"One of these days the US real estate market is going to recover, and when it does, you will want to be owning the stock of Lennar Corp. (Symbol LEN)"

Dow Jones Industrial Average 16,065.67 (Down) Week ending 03-14-2014
Dow Jones Industrial Average 16,303.00 (UP) Week ending 03-21-2014

Well, it looks like we are moving from the early recovery phase of the Real Estate market where cash buyers were making the most of the buys from a bloated inventory of houses that included many foreclosures to a more normal housing market with people buying houses with mortgages and the supply of houses is more limited.

One company that will benefit from these conditions is the home builder, Lennar Corp (Symbol LEN, 39.57). 

Think about this. The 30-Year Mortgage national Average interest rate right now is 4.27%, (4.24% in PA.). While this is not at the all time low rate, it is historically a very low interest rate. This rate bodes very well for Lennar's business. 

Lennar Corp.  has a PEG ratio of 1.34 on the Nasdaq web page and a PEG ratio of 0.63 on the website Y-Charts. The 5 year PEG ratio is projected at 1.04. The company has a Return on Equity of 13.05 %. The IBD earnings rating is 98, which is excellent. 

Lennar just reported a stellar quarter here this week with a $.35 cents over $.26 year over year earnings gain. At the same time, Revenues rose 37.69% in the quarter. The stock rose up to $42.00 per share this week, but the market turbulence at the end of the week pushed everything back, so a good buy price right now here at $39.57. 

The company is projecting for 2014 $2.46 cents per share and for 2015 we are looking at $3.20 and a forward PE of a low 12.68. The one year earnings growth is 21.5% and the 3 year earnings growth is 46.7% and, mind you, this was during a housing recession.

The Current ratio for the company is an amazing 30 to 1. The Quick ratio is a healthy 1.69 to 1.

I think if you just get a little pricing power back into this real estate market and just a little rise in the prices of properties, it will greatly help the earnings of Lennar, who also is an investor in properties with their Rialto Capital Management group.

Looks good to me. Sit down and have a sandwich and a beer in your new Lennar built kitchen.

Enjoy your beginning of Spring and let's put some money to work in the stock of Lennar Corp. (Symbol LEN) this week.

Freewilly

"The ongoing dispute in Ukraine, with the government instability and the involvement of Russia, may create an opportunity for the North American potash and phosphate producers."

Dow Jones Industrial Average 16,452.72 (UP) Week ending 03-07-2014



 Potash - in it's natural state

I have always liked the balance sheet and the financial strength of this company, but the business it was in seemed to usually be in turmoil.

Mosaic Co. (Symbol MOS, $49.73) is a company that was born out of a spin-off from Cargill back in May 2011. MOS is a producer of Phosphate and Potash for fertilizer for agriculture use around the world.

 In February 2014, Mosaic authorized the buy back of $1 billion of their stock, which includes 8.2 Million Class A shares from its former owner, Cargill. Also, in February 2014, Mosaic announced the opening of a plant in Brazil that will employ 1,000 people. Mosaic employs 8,400 people worldwide. 

Mosaic Co. is a leader in the Phosphate and Potash industry, with an excellent global distribution network. The world needs to eat and the world population increases by 75 Million people per year, so there is plenty of ongoing demand for their products.

So, here are the numbers: some good, some bad in the short term. The IBD earnings rating on the MOS stock is 18. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the stock. The PEG ratio on the stock is 1.98,(NASDAQ), and the Return on Equity is 12.05.

The company does pay a 2% dividend while you wait for the world to get hungry. The Current ratio is 2.48 to 1 and the last 12 months Insiders have been buying up their stock.

 

 Revenues for the company for 2013 were $8.17 Billion dollars with Net Income of $1.584 Billion dollars. The current PE is 19.58 and the forward PE was 17.30. Earnings for 2014 are projected at $2.79 per share and for 2015, the earnings per share look like $3.43. 

