"Time to take a look around and nibble on some bargain quality stocks to add to your portfolio. It feels like the storm has mostly passed"

Dow Jones Industrial Average 15,973.63 (Up) Week Ending 02-12-2014

Well that was fun! I finally stuck my head out of the foxhole after two weeks to see if the sky was still there (and it was). I thought it might be a good time to put some of that cash to work that we had stashed over on the sidelines.

So I did not venture far out just to my backyard for a local company in Philadelphia. Lannett Co. Inc. (Symbol LCI, $25.51) is a Philadelphia PA. based generic pharmaceutical company that had just purchased another company called Kremers Urban Pharmaceuticals. Kremers just this past week got FDA approval for Temozoloride capsules, so more to add to the honey pot. Lannett founded in Philadelphia in 1942 has seen it stock price go down from a high of $72.44 to this current level of $25.51. Some of that was coattails of the Mylan Labs sell off, another generic pharma company.

At it's current price it appears to me by my metrics to be a great bargain. The company is projecting 2016 earnings of $3.74 per share which is a PE of 6.55. 2017 earning are projected at $4.04 per share and a forward PE of 6.17. IBD rating is 68 and B.

Financials are strong here also with a Return on Equity of 24.10 and a PEG Ratio of 0.72.
The Current ratio is 4.2 to 1 and the Quick Ratio is 3.3. 2015 Sales growth was 46.6 %. Target price for the stock is 37.  I would say you can buy a full amount of shares here at this price.

The next one I would nibble on is Synchronoss Technologies Inc. (Symbol SNCR, $23.46).  The company is involved in Wall Street's favorite two words: "Mobile" and "Cloud". They help companies to synchronize those two with their business platforms. No mystery here, pretty straight forward. The 52 week high on the stock is 52. Sorry for the guy that bought it at that price!

SNCR will earn $2.36 per share in 2016 and $2.88 per share in 2017. That is a forward PE of 8.05. The company has a PEG Ratio of 1.59 and an ROE of 8.80 % and is trading at 1.67 times current book value. The IBD rating is 95 and "A".

Analyst right now are 7 Buy and 1 Accumulate. The company is doing a $100 Million dollar buyback of its stock. The company has a healthy Current and Quick Ratio of 5.7 to 1. The 5 year sales growth rate is 28.80%. I would buy it here, (and have purchased both of these here).


One last thing I would add for some yield here is a company that has done very well during the market downturn. 

AT&T (Symbol T, $36.47) has an IBD rating of 80 and "A". This one you are buying for the 5.26% dividend yield. The company grew big last year because of the acquisition of Direct TV. (Must have been the Hanna and the horse commercials.) This year it will only grow at 6 -7 % so really you are buying this to act like a "bond" and give some stability to your portfolio. (I own it from an earlier point). It has a 15.5 PE , so you don't have to be real aggressive buying it here. Nibble. The company will earn $2.84 per share in 2016 and $3.00 per share in 2017. 

(The aforementioned Hanna and her horse AT&T/ Direct TV commercial)

So don't get too crazy this week but you can probably put a little money to work on Tuesday when the stock mark reopens.  We are celebrating Lincoln and Washington's Birthdays on Monday.

(the aforementioned George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, US Presidents)

Thanks and have a great week and Valentine's Day today, here in the USA,

Freewilly

Enigma: definition : a puzzling or inexplicable occurrence or situation. Such is the case with one popular name but very unpopular stock. Twitter (Symbol TWTR, $17.84)

Dow Jones Industrial Average 16,094 (UP) Week ending 01-22-2016

A picture tells a thousand words. Our Nor'Easter here this weekend mirrors the turbulence of our current US stock markets this past week.  Hard to tell where the ocean ends and the shoreline begins, kind of like our stock averages. 

But sometimes, like Doc in John Steinbeck's story Cannery Row, you can go into The Great Tide pool, (of stocks), and in the some small eddy you can find some really amazing things. 

Such is the case of one enigmatic stock called Twitter Inc., which finds itself tossed and turned with the wild tide of these markets. 
 Twitter, (Symbol TWTR, $17.84) is simply the most fantastic and fastest news delivery system in the world. Don't try to picture it as something else or compare it to other things that it is not. 

Analyst are projecting $0.36 cents earnings for this year and projecting next year earnings at $0.56 per share. For the next 5 years earnings are projected to increase by 65% per year. Twitter has a Quick Ratio of 10 to 1. Analysts have 18 Buy recommendations and 23 Hold recommendations. Yet, Insiders over the last three months have been selling shares by a 2 to 1 ration , rather than buying them.?? 

The company has target prices of 40, 33,29,24, and 21 by various firms. Ex-Microsoft CEO bought 4% of the shares and says "Good Job" and is glad he has bought the shares. The company trades at 2.8 times book value.

