: Modern Warefare 2 and racked up $310 million in sales from the U.S. and United Kingdom over a 24 hour period. With Christmas right around the corner, the final sales numbers for this edition of Call of Duty are going to be much bigger.World of Warcraft: Cataclysm for the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) is expected to be released in 2010 to the 11.5 million active users who pay every month (or by the hour in China).The Blizzard division of Activision that created World of Warcraft also has another potential blockbuster game called Starcraft 2 scheduled for release in the first half of 2010. More than a decade after the release of the original Starcraft game millions of people are still playing it on Blizzard's online service called Battle.net.Activision's line up of franchises like Guitar Hero and Call of Duty continue to perform well. According to Activision's CEO Bobby Kotick Guitar Hero was the year's #1 best-selling third-party franchise in North America... Intro - Main Section Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.thestockadvisors.com/content/view/4288/33/ Holly Corp. is my top-ranked 'Doubler' -- stocks with the potential to double in price. With regard to HOC's fundamentals, I like the following: Holly has delivered impressive year-over-year earnings growth of +34.8%. I also look at multi-year (3 to 5 years) average earnings growth, as this tells me if a particular company has long-term staying power. In this case, HOC has delivered exceptional five-year average earnings growth of +25.7%. One way to judge a company's health is to look at its return on equity. The higher this number, the better. In this case, HOC sports a very strong ROE of 26.1%. Knowing a stock's price/earnings ratio (P/E) is important, but it's not nearly as important as knowing how that P/E stacks up against the stock's peers. With a P/E of 10.2, HOC is reasonably valued relative to its peer group. When I can get a decent dividend on a stock, I consider it a bonus. In the case of HOC, its annual yield is 2.2%. In addition, I want all the financial 'stars' aligned when I buy a stock. This means I want the fundamentals and technicals to be strong. However, it is also critically important to... Intro - Main Section Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.thestockadvisors.com/content/view/4298/33/ The last time the world’s stock markets rose nearly straight up for eight months, they then spent a few months sideways before heading sharply higher. Not surprisingly, much of the growth today is coming from China, where third-quarter GDP hit 12.2%, and South Korea, where GDP is growing 8.2%. Chinese retail sales have risen 30%, and even beleaguered Japanese exports are up 31% annualized. Of course, not all bailouts are equal. So the growth is proceeding at an unequal pace. But the point is that the world is growing. Therefore, any correction or consolidation should present us with the ability to buy more dynamic companies with global exposure and solid cash flows at even bigger discounts. We’re very excited and trust you are, too. One thing that developing countries around the world cannot do without is power. And ABB Ltd. (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=abb) (NYSE: ABB (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=abb)) is one of the global leaders in large-scale electrical infrastructure projects. As of September 2009, ABB was sitting on $26.1 billion in backlogged orders. Recently, the company announced that orders from emerging markets now account for 55% of total orders. That’s good news. Emerging markets seem to be getting their economies back on track... Intro - Main Section Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0100 http://www.thestockadvisors.com/content/view/4286/33/ At its core, Florida-based Harris is an information technology company. Admittedly, this is a stodgy area in the tech world, but don't let that deter you. There’s a lot to like with Harris. For instance, the U.S. government is one of the company's biggest customers. Companies that rely on Uncle Sam for the bulk of their sales and profits, as does Harris, have predictable revenue streams. They’re often able to weather economic downturns more easily than other companies. Harris designs and builds communications technology used by the U.S. military. Given that the U.S. is involved in two armed conflicts with no end in sight, demand should remain steady for the company's products. Harris recently reported a 12% drop in fiscal first-quarter earnings, but sales climbed by almost 3%. That is significant. Unlike many companies that spent the better part of 2009 cutting costs, Harris is showing top-line growth. More importantly, Harris offered robust full-year guidance. They expect to earn $3.85-$3.95 a share on sales of $5.1-$5.2 billion, topping previous estimates. The company landed a combined $286.5 million in new contracts from the State Department and U.S. Navy on the same day in late October. Two weeks before... Intro - Main Section Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.thestockadvisors.com/content/view/4285/33/ To hear some analysts tell it, the BlackBerry maker is going the way of Nortel; it's just a matter of time. For example, analyst Jim Suva of Citigroup Global Markets recently issued a sell signal on the shares, saying that RIM's long-time dominance of the smart phones market is over. For the record, many analysts disagree with Suva's assessment. Credit Suisse has reiterated its 'outperform' rating with a target price of $95. Bank of America/Merrill Lynch has a $100 target, Scotia Capitalhas a $103 target and CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets has a target of $100. RIMM has a long love/hate relationship with investors. No one paid much attention to the stock after it went public in late 1997 until it suddenly caught fire in 1999, gaining more than 2,800% in less than two years. Then the tech bubble burst and RIM came crashing down. In 2002, you could have bought shares for as little as $2.20. Don't you wish you had done so? From there they moved steadily back up to over $140 a share in mid-2008 before they were socked by the market meltdown that followed. Now they are trading for less than half that price. Can they... Intro - Main Section Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.thestockadvisors.com/content/view/4287/33/ There are plenty of reasons to be bullish on the future of gold prices, including a weak US dollar. Further, India's Central Bank recently announced they wanted to buy