Now I know how Brett Favre felt with that New Orleans blitz pounding away at him

Dow Jones 10,067 (down), trading week ending 1/29/2010

If you had jumped into the market after those couple down days, buying on the dip,
you were hit with a major hail storm of stock selling and had "your head handed to you" in football slang parlance. Now I know how Brett Favre felt in the NFC Championship game with the New Orleans Saints smacking him down to the ground. It hurts!

The Big Dogs on the street, which have all reported well, Apple Computer (Symbol AAPL), Microsoft Inc.(Symbol MSFT) and Google Inc.(Symbol GOOG), all took their licks this week and were down. Our president, whose friends call him "Barry", gave the State of the Union speech on my birthday 1/27 and the Q4 GDP number came in at 5.7% percent Friday. The street has seen higher numbers in the past coming out of a recession, so good was seen as bad.

One bright note, it is my mentor's birthday today, Louis Rukeyser, who was born 1/30/1933. Happy Birthday Lou!

So, what did do well in January? I went in search to the NASDAQ exchange Sector Performance page for some help on that.

Culp Inc. (Symbol CFI), who is in the textile industry,
"Textiles, are we actually talking about the US textile industry?"
(reference to Allen Iverson - Phila. 76er and his famous quote about "practice"), was up 30.26% in January and continues to elevate. Sales and earnings here seem to be rising. I was looking to buy it on a dip to the sub $10.00 area, but it shot up to $13.06 by the end of the week. I will be patient.

A list of some others which I did not research and am just reporting:
Bare Escentuals (Symbol BARE) up 30 plus % on a tender offer. Mindspeed Tech (Symbol MSPD) up 34.75% in January 2010. LTX Credence (Symbol LTXC) up 41.01%.Libbey Inc. (Symbol LBY) up 34.14%. Radio One Inc.(Symbol ROIA) up 26.73%. Also Houston America (Symbol HUSA) and Crocs Inc. (Symbol CROX) were both up 25% plus.

What does all this mean? That February is coming, and it's cold, and Ground Hog Day is coming up soon here in Pennsylvania,(Phil will see his shadow). These things I am sure of. Everything else is left to chance. Be patient is all I can tell you.

Best regards,

Freewilly

If you want to cruise along in 2010 - you better "Hang 10" and not "Wipeout"

< Dow Jones 10,172.98 (down).

In USA - Cell Phone text "Haiti" and send to 90999 to help with Haiti relief aid. $10.00 will go to Red Cross.

My friend Colton who lives in Hawaii is always sending me cool pictures so that I will come out and see him there. One of the things on my bucket list is to go to the North Shore of Oahu and witness "The Eddie", one of surfing’s most prestigious events, with expected 30 to 50 foot high waves. "It is the ride that electrifies thousands of fans who descend on Waimea Bay, the famed surfing cove where Eddie Aikau, a legendary surfer and lifeguard, once plied the waves".

Well with great risk there can be great excitement, buy it is not always the best idea to try to find this excitement by doing wild and crazy moves in your investment portfolio. Save that for your surfboard action. So let's talk about some insurance company stocks for solid investments. (boy, that's a buzz kill, huh! total letdown). I would rather keep your investments in the 3 foot waves, like in Wildwood, New Jersey.


Lincoln National Corp. (Symbol LNC $24.50) a life insurance company and sponsor of our very own beloved and maligned Philadelphia Eagles and their home stadium aptly named "the Linc", is my first suggestion. Projected 5 yr.sales growth rate of 13.42%, 12 month return of 62%, PE 7.76, Earnings 2010 of $3.16 and 2011 of $3.38 per share. No waves here!

Chubb Corp.,(Symbol CB $48.02), a property and casualty insurer with a dividend yield of 2.92% is representing that group. Forward PE (price to earnings) of 9. Growing at 7.72% with a net profit margin of 15% and 2010 earnings of $5.39 per share. No Tsunami warnings here!

AFLAC Inc. (Symbol AFL $49.10) is an accident and health insurer of supplemental insurance. It has a 12 month total return of 116.4%. Projected long term earnings growth of 14.5%.
Dividend of 2.28% and 2010 projected earnings of $5.28 per share which is a PE of 9.3. Ducks can swim, so no problem with the water here.

So keep your head above the water and stay on top of the waves,

Freewilly

That Energizer Bunny keeps going and going ...... for consistent profits.

I must have batteries on the brain! Portable Energy Storage Devices. The storage and movement of energy with electricity, liquefied natural gas including Methane and Hydrogen, Wind, Solar, Water Hydro, Geothermal, and Nuclear will be important and large businesses in this new decade. Monitoring the movement of this energy is something the company I work for, Numerex Corp.,(Symbol NMRX), does very well, with Device, Application, and Network services brought together and offered as a combined solution.(D-N-A).