There have been two large option trades with big buys placed on the March $36 Call Options.

Revenues for the company have been growing from 2013,$668 Million to 2014 at $1.4 Billion to 2015 at $2.0 Billion. Quarter over quarter sales are up 57.5 percent.

"The US markets got clobbered last week. Worst start to a new year EVER. So there must be some value picks that provide a margin of safety. I like BP plc ADR right here with the combo of dividend and potential cap gain. This is not a trade it is an investment"

Dow Jones Industrial Average 15,988  (WAY Down!) Week ending 01-15-2016

Oh brother, what a pounding we took last week. Hope that you didn't sell out of all your long term investments. I hope you still have some cash on hand to take advantage of some current bargains. 

They keep telling us that it is the end of the world for oil and that prices will continue to dive. My feeling is that we have come down on Brent Crude from 145.61 in July of 2008 to now $29.20 in January 2016 , (Oddly that is almost the exact price of a BP plc ADR share, (Symbol BP, $29.16), and that most of the correction has already happened and we are damn near a bottom on the price. 

This is a value/total return investment play for a two year investment. The BP dividend yield currently of 8.23% and with BP having more of a priority to maintain their dividend then to buy back shares, even a rise in the price from here to the $32 or $33 dollar area would be a 10 plus% added with the dividend would be an 18% investment return.  That is a fine number with me. In the short term, the stock price could go lower, but I think its steady dividend will hold it up at a decent price level . The company has $23.61 Billion in cash and short term investments. Last quarter, even at reduced revenue numbers, the company did $35 Billion dollars in revenue for the quarter.

Although my normal PEG Ratio and ROE numbers, (3.07) don't hold up well here, the company is trading at a  Price to Book ratio of less than One, (0.88), and a Price to Cash Flow of 2.8. The current PE is 14.3 and the forward PE is projected at 16.43 so not off the chart numbers. The BP ADR is projecting a $1.56 earnings per share for this year.

The company has also cost righted itself and diversified geographically and in business mix. The company is also involved in research and products in super thin membrane technology , Ultra Thin Membranes. They have anticipated this oil price drop for the last couple years and have adjusted operations accordingly.

Many products and base compounds for many industries are made from Oil. Demand for Oil remains very strong with only a 1 million barrel front end surplus right now. (Boone Pickens said so!), as the number of rigs in the US continues to drop. You need to be thinking long term investment here!

If you feel you need to be in there trading and speculating on oil for a trade, I would probably look to lean to buy some Whiting Petroleum, (Symbol WLL, $5.70), but you are on your own with that one for a trade. The better idea is to buy BP and hold it for awhile!!.

You could also wait a week and then buy BP and that might work out just as well. No reason to be in a big hurry here.

If you are an investor there is nowhere to go but up!

Invest, don't speculate.

Freewilly

" My 2016 picks with a new twist. How to build a small portfolio with 3 stocks, since the purpose of this blog is to assist novice investors to get started. A growth stock, a value stock and a steady Eddie stock."

Dow Jones Industrial Average 16,346 (Way, Way, Down) Week ending 01-08-2016

The purpose of this blog is to help people get started in the stock market who may for whatever reason have a fear of it or that just lack good information about it.

So this year I am giving picks that will allow someone to start a small portfolio starting with $5000 to $10,000. It can be built with 3 stocks from my list using 1 Growth, 1 Value, and 1 Steady Eddie stock.  Now I am not a stock broker, so when you finally make your picks that you want to use, you should run it by a licensed broker to get their opinion for your particular financial situation. This is only to give you an idea guideline on how to get started. (This is just in case you don't win the $1.3 Billion Powerball Lottery here in the USA this week.)

 2016 Growth Stock Picks:

Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen Inc. (Symbol PLKI)

Snap-On Inc. (Symbol SNA)

MobileEye N.V. (Symbol MBLY)

Celgene Corp. (Symbol CELG)

Boston Beer Company Cl. A (Symbol SAM)

Sketchers USA Inc. CL. A (Symbol SKX)

American Woodmark Corp.(Symbol AMWD)

2016 Value Stock Picks:

Apple Inc. (Symbol AAPL)

Time Warner Inc. (Symbol TWX)

Twitter Inc. (Symbol TWTR)

Oshkosh Corp. (Symbol OSK)

Teekay Corp. (Symbol TK)

Iconix Brand Group Inc. (ICON)

2016 Steady Eddie stocks:

Visa Inc. Cl. A. (Symbol V)

General Electric Corp. (Symbol GE)

Johnson & Johnson ( Symbol JNJ)


So here is an example of  a small portfolio:

Buy some shares of  Sketchers (SKX) for growth, Time Warner (TWX) for Value, and Johnson and Johnson for your steady Eddie stock. This would be a good way for someone to start out. 

