" Sometimes you just need to put a muscular and unbreakable stock on your team, so that you can sleep easier at night"

Dow Jones Industrial Average 12,231 (UP) Week ending 10/28/2011

I don't know if it is because it has been raining ice and snow all day and it has taken down some of my trees or if watching a rerun of "GI Jane" and watching the grueling training that the US Navy Seals go through, but it just put me in the mood to write about a stock that is "tough as nails", with numbers that just never quit. The nails analogy is good here, because this stock has just the tools to hammer in those nails. I am talking about the stock of  Stanley Black & Decker Inc. (Symbol SWK, $66.69).  

     The marriage of Stanley Tool Works and Black and Decker took a little while to get back in operational line, but they are in lock and load mode right now, unbreakable.  Last quarter proforma earnings were up 38% to start with. 2011 earnings ending in December is projected at $5.11 per share. Moving to 2012 , $5.91 per share. 5 year sales growth at this company is 17.55% with the 3 year total return of 116.5%. The stock had a dip down in 2008-2009 when the rest of the market took a tank and bottomed on March 5th, 2009, but from then on things have looked pretty good.


Demi Moore in GI Jane


P.S. after watching Demi Moore do push ups in the movie, I wouldn't go messin with her if you know what's good for you. SWK is up 9.56% year to date. The real tell on this stock is the 2.46% dividend of $1.64 a share. Stanley Black and Decker have raised the dividend in every year for the last 5 years. This is always a very good sign for any stock that you are investing in.

Something else you should know about this company is that they are benevolent. This press release just came out. JOPLIN, Mo., Oct 20, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Stanley Black & Decker (NYSE: SWK) a Fortune 500 provider of hand tools, power tools and security solutions, today announced a $350,000 tool donation to the Joplin, Missouri, rebuilding efforts. Our friend and builder of our kitchen, Andy Doyle, just donated his time and went to Joplin and built a new wooden children's playground out there in Joplin. So good things can happen when corporations and individuals work together for a cause.

I must be old, because I remember Demi Moore as the girl with the raspy voice on the TV show "General Hospital"  that was on  in the afternoons. She does a good job in the movie GI Jane, if you get a chance to see it.

Have a good snowy end of October. November should be fun with the market moving up. I like some of the commodity stocks going forward with a hint of inflation showing up in interest rates.

Jacko-Lantern in snow - Deb Wilson


All the best ,    Freewilly

"Diversify your IRA or 401K by purchasing stock in dollar blocks of $1500-$2000 to keep things managable for you"

Dow Jones Industrial Average 11808.79 (UP) Week ending 10/21/2011

I am always looking for stock positions to diversify my IRA portfolio that tend to be broken down into blocks of $1500 to $2000 to form building blocks. So in a $10,000 portfolio you may have 4 or 5 stocks
that are Large cap or Mid cap , then maybe one or two stocks that are Small capitalization companies. So I am looking for good fundamental value as far as price to earnings and revenue growth and preferably a stock that I can buy a fair amount of shares of. In this current trading environment it does not hurt to have a dividend.

So what would I buy on Monday?  NOKIA Corp. ADR (Symbol NOK, $6.61) , (logo the work of Atakos.com , Design and Marketing blog)                                                                                        

You could buy 250 shares here for $1652.50. This would fill a large cap stock position in your portfolio. NOK pays a nice dividend yield of 7.26 percent. Revenues and earnings have been sickly here the last year because of a short term lack of competitive product to compete with the Apple I-phone and multi-platformed Google Android phone lines. However the word is that the Nokia smartphone with the new simplified Microsoft phone interface in it will be out for the Christmas sales season. I think this new simplified phone interface will be well accepted internationally. Remember, even in an off year,this company did over 58 billion in revenue.

Another stock I like right here is NVIDIA Corp. (Symbol NVDA, $14.48). You could buy 125 shares for $1810.00. NVDA has a long term growth rate of 16.91%. Earnings for 2012 looks like $1.00 per share and for 2013, $1.18 per share. The company's "best 3D technology for the PC just got better with the introduction of new NVIDIA(R)3D Vision(TM) products, which deliver greater realism and immersion than ever for 3D games, movies and photos".  The company pays no dividend but has the major plus in these leveraged times of having zero long term debt. Tech stocks as a sector seemed to be ready for some upside movement in this 4th quarter.


People tend to diversify by market sectors, but don't forget to also diversify with large cap, mid cap, small cap and international stocks.  