The disciples of Charles Tandy, John Roach, Bernie Appel and Lew Kornfeld at Radio Shack Corp.,(Symbol RSH), are forever inventing new electronic gadgets for you to put batteries into. Boom boxes, electronic toys, musical keyboards, home fire alarms, TV remotes, flashlights and the list goes on ad infinitum. Warren Buffett, at Berkshire Hathaway (symbol BRK.B) even figured out how to put a battery in a disposable razor blade to get the little hairs on your chin to stand on end! So where is all this leading to you ask?

Energizer Holdings Inc.,(Symbol ENR), the company engaged in the business of manufacturing batteries, flashlights and personal care products in the wet shave, skin care, feminine care and infant care product categories. It has a 12 month total return of 33.6%. The PE ratio is 13.48 based 2009 earnings of $4.72 a share. Projected 2010 earnings per share $5.30 share, 2011 is $5.89 per share. Gross margins are 49.73% overall. It is frankly a somewhat boring business. 10% projected sales growth. I think it will be a winner in what I think will be a tumultuous 2010 trading market as the Fed starts to slowly drain liquidity out of the markets. Caution is the watch word for 2010 trading.

So recharge your batteries and get back into the fray!

Freewilly

Ben, I just want to say one word to you, "Plastics" - from the movie The Graduate (1967).........Fast-forward to 2010

Good morning and Happy 2010. If they were remaking the movie The Graduate today in 2010, when Mr. McGuire pulls aside young Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) and says," I just want to say one word to you", "are you listening", the word would be "Synthetics". "There's a great future in Synthetics". "Enough said". What are some of the names of these producers of specialty compounds and chemicals you ask? Well the one everyone loves for the long term is Sociedad Qufmica y Minera de Chile S.A. ADR, (Symbol NYSE: SQM), the miner of lithium and potash. The Hybrid automobile market needs boatloads of Lithium to make all those car batteries, not to mention the batteries in all those cell phones, I-phones and I-pods. The Andes mountains hold 90% of the world's lithium brine. Enough said. Rated a hold currently because of being fully valued and having some pesky cash problems with paying their dividend, this is a good 3-year investment at the right buy in point.
Praxair Inc.(Symbol PX) would be the next stock I would mention. They produce Oxygen. Pretty important stuff for life. Good sales growth 14.8%, good earnings, good dividend, 43% operating margins. Enough said.
Calgon Carbon Corp., (Symbol CCC), falls into the synthetics group also. They purify dirty water and do Mercury removal. Important stuff for human existance. This stock is up 141% in 3 years. Earnings are starting to advance nicely. Enough said.
I should mention that I am not a registered financial advisor and that everything that I report is just from my common sense observation. I do have a degree in Psychology from Rutgers, Camden NJ., (symbol R.U.C.C.A.S.), if that gives you some comfort, so I can console you on any bad trades you make.
Last, but not least, is Albemarle Corp., (Symbol NYSE: ALB).
These guys have three operating segments: Polymer Additives, Catalysts and Fine Chemicals. Earnings estimate for this year are $1.80, for next year $2.47 per share. 12 month total return is 74.8%. 5 year earnings growth of 21.92%. Look it up if you don't beleive me. http://www.smartmoney.com. The link is on my blog.

So if you want to find your Elaine (below) .............


you better do your homework, and look at the numbers.

Enough Said,

Freewilly

Instead of a grand 2010 prediction list -how about just one Energy stock idea

I tend to be contrary to doing the predictable. It may be the Scotch, Dutch, Irish, or Italian decendency that makes me that way, and I will let you decide. I did not want to do the big 2010 "roundtable list" and throw a dozen names at you. I thought it better to give you one good idea from public information.
On December 7th, Bloomberg News reported that McDERMOTT International Inc,(Symbol MDR - price $24.01) whose price has doubled this year, will seperate itself into two distinct companies. One will be named J. Ray McDERMOTT and be in the offshore Oil & Gas engineering business. The other will be Babcock and Wilcox Company which builds reactors for the US Navy and the government. This will allow Babcock to have a better opportunity to win more government bids and also make it a desirable takeover target. Analysts think that J.Ray McDERMOTT could be worth $21.00 and Babcock $12.00 a share at the breakup. Well do the math, and you could come up with a fairly low risk one year investment with a 38% return plus any rise in the stocks, in a year that they say there could be some rough sledding in the market.
I beleive (MDR) should earn a spot in your investment lineup in 2010.

Please comment with your good idea stock for 2010.

All the best , Freewilly

Macao, Taipa, Macau - will this "city of dreams" bring you a 2010 Casino investment?