The 1 year Total Return on the stock for the trailing 12 months is (-16.21%), but for the last month, it is up 7.06%. The book value for share MOS is $26.53 per share.

So, I see this investment as a 3-5 year long term investment with a lot of upside to come. I think that you should buy the stock here at the current price. We will always need more productive farming and more food in the world. There is never enough.

So, buy this stock and start your own vegetable garden,

Freewilly

"You have been selected for a 5 year mission away and you have to make a 5 year long term investment decision. Do you buy 10 ounces of Gold or do you buy 10 shares of the common stock of Google?"

Dow Jones Industrial Average 16,321.71  (UP) Week ending 02-28-2014

How you answer this question will tell you a lot about whether you are a growth or value investor and about your general investment philosophy.

Do you buy the 10 ounces of Gold at the current COMEX price fix of $1321.60 an ounce?

Or............. Do you purchase 10 shares of Google stock priced currently at $1215.65 per share? You cannot make any changes for 5 years once you make the decision because you will be away.

There are many ways to look at these choices. 

You know that $1,896.50 per ounce on the morning of September 5, 2011 was the all time high for GOLD, so Gold here appears to be at a value based on that price at 66% of that value. But if we continue to have a deflationary economy and housing prices stay stagnant, gold could go down lower from here. On the other hand, all this monetary stimulus by the US Federal Reserve to pump up the economy could de-value the US Dollar by adding too many dollars to the money supply and Gold could become the safe haven and increase dramatically in value. But Gold is a commodity, and it cannot have growth like a company with Cash flow and profits to reinvest and compound.

So what about Google, (Symbol GOOG, $1215.65)? 

Anyone I talk to says Google has run up and is expensive here at this price.  So here are the facts on this muscular company. First, you should know that Google went on a hiring spree and hired all the smartest people coming out of college from all over the world. It was like there was a sports "draft", and they got all the draft picks. So here we go.

GOOGLE had a 1 year, trailing twelve month percentage change in the stock of 50.79% and a 3 year TTM percentage of 98.18%. Formidable numbers.

 The PEG ratio is 1.61 to 1.84% depending on your source. The Return on Equity is 16.30%. The company at the end of 2013 had $72,886 Billion dollars in Assets with $59 Billion of that in cash. The current ratio, (ratio of assets to liabilities), is 4.582 to 1.

I think I am leaning towards Google for my 5 year investment!   Google Search advertising, Google Fiber, Google Glass, Google new robotics company, Google diagnostic medical products, Google Android, YouTube, the Blogger that I type on as we speak here, Google, "only God knows what the blazes is currently in their R & D laboratories", these are the growing branches of a great company.

Google is projecting 2014 earnings per share of $52.71 and 2015 earnings of $62.67 per share, (a forward PE of 19.29). 

GOOG had 2013 Revenues of 59.88 Billion dollars. The company earnings rating in Investor's Business Daily is in the 89th percentile; amazing for a company of this size.


So the 5 year contest will be on total percentage gain in the investment as of 03-02-2019. God willing, we will all be here to come back here and review the results.

So, when he takes off on his Virgin Airlines 5 year expedition trip to MARS, Freewilly will officially throw his money in on the capital growth company common stock of 10 shares of Google.

What will you do with your money and why? Please comment below. We would be glad to hear from you. 

See you on MARS!

Freewilly

" Now that Actavis has bought out Forest Laboratories, what girls are left at the dance for the other pharma partners to pick up? My pick is Salix Pharmaceuticals (SLXP), $6.63 billion market cap, rather than Mylan Labs."

Dow Jones Industrial Average 16,103.30 (Down) Week ending 02-21-2014

 Julia Roberts - waiting for a dance partner

I am familiar with Salix Pharmaceuticals (Symbol SLXP, $105.37) for two reasons. I had started watching Salix when the stock was trading at 14 dollars per share and it went up to 21 and so I thought it was too expensive, so then I forgot about it and lost track of it. Secondly, I owned the stock of Santarus, which I had talked about on this blog earlier in an article last year and a couple of months ago Salix Pharmaceuticals came in and bought them out. So this time I am paying attention to SLXP.  