Have a good last trading week of October. Still have Halloween on the following Monday. Make sure you don't eat all the candy before the kids get there!

Freewilly

                                                                                                                                                                                                

"Occupy Wall Street? Heck for Twenty Six dollars and Fifty-Three Cents you can own Wall Street, with the shares of NYSE Euronext"

Dow Jones Industrial Average 11644.49  (Up) Week ending 10-14-2011

Everybody is mad at Wall Street. Citizens are mad at the banks that were too big to fail, and bankers that still got their fat bonus checks.Those banks took capital risk that they normally would not have taken, knowing they would be bailed out if they screwed up. And screw up big time they did! The banks along with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae made high risk loans to people to buy houses who put very little money down and that they could not afford. Everybody was making money in real estate, and the activity drove home prices to speculative levels that could not be sustained. So now we are stuck with this wicked multi year financial hangover and lingering 9% unemployment.

So why not just own Wall Street and have them pay you? NYSE EURONEXT , (Symbol NYX, $26.53) stock gives you ownership in the New York Stock Exchange. First you start out with getting paid a 4.41% dividend. The stock trades at a meager value PE of 10.38. Average 5 year sales growth of 17.70% and earnings growth of 10% a year. You wrap all that together and you are bound to get a pretty good annual return. The stock was trading as high as $41.55 in May of this year, so you have plenty of headroom here.

You could also take your protest to other cities around the world because NYSE Euronext owns:    The New York Stock Exchange, Amsterdam Stock Exchange, Brussels Stock Exchange, Paris Bourse,  London (LIFFE) and the Lisbon Stock Exchange. You would have a lot of curbs to sit on and not get kicked off because you would be the owner!

 
So get your Protest groove on , and keep it peaceful, that's how Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi would have done it. The voice of the people. Let's get a job for everyone that wants one.

Freewilly

"Some ideas extracted from Investors Business Daily and some from Jim Cramer's Mad Money TV show"

Dow Jones Industrial Average 11103.12  (Down) Week ending 10-07-2011

Some times a small reward in your day can help you make it
through. Hershey Co Inc. (symbol HSY, $58.99) can deliver these chocolate treats and has been doing it for years. This tasty stock has a one year total return of 21.9% and a three year total return of 68.6%.  The stock pays a nice 2.34% dividend and has a staggering Return on Equity percentage of  67.00%. The IDB rating is 90-62-92. Earnings growth a little mild, but very consistent. 

Another stock that jumped out at me from IDB was not usually a stock that you would often talk about. STAMPS.COM (symbol STMP, $24.72) has a long term growth rate of 18%. Stamps has an IDB rating of 99-89-99 A+, B. , with 99 the highest rating you can get for growth. 12 month Total Return is 67.6% and the 3 year Total Return of 173.8%.   These are two stocks that I saw in Investors Business Daily that peaked my interest. They do an excellent job of extracting data and making it easy to see and understand.

Jim Cramer of CNBC , who went to the same high school as my wife Deborah here in Springfield (Montco) PA., works harder than anyone I know to bring you just tremendous investment ideas on his TV show Mad Money and on his websites. You will find his websites on the links on the right column of my blog. I was lucky enough to be watching when Jim brought on to his show the CEO of Whiting Petroleum Corp. (symbol WLL,$35.54) . This stock is flat out great value investment which is down this year. The CEO is committed to getting the stock price back up. Great fundamentals and  explosive earnings growth with 2011 earnings per share of $3.67 per share and 2012 earnings of $4.66. This company has 18, (count'em) , strong buy recommendations according to SmartMoney.

Jim , (pictured), a week later brought the CEO of Red Hat Inc. (symbol RHT,$42.88) on to his show and rolled out just another great company.
Long term growth 20.40%. 12 strong buy recommendations. The stock is only up 1.5% this year but the three year total return of 222.2%. We can live with that number!  This company helps companies save money. That is a winning concept all the time.

One  last recommendation from Jim is Big Blue,  International Business Machines Corp. (symbol IBM, 182.39).  Eleven strong buy recommendations.  The price might look high on a historical basis, but the company is projecting 2012 earnings of $14.75 per share. A three total return of 104%. Not too shabby!

 So it's OK to use the other guys recommendations when they are going to make you money. They have full research staffs to help them out and lots of eyes and ears out there to find those great ideas. Three bucks for an daily IDB and Jim Cramer gives you lots of free stuff and also offers professional services if you prefer their inside stuff and a timing advantage.

So hope for sunny fall skies and Dow 12,000. Have a good week.

Freewilly