I thought I was going to write a buttoned up nice little article on investments to profit on the thriving Macau casino business's, but it turned out to be a more complicated discussion than I first thought. Pictured to the right is the Casino Lisboa which is owned by Sociedade De Turismo E Diversoes De Macau, (Symbol HK: SJM) which is owned by Stanley Ho(Hung-Sun) and his family and trades on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Stanley has had a monopoly franchise on the Macau casino business for 40 years before anyone else arrived. All the current folks have only been there 10 years. Taipa is the smaller of the two islands in Macau Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (formerly the Portuguese colony of Macau).Craig Stephen's "This Week in China" on Marketwatch.com is an excellent source on keeping you up on events in Macau. The Chinese government holds the ultimate trump card here, like many other things in the world, so add a dose of measured risk for that fact. Also there are Hong Kong exchange stocks and US exchange stocks with varying levels of exposure to this market and the associated risk. Wynn and Las Vagas Sands have stocks on both exchanges. If you want to see the Hong Kong stock exchange it is listed at http://www.hkex.com.hk/index.htm, I will limit my discussion to the US investment stocks. WYNN (Symbol WYNN) and Las Vegas Sands (Symbol LVS) which owns the largest hotel in Macau, The Venetian Hotel Resort, are safe ways to get exposure to the Macau action. Melco PBL Entertainment LTD ADS (Symbol MPEL) with the "City of Dreams" on the Cotai Strip should also be one to look at. All of us were cheering for Playboy (Symbol PLA) with their Macau location to be a boom for the company, but evidently they are playing with such a "short stack" at the poker table that Iconix Brand Group (Symbol ICON) that makes London Fog raincoats, walked away from a buyout opportunity of PLA last week. That must be one ugly Bunny balance sheet.
If you are in the market to just look at some good casino stocks and don't care about China, WMS Industries (Symbol WMS) and Penn National Gaming, Inc (symbol PENN) are both worth a look.
If anyone has comments on the other Hong Kong exchange traded stocks in Macau with more information, I invite you to comment on this blog and share with others your insight.

Season Greetings and Happy New Year,

Freewilly

What If you had to pick just one superstar stock ........

Ah Yes, If you could just pick that one stock that is a sure shot superstar. As a purveyor of stock advice you will time and again get the request from a friend that has a CD coming due that they are making 0.25% interest on and want to put it into a can't miss superstar stock. Well the last time I got this request back in 2000 I told my friend to purchase Lucent Technology which had been growing at 40% a year for multiple years in the optical electronics business and also Pfizer (Symbol PFE) which had just purchased Warner-Lambert and their superstar growth drug Lipitor. These stocks just like Tiger Woods a few months ago, appeared to be rock solid, can't miss safe bets. Well they both ended up crashing down in stock value and both were investment disasters. Tiger still has his golf talent, but faces a tough road ahead bringing his life back in order. I feel sad for his wife and children.
That brings us to today, December 19th, 2009 where the superstar question is posed again. Well based on the premise that people will continue to eat and there will continue to be more people in the world, I will pose to you an agriculture stock. Thomas Jefferson would have been happy about that. The name I will pick is Monsanto (Symbol MON). The stock is up 58% over the last 3 years, 18% net profit. Sales growth around 13% and continued earnings growth.
From an excellent group of Potash (POT), Agrium (AGU), Mosaic (MOS) and Scotts Miracle Grow (SMG), I picked out Monsanto because it also has the kicker of selling the material that goes inside all the airbags in automobiles. I can be sure people will eat and also cars will continue to collide together as we have 20 Inches of snow coming down in the northeast right now. The stock trades north of $80.00, so you will need to pick an entry spot for purchase. Maybe during a lull in February 2010, when everyone else is piling into the tech stocks.
I guess Tiger took his guidance from the "Advice Dog" over to the right, and he is an easy target right now so I will not take cheap shots at him, but golf needs him to come back and bring the magic back to the links. He should also get some corrective lenses, because he apparently is not able to see his wife Elin, who is a knockout.

So chow down and buy some Monsanto,

Freewilly

2010 - Distress in real estate continues. Will it create an investment opportunity in stocks or REIT's?