Now let's go over the numbers that make it so attractive. First, the Current ratio on the stock is 4.3 to 1. The current market capitalization of the company is $6.63 Billion so it is a Mid-Cap stock. (I started this blog on Sunday last, so things are in motion). The company has annual revenues of $874.4 Million dollars. 2014 Revenues are projected at $1.59 Billion dollars.

This Raleigh, NC company has a One year stock price appreciation of 113.43% for the trailing 12 months. The company has 1 year earnings growth of 73.1%. 

On my key benchmarks, the company has a PEG Ratio of 1.19 and a Return on Equity of 17.90%. A double pass on my checkoff list. The IBD rating on the stock for earnings is 93.

2013 earnings were $3.23 per share and for 2014 is projecting out at $6.04 per share. This is a forward PE of 16.94. The company operates at gross margins of 81.99 %. 




Analyst Rankings on the stock are 7 Buy - 1 Outperform and 4 - Hold ratings. Hedge fund managers Joel Greenblatt and George Soros have been active trading the stock over the last year.






I would look for a down day in the market to find an entry point on this one. Again, always buy in small and accumulate a position even if you only buy 10 shares at a time.

I think that this holding will work out well for you for growth  as part of your Healthcare holdings segment of your diversified portfolio.


Have a good week and the sooner you invest, the better your odds are of accumulating wealth. 

Freewilly

"How about a bank that derives 56% of its global consumer banking revenue from credit cards. Such is the unrecognized case with the stock Citigroup, (Symbol C)."

Dow Jones Industrial Average 15,739 (UP) Week ending 02-07-2014
Dow Jones Industrial Average  16,154 (UP) Week ending 02-14-2014

Well the siege of winter has laid in upon us the last two weeks in the Mid-Atlantic states and Maryland, with snow, ice, wind and non-stop storms. It is hard to write a stock blog when you have no heat or electricity for 5 days straight. If I had known, I would have bought the stock of  Generac Holdings, (Symbol GNRC), who makes portable and installed electric generators and whose stock went up 9 points in 3 days last week. Oh well, not that clever.

 "My back porch"

So now it is time to get back to the business of making money in the stock market. If you will remember your economic history, the stock of Citigroup, (Symbol C, $49.52), had done a 10 for 1 reverse stock split. That really says that you can buy the stock here at a previous pre-split price of $4.95 cents per share. It is listed in the Investors Business Daily as a "Bank", but it really is a "Financial" stock based on its revenue like American Express and Discover. IBD rates the stock an 87 for earnings.

Citi has a market capitalization of $150 Billion dollars but the Enterprise value of the company is $239.90 Billion dollars. I took a small position in Citi last month than added another position Friday morning. Friday afternoon at 5:10 PM it was announced that George Soros had taken a position in the stock, so I knew that I was on the right track.

Citigroup has a Peg Ratio of 0.1389 and a Return on Equity of 7.23%. To me this stock is a deep value play that should hopefully start paying a higher dividend soon. "Despite huge losses during the global financial crisis, Citigroup built up an enormous cash reserve in the wake of the financial crisis with $420 billion in surplus liquid cash and government securities as of June 2012. As of Q1 2012, Citi has tier 1 capital ratio of 12.4%, making one of the best-capitalized financial institutions in the world after billions of dollars in losses from the financial crisis" (Citing Wikipedia). 

I do not pretend to understand a banks balance sheet or accounting, but I know when something seems inexpensive. Citi is forecasting earnings
of $5.04 per share and for 2015 is looking at $5.80 per share with a forward PE of 8.6.

The company stock has a One year twelve month trailing gain of 12.96. That might be glacially slow compared to the stocks that I normally talk about in this venue but most conservative folks would be very happy with 13%  a year return on their money. 