IMF gold. Russian and Chinese Central Bankers have also expressed an interest in purchasing the remaining IMF gold. Do major players know or suspect an announcement by the IMF that the remaining 204 tonnes of gold have been sold? Another possible reason for strong gold prices is the lifting of purchase restrictions in Vietnam. The country suffers from high inflation and citizens are purchasing gold rather than holding currency. They currently pay $25 or more above spot gold prices on the black market so eliminating restrictions will increase purchase volumes. Gold prices could also be higher because of the smoldering feud between Iran, the US and Israel. There is also the fear of impending inflation as the Federal Reserve continues to make more dollars available. Chairman Bernanke's plan is to eventually sell the Federal Reserve's treasure trove of low interest rate Treasuries and toxic mortgage bonds for dollars, and then retire the proceeds, i.e. destroy the money. In this way, excess money can be withdrawn from the... Intro - Main Section Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +0100 http://www.thestockadvisors.com/content/view/4280/33/ This strategy involve the four Ds -- dividend reinvestment, dollar-cost averaging, diversification, and discipline. Ibbotson Associates has reported that dividends accounted for about 40% of investor return since the mid-1920s. Reinvesting those payouts adds the 'miracle of compounding' to those returns, and DRIPs allow every penny to do so becuase they even buy fractional shares. Dollar-cost averaging spreads investment dollars (and pricing risk) out over time, avoiding the usual tendency to buy at market tops (out of greed) and sell at market bottoms (out of fear). Given the long term uptrend in stocks, an investor's cost basis ends up being much lower than the value of the shares that they accumulate. This technique is especially easy with DRIPs, since most allow investments of as little as $25 or $50. Diversification can be accomplished just as easily, since such small amounts can be spready among many companies, reducing the risk of being too heavily committed to one or two equities. The final D -- discipline -- can be achieved either automatically (through monthly bank drafts) or through habit (seeing the shares accumulate with each quarterly reinvestment and optional cash purchases. Meanwhile, our latest featured stock, Regions Financial, is a... Intro - Main Section Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0100 http://www.thestockadvisors.com/content/view/4270/33/ When properly managed, a property and casualty insurance company is an excellent vehicle for participating in a region’s growth. However, the average age of top insurance companies in the U.S. is 108 years and their assets of the U.S. are growing slowly. For real growth opportunities in the insurance business, you need to go to countries with better growth prospects … and with younger and smaller insurance companies. In China, the industry is just getting off the ground. Reason one for this is the simple fact that Chinese people have substantially more stuff worth insuring each year. Reason two is a growing shift in cultural norms (toward more American standards) that rewards the accumulation and protection of wealth. Cninsure was founded in 1999 as an automobile insurer—it added property and casualty insurance in 2002 and life insurance in 2006—and its revenues have grown every year. Last year they mushroomed 105%, from $60 million to $123 million. No doubt growth will slow in the years ahead as the company gets larger, but we still that growth of 25% or more may be a conservative projection. The lion’s share of the company’s growth has come from acquisitions (more than... Intro - Main Section Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0100 http://www.thestockadvisors.com/content/view/4278/33/ Each day, the Baltic Dry Index calculates the prices to ship raw materials, representing what the end customer pays to have a shipping company ship their goods across the seas on the Baltic Exchange. Because BDI is forward looking -- most economic indicators are backward looking -- it provides a real-time look at global commodities demand without the threat of manipulation. The Baltic Dry Index is totally devoid of speculative players. Trading on the exchange is limited -- only member companies and relevant parties with contracts to move cargo and ship owners can trade on it. This aspect of the BDI is what makes this index so attractive to me. Looking back over the past couple of years, the BDI tends to lead the market higher or lower by about two months. That means the latest firming in the index is foretelling of a higher stock market by yearend. Assuming the BDI is a forward gauge of things to come, then Santa Claus is coming to Wall Street this Christmas. Navios Maritime Partners L.P. is an international owner and operator of Capesize and Panamax vessels. This dry bulk shipping company is a MLP formed by Navios Maritime... Intro - Main Section Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0100 http://www.thestockadvisors.com/content/view/4277/33/ Investors have long favored utilities for a few very good reasons: predictable, recession-resistant revenues; steady streams of dividends; and government-sanctioned monopolies. They’re a safe haven for stressed investors in the midst of a recession. But while much of the retail stock buying focuses its attention on the predictable utility stocks, one deeply related and highly profitable niche is being left to the wayside -- wholesale power generation. Many people don’t realize the fact that power companies don’t own all of this country’s power generation facilities. A different class of utility stocks, known as wholesale power generators, engages in turning commodities like coal, oil, and natural gas into energy. NRG Energy is one such company. This generation firm operates 48 power generating facilities internationally using coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, and alternative fuels. In the aggregate, the company is controls facilities that generate enough energy to power between 4 and 8 million U.S. households. And unlike most of its peers, NRG is actually in the process of constructing additional generation capacity right now. In the highly leveraged power generation industry, NRG is a best-in-breed stock with phenomenal operating metrics and a strong balance sheet, all at a relatively cheap price.... Intro - Main Section Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +0100