Peter Lynch, possibly the greatest fund trader of all-time with his Fidelity Magellan fund, states early in his book "One Up on Wall Street" that one needs to pass a "mirror test" first before you start to study the financial section to look at stocks. Peter said "before you buy a share of anything there are three personal issues that ought to be addressed." Well it is issue number one that I want to discuss, 1. Do you own a house? Well in 1989, when Peter wrote his book, it was a great idea and over the long term it has been a great idea. However, recently with the bank credit crunch, foreclosures due to too much leveraging of financing, and some over supply conditions, the value of real estate has gone down in the short term. Add to that pressures in the Commercial real estate market continuing in 2010 and you get some very distressed property values for those that have to sell. At the same time an opportunity is created for some of the real estate investment trust, (REIT'S), with new infusions of cash from high net worth liquid investors to make some once in a lifetime buys.
I should note at this point that banks should exhaust every option to help a homeowner stay in their house and not foreclose on them. It is devastating and could happen to anyone given a bad turn of financial circumstances, such as loosing your employment.
Anyway , some REIT's that you may want to look at to make some money are: CGM Trust: Realty Fund, (Symbol CGMRX)$20.86 NAV,which gives you a blend of real estate investments. If you like the Washington DC play on real estate you can go First Potomac Realty Trust , (Symbol FPO) $11.85 NAV or Liberty Property Trust (Symbol LRY) $31.25. If you are looking for a value play here with a good dividend my broker Vince likes Duke Realty Corp.,(Symbol DRE)as a longer term pick. If you are looking for something to invest in on the mortgage side you may like Annaly Capital Management Inc. , (Symbol NLY) $18.38. I think as tempting as it looks, it is a little early in 2010 to buy the home builders, unless we have a dramatic drop in interest rates. I keep my eye on Lennar (Symbol LEN) and Beazer Homes, (symbol BZH).

Happy Holiday portfolio shopping,

Freewilly

Baltic Dry Index and the bulk shipping business has been on the rise lately, but is there trouble ahead?

Up to a couple months ago, I did not really think much about the bulk shipping business. I had seen some folks jumping in and out of DryShips Inc. (Symbol DRYS 6.29), in the $5.50 - $7.50 trading range and it seemed to be tied mostly to the Chinese economy and how much stuff they are gobbling up.

Well, I can tell you two things about this business. When it is going well it has great margins and is extremely profitable. Second, it is extremely capital intensive to buy ships and finance them in all kinds of creative ways. So you are either doing real well or really bad, earnings wise with rapid swings.
Some companies that have performed pretty well in this space and seem to make money are Diana Shipping, (Symbol DSX), and Kirby Corp.,(Symbol KEX). Both of these have done pretty well over a one year period. Some names I would avoid are Eagle Bulk Shipping, (Symbol EGLE) and Overseas Shipping Group, (symbol OSG). OSG leads in sales revenue, but not so good on the bottom line of the balance sheet. Some prognasticators are calling for softness in the bulk business in mid-2010?

So go with whatever floats your boat, I personally like DSX.

Freewilly

Gold has taken off in price, will Silver try to catch up?

With the continuing fall of the US Dollar, Gold on the COMEX has jetted up to a friday close of $1116.80 per ounce. Yet Silver on the Comex sits at a Ho-hum $17.39 an ounce? There seems to be a disparity here and common sense seems to dictate that silver needs to rise from here. Well there is alot to look at here, including bullion and coins. I'm no millionaire and can't afford stocks like BHP Billiton or RIO Tinto the mega player miners in this space, but not pure silver plays. You can look at the Junior mining stocks on the Toronto Stock exchange but your equity risk increases dramatically with these names.
So here is my recommendation: I-Shares Silver Trust , (Symbol SLV), from the Barclay Global Fund Advisors. The price currently is $16.92. It is up YTD 59.86 % and 84.07% for 1 year. Let these guys figure out what to buy. You get a 100% Silver play and don't have to try to figure out a miner's balance sheet. If anybody has other suggestions on Silver, please I invite you to post them in comments.

Dreary, rainy weather continues in PA. and Jersey,

Freewilly

Getting near the end of the year - time for a longshot?

Well the 2009 stock trading year is rounding the bend towards a close and you are still looking for that one 3-point shot at the buzzer to win the game at the end of the year. You have dice in hand and should be playing with the houses money if you have been involved most of the year. So I thought I would roll out some speculative names for sporting purposes only. (Speculative means you can lose or make a lot of money quickly. Some luck and good timing is required. If you cannot afford to lose your money you should not speculate).
The first name I will throw out is BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Symbol BCRX). BioCryst received an initial order for 10,000 courses of its intravenous flu drug peramivir, valued at $22.5 million, under a contract from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Demand will remain strong for their product that is also marketed in Japan.
Next up, Clearwire Corp. (Symbol CLWR). Their 4G highspeed
wireless internet services using WIMAX to cover your home, business , and mobile internet needs. The 2G and 3G carriers are quickly running out of spectrum with continued high growth. WIMAX makes your world one big hot-spot. Side bets on this stock are Sprint , (Symbol S), who owns 51% of Clearwire's stock and Motorola (Symbol MOT), that is cranking out with factories humming WIMAX infrastructure equipment for their towers.
Third, we need to acknowledge the boom in Gold recently. So at least let's pick one with a pretty good return on equity. ELDORADO GOLD CORP , (Symbol EGO). All I know is that all that glitters is not gold. I also know that the dollar keeps getting a haircut because of our low interest rates, making it worth less and less. So people are looking for somewhere to preserve their equity.
For full disclosure, of these stocks I currently only own Clearwire. That does not make it any better or any worse than the other picks!.

So roll the dice, 2010 is coming soon.

Freewilly