There are 21 buy recommendations by analyst on the stock currently , (plus add in the endorsement of billionaire George Soros).  Also insider buying is running 5 to 1 of purchases over sales. That is a very strong endorsement for the stock.

So think credit card, when you think Citi and buy some "C". 

Let's have a great 2014,

Freewilly

"Sometimes a stock comes along that has technologies that are just "scary" cool. Put that together with impressive financial numbers and you will find the stock of Synaptics Inc. (SYNA) "

Dow Jones Industrial Average 15,698.85 (Down) Week ending 01-31-2014

First, you had human to human interaction. Then M2M machine communications, (a business that I was in for 19 years!). Now you have the new frontiers of human to machine communications and interaction. Sometimes you only need to be nearby, (Near Field Communications) to interact. Sometimes it is a touch or a gesture to communicate.

Enter Synaptics (Symbol SYNA, $58.36). Sometimes I talk about a stock and it may go down in that week. The stocks I pick out for this blog are purchased with a 1 year to 3 year opportunity window in mind. I am not a day trader. 


Synaptics describes the company on their website as follows:

Our Company

We are the leading developer of human interface solutions which enhance the user experience in the expanding digital lifestyle. We were founded in 1986 by Federico Faggin and Carver Mead and over the last 26 years we have grown from a neural network research organization into the leading human interface solutions partner of a global customer base. Simply put, our next-generation interfaces set users free to interact with devices in ways the world couldn’t have imagined a decade ago.

Our combination of technology, expertise, innovation, comprehensive and customized solutions (from prototyping to module design to manufacturing to testing), and exceptional customer support makes us the right choice for partners that want to differentiate in the market.

• We have more than 1,900 unique capacitive touch solutions in the market
• We have close to 400 patents issued or pending

Over one billion devices include Synaptics interfaces. Shouldn’t yours?

Now to take a look at the numbers. SYNA

The company currently has a PEG ratio of 0.0692 and a ROE of 26.54%. (Stats are from Y-Charts).  I should note here that be careful with the stats that you make your purchasing decisions on when doing your homework. You can go to four different websites and they may all give you a different number for the same stat. Use multiple websites for reference. 

Revenues for the company this year are $822 Million dollars so this is a small cap stock. Revenue year over year growth has been running 43.85%. Wall Street is in love with revenue growth right now because they think that most earnings are being engineered by buybacks of company stock.

Synaptics Inc. has a great balance sheet with a Current Ratio of 3.8. (3.8 Assets to every 1 part liability), with a current PE of 15.24. The company has Gross Profit Margins of 45.95%.

Earnings for 2014 are looking like $3.70 per share and looking out into 2015 are projecting at $4.11 per share, (Stats from CBSMarketwatch) , with a forward PE of 14.19. The last quarter Year over Year, (YOY), earnings change was 62%.

The One year stock gain for the Trailing Twelve Months, (TTM), is 66.36%. The Investor's Business Daily's current EPS rating is 92. (I would have liked that as a grade in high school.)

 Here is the link for Near Field Communications. Really Cool. Near Field Technology Demo Link . It shows how amazing this technology is.

 Multi-Touch Interfacing

The Analyst have 10 buy recommendations, 1 Overweight, and 2 Hold rankings on the stock. 

There are 34 Million Shares outstanding of the stock. The largest Institutional holder of SYNA stock is BlackRock.

I would say to buy in with small buys into the stock because the price will move around here a bit up and down. Then sit back and relax and put your feet up.

 "Sully"

Happy Superbowl - Ground Hog Day here in Pennsylvania. Phil saw his shadow, so 6 more weeks of Winter and another 4-8 inches of snow coming tomorrow. Super Bowl prognostication: Broncos. 

Freewilly

"A 3% correction in the market on Thursday and Friday brings an opportunity to add the top biotech company in the world, AMGEN, (AMGN), to your long term stock portfolio."

