"When the MASTER'S Golf Tournament arrives in April, I love to go back and watch the movie, "The Greatest Game Ever Played", that features young amateur golfer Francis Ouimet with his 10 year old caddy Eddie Lowery stunningly winning the 1913 US Golf Open. So what does this have to do with stocks?"

Dow Jones Industrial Average 18,058 (UP) Week ending 04-10-2015
Dow Jones Industrial Avergae 17,826.30 (Down) Week ending 04-17-2015

Each year in April when the Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, GA. rolls around with all the great golfers coming in to make their play to win the coveted green jacket, it makes me want to re watch the golf movie, "The Greatest Game Ever Played. 

This movie is based on the 2002, Mark Frost biographical account of Francis Ouimet's 1913 U.S. Open victory titled, "The Greatest Game Ever Played: Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, and the Birth of Modern Golf."

The story is about a young caddy Francis Ouimet who decides that he is going to try out to play as an amateur in the 1913 US Golf open near Boston, Massachusetts. "When Francis was four years old, his family purchased a house on Clyde Street in Brookline, directly across from the 17th hole of  The Country Club. The Ouimet family grew up relatively poor and were near the bottom of the economic ladder, which was hardly the position of any American golfer at the time." (Sourced From Wikipedia) . He is pictured above in the movie with his unlikely 10 year old caddy, the spunky Eddie Lowery. True story.

 Harry Vardon, Francis Ouimet, Ted Ray

Well, I will let you watch the movie to see what happens, but I included a picture with Francis and his two top British professional golfer competitors, Harry Vardon and Ted Ray. These were all excellent golfers. Francis Ouimet remained an amateur and become a very successful  businessman.

So what does this have to do with stocks?? 

Well it turns out there was formed by a group of people a Francis Ouimet Caddy Scholarship Fund. 

Well there was this young caddy who applied for this scholarship and was awarded it to study at Boston College.  His name was Peter Lynch.

I was for some reason rereading Peter Lynch's "One Up On Wall Street" last night, and this information jumped off the page at me in stunning fashion. It was as if somebody had led me there to read it. 

His story was similar to story of Francis Ouimet, except for instead of winning the US Open his success was that be became the greatest mutual fund manager of all time, getting a job through his caddying with the Fidelity company in Boston and later running the Fidelity Magellan Fund from 1977-1990. 

The Fidelity Magellan Fund had a 2510% gain during his tenure as manager. That is the equivalent of golfing a 62 on each day of the golf tournament!! Talk about the butterfly effect!

So if you want to know what stocks might fit Peter Lynch's criteria today to invest in, you can go to WWW.NASDAQ.com and when you look up the symbol of a stock and enter it in, they have in the left-hand column a link called "Guru Analysis". At the top of the list is Peter Lynch's rating based on his criteria. Here are some examples of the stocks screened from Guru Analysis he would like right now:

91% Qualcomm Inc. (symbol QCOM, $67.15)
91% Apple Inc.          (symbol AAPL, $124.75)
91% Honeywell International  (symbol HON, $101.70)
91% Wells Fargo & Company (symbol WFC, $54.05)
91% Kansas City Southern   (symbol KSU, $104.49)
91% US Bancorp  (symbol USB, $42.44)

87% The Middleby Corp. (symbol MIDD, $102.60)
72% Constellation Brands (symbol STZ, $115.98)
72% Icon PLC   (symbol ICLR, $68.98)

So you can see now how Golf and Caddying have had a direct effect on the history of Wall Street investing. (P.S. little Eddie Lowery, the 10 year old caddy, went on to become a multi-millionaire businessman himself, so success all around.)

I would also recommend that you read Peter Lynch's books, "One Up on Wall Street" and also "Beating the Street".

He will tell you that you can be as good at investing as he is if you focus on what you know.

Have a great investment week,

Freewilly

"The endless quest for growth at a reasonable price brings me this week to a quality stock at a decent price. Keurig Green Mountain Inc. (Symbol GMCR)."

Dow Jones Industrial Average 17,690.41 (Down) Week ending 03-27-2015
Dow Jones Industrial Average 17,763.24  (Up) Week ending 04-03-2015

I can always look to the "Beverage" sector if I need to find some growth. I currently own Constellation Brands, (STZ), and have also owned Monster Beverage (MNST), and Boston Beer Company (SAM) and they have  done very well for me. 

So that led me to the single cup coffee, (and tea), company Keurig Green Mountain Inc. (Symbol GMCR, $114.31)  which seems to me to be trading at a slight discount right now and is down from it's high of $156.92.

GMCR has a PEG ratio of 1.71 and a Return on Equity of 17.10. I go into work and use one of these machines everyday and it works well, no wasted coffee.

Keurig Green Mountain had annual revenues in 2014 of $4.71 Billion dollars. The 3 year growth rate in revenues has run 11.43% and this was after one year where they had 50% plus revenue growth, so quite a run.

The company has just signed a partnership deal with privately held Reily Foods down in New Orleans with New England and French Market coffee and Luzianne Ice Tea pods.

A possible catalyst this week for the stock will be when Bed Beth and Beyond announces their earnings report and them discussing a new Keurig single serve Soda machine that they will be selling. (I guess that they are going after the market now held mostly by SodaStream.)

Zack's has a "Hold" rating on the stock and IBD has a earnings rating number of 70. The stock chart has been ugly recently.

Earnings for 2015 are projecting at $4.09 per share and for 2016 they are looking like $4.68.
Long term earnings growth for the company has been 16.25% and the 3 Year earnings growth has been 22.61%. The company operates at Gross Margins of 44.20%.

Financials are good here with the company having a Current Ratio of 2.80 which is excellent.

The company also pays out a dividend yield of 1% to cover your account expenses.

Insider buying is very favorable here and is running around a 5 to 3 ratio of buys to sells by insiders.

The stock has has been drifting down here so as usual I would say to buy 25 shares and see how it goes. If it goes lower add some more.

This is too good a company for this to keep moving down. Growth at a Reasonable price seems to be the key.

I hope you had a great  and wonderful Easter and Passover holiday. 

You can pretty much put anything in a K-Cup!  A simple and great concept. Buy GMCR.

Freewilly