Dow Jones Industrial Average 15,879 (Down Big!) Week ending 01-24-2014

Well now, that was one ugly end of the week!
I guess it would not really be a market if stocks only went up and never went down. I would say here that if you have stocks with a good long term growth potential that I would stick with them, and hold them. They will be the stocks that come back after the storm blows over.

With that said, the flip side is that with these sell-offs in stocks comes an opportunity to add some quality names to your IRA and long term investments. One name that I identified on Friday is AMGEN, (Symbol AMGN, $119.31) which was down 4 points on Friday. 

AMGN gets overshadowed in the media by its glitzy brethren Celgene, Gilead, Biogen-IDEC and Regeneron.  But make no mistake, this company which is a little more mature and pays a 2.05% dividend, had a 1 year trailing twelve months stock value change of 44.38% and that is AFTER the sell off on Friday, so it had been up around a 50% total return last year.

Besides, you know that a company that sponsors a world class bicycle race is not going to come in last place!

AMGEN by the numbers: Revenues last year were $18 Billion. The PEG ratio is currently 1.423 and the Return on Equity is 24.05%. 
These numbers fit well with Freewilly's investment criteria for PEG and ROE.

AMGEN Helix Pedestrian Bridge

AMGEN operates at a Gross Margin of 83.40%. The quarterly year over year diluted earnings growth is 26.95%. As of last quarter, the company had $22.56 Billion dollars in Cash and Investments. 

AMGEN is projecting $7.47 per share in earnings for 2014 and $8.17 per share looking ahead to 2015 with a Current PE ratio of 18.85 and a future PE projected at a reasonable 15.20. Year over year Revenue growth is 9.93%.

AMGEN had purchased ONYX Pharmaceuticals back in August 2013 to add to their developing pipeline of medicines. AMGEN is currently the world's largest Biotechnology company. AMGEN employs 18,000 people.

AMGEN as a company has total assets of 57.07 Billion dollars. In the last 12 twelve months more INSIDERS have been buying than selling (66/65).


It is my opinion that this stock can get to a price of 136 by the end of the year, a 15% gain. Add that to a 2% dividend and that gives you a 17% Total Return. I think that will reflect as a good return number at the end of 2014 and with very little inflation.

So don't get shook out of your boots!  Be smart and be a stock picker this year. Make sure to mix in some those quality stocks that pay a dividend to go along with your mega-growth stocks.  You'll sleep better at night.

Let's see what happens this week, with lots of companies reporting in their earnings.

Best Regards,

Freewilly

"A couple of oil stock names to lubricate the gears of your financial wealth machine. Laying out a strategic energy deployment in your diversified portfolio"

Dow Jones Industrial Average 16,437.05 (Down) Week ending 01-10-2014
Dow Jones Industrial Average 16,459.00 (UP ) Week ending 01-17-2014

Good morning fellow amateur retail stock investors. This was an interesting and disturbing week in the stock market with Royal Dutch Shell reporting quarterly earnings down because of the rising cost to the major oil companies to find and deliver oil. The disturbing part was the volatility in stock names such as GE, BAC and ISRG as they reporting earnings. Some stocks that were at the top of the IBD rankings such as Nu Skin Enterprises (NUS) got blown up like stepping on a land mine on a single report from China, dropping from $140.00 down to $79.85 in 3 days. Fear not, you still need to be invested in 2014. 

I would start your energy investment strategy off by purchasing the stock of
Seadrill Ltd. (Symbol SDRL, $40.12). SDRL pays a dividend out of 9.47% for each share held. That equated to $2.67 Billion dollars last quarter to shareholders. The Return on Equity for the company is 36.91% and the PEG ratio is 0.0513. You can't ask for better numbers than that. At some point, that dividend rate will need to be lowered so that they can deploy that capital towards additional ships and rigs, but until then, enjoy the 9.47% dividend.

The Royal Dutch Shell news about the major oil companies' costs rising so much made me think that those companies may find it easier and less expensive to just buy other Oil companies. How about Continental Resources Inc. (Symbol CLR, $108.46) as an example?... America's pride in the US energy renaissance, who only has a current Market Capitalization of 20.15 Billion. Peanuts to a major oil company. And, this is a growth story. Revenue, YOY growth is 70.31%.  The PEG ratio is 0.74 and the Return on Equity is 27.03%.  I love this as a growth stock. Earnings per share for 2014 look like $5.67 per share and for 2015 is projecting at $7.23 per share. The 1 year twelve month trailing gain in the stock is 32.16%. I have current revenue at $3.324 Billion dollars. This should have probably been in my 14 for 2014 instead of Holly Frontier (HFC), an oil refiner out there in the interior USA. Did I mention that I like this stock (CLR)?!

One more for you, in case you just need to sleep at night and need a substitute for those floundering short term bond investments.  BP PLC ADS (Symbol BP, $48.20) is an investment the CFO, (Mark Panetta), of the company I work for likes. He is the best person in the world I know with numbers, so you can feel pretty safe with this one. The stock is still recovering from the big Gulf of Mexico oil spill and that has created the value pricing here on the stock.  Your dividend yield here, that is perfectly safe, is 4.73%.

BP has a Return on Equity of 19.57%.  The PEG Ratio is 0.68. The 1 year trailing twelve month gain in the stock is 9.45%. Add that to your 4.73% dividend and your safe return is 14.18%. Pretty simple. Any questions? The twelve month trailing Revenues for the company is $400.9 Billion dollars. THAT, (emphasis), is a major Oil company.

Below, some of the handy work of the editor, whose creativity and command of the English language help this blog venue immensely. Thank you, Molly Wilson.

Yours Faithfully,

Freewilly

"I called a local radio show to try to win a hat for answering a stock trivia question. I got the question wrong, but the radio show triggered a lot of good investment ideas."

Dow Jones Industrial Average 16,469.99 (Down) Week ending 01-03-2014

I listen to the "BIG Money Show" on Saturday mornings on the AM radio station 1210 WPHT in Philadelphia, PA to hear stock talk conversation. The regular host, Steve Cordasco, was off and Joe Besecker from Emerald Asset Management was hosting the show this week.

Joe put a stock trivia question out there asking, "What Pennsylvania company stock with three letters, (NYSE stock), has had a positive stock return for the last 14 years?" He also gave a second clue that it was a Western Pennsylvania company.

        I decided to give a call over to the station. I was sure the company was symbol PPG, Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company.

Joe Besecker

The only problem was that the girl right before me guessed PPG, and the answer was wrong! So I was suddenly up next and had to scramble and the only thing I could think of was to throw out the name "Eaton", (symbol ETN). But alas, that was also wrong, (but not a bad guess). I did not even get a chance to give a shameless plug for my Freewilly's stockpicker blog! It turns out the answer was Wabtec, up 14 years.

Not all was lost, though, since the show brought to light many good investment names for buying in 2014. Here is a short list of good solid companies to invest in for the long term in 2014.

Wabtec Corporation - (Symbol WAB) Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies -
 PEG - 1.192   ROE - 20.98%

       B/E Aerospace - (Symbol BEAV)
       PEG - 0.418    ROE - 15.45%

   PPG Industries Inc. (Symbol PPG) - mentioned in this blog in January 2012 also.

 PEG - 0.0334    ROE  69.76%






These are the kinds of industrial names that are growing their businesses and are safe places for the long term investor to put money to work in this year.

 If you are a reader here at this blog, you remember that I like stocks with PEG ratios below 1.5 and that also have ROEs of 15% plus.

 "Metrolinx locomotive repowered by Wabtec new engines and propulsion systems"

 So, don't get "Twittered!"  Buy stocks in businesses that make sense and make money.

Freewilly