I have been over past years a "Growth at a Reasonable Price or GARP" investor but in the past few months because of the changing market conditions and the change in the view of the Federal Reserves to now raise interest rates, I have more of a lean to the thinking of Value Investing in stocks or to combine the two styles in my screening of stocks. 

My investing tenets had traditionally been PEG Ratio under 1.5 and Return of Equity of 15 or higher for my GARP strategy.

I have added Price to Book Value of under 2 , (and preferably below book value if possible), and a Price to Cash flow of under 10 which seems to be a sweet spot. I may refine this as the year goes on to get a larger pool of quality prospect stocks.

I personally own 11 of these listed stocks for full disclosure. I am shopping on the others for best prices.

So there you have it. Good luck with your investing in 2016 and remember it does not hurt to have 10% of your money in Cash at all times so that you can take advantages of buying opportunities.

Thank you for reading. We will learn and prosper together. 

Please leave comments and let me know what you think or contact me with questions or comments on Twitter. My main ideas will all still remain on this blog.

I have joined the modern age and now have a Twitter Account.

Freewilly    Find me also on Twitter at:  @freewilly555

It's that time of the year when we recap last years "15 for 2015" stock picks to determine their Total Return for the Year. Most indexes were down this year except for the NASDAQ.

Dow Jones Industrial Average 17,425. (Down 2.23% for the year 2015)
S & P 500 - Down 0.73% for the year
NASDAQ Index - Up 5.73% for the year
Russell 2000 Index - Down 5.71% for the year 2015

This year was a battle. Big winners and big losers dotted the landscape. If you were heavy in the oil or commodity stocks it was a disastrous year for you as Deflation was the watch word for the year.

This year I am evaluating the picks for Total Return. That is whatever the stock percentage was for the year ,(up or down), then adding the dividend paid as a plus to the gain/loss percentage. Here are the results below for 2015:

1. Walt Disney (Symbol DIS)            Up 12.91%
2. Delta Airlines (Symbol DAL)         Up 4.12%
3. Constellation Brands (Symbol  STZ)      Up 45.97%
4. Johnson and Johnson (Symbol JNJ)      Up 1.15%
5. Discover Financial Services (Symbol DFS)   Down (-16.03%)
6. Tractor Supply (Symbol TSCO)        UP 9.42 %
7. Hershey Foods (Symbol HSY)          Down (-11.50%)
8. Oshkosh Corp. (Symbol OSK)     Down (-17.80%)
9. Celgene (Symbol CELG)               Up 7.06%
10. Yahoo (Symbol YHOO)                 Down  (-34.15)%
11. Monster Beverage (Symbol MNST)      UP 37.48%
12. Dow Chemical (Symbol DOW)   Up 16.44%
13. Edward Lifesciences (Symbol EW)  - Up 24.01%
14. Foot Locker ( Symbol FL) -  Up 17.40%
15. Southwest Airlines (Symbol LUV) - Up 2.45%

Overall result will equal parts purchased of all 15 stocks:   UP + 6.595%

You were a big winner in the two beverage stocks. Constellation Brands and Monster Beverage were the two biggest winners. (45.97% and 37.48%)

The biggest loser far and away was Yahoo, who could not figure out what to do with their assets to make them work right. (-34.15%)

You can see that being too diversified in 15 different stocks actually brought down our success percentage. In 2016 , I will pick a smaller number of stocks to try to assist to bring the percentage gain up. 

Paying a dividend did not necessarily help a stock's performance this year. 5 of the stocks paying dividends actually were negative as far as capital gain %.

All and all considering the year results for the Dow averages, not a bad year for the Freewilly's Stockpicker Blog picks. 

I would tread lightly at the beginning of the new year here and expect the volatility to continue in 2016.  Next blog I will present my picks for 2016.

Thanks and have a great 2016 investment year.

Freewilly

"I am out there looking for "The Rainmaker". I am willing to speculate at this time that Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) will need to purchase Oshkosh Corp., (Symbol OSK) (Oshkosh Defense) because it is much easier than suing the Pentagon."

Dow Jones Industrial Average 17,520.49 (Down)  3:25 PM EST on 12/28/2015

"The Rainmaker" Moravian Tiles Works, PA.

Lockheed Martin Corp. is fit to be tied. First in October, Lockheed Martin and partner Boeing lost a $55 Billion Air Force bomber contract to Northrop Grumman. 

Lockheed Martin has filed suit along with its partner Boeing over losing the contract for the next-generation Long Range Strike Bomber to Northrop Grumman. That contract has an estimated value of approximately $80 billion.Lockheed Martin has also filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense over losing the contract for next-generation combat vehicles to Oshkosh Defense.

The U.S. Army plans to procure 55,000 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles for both the Army and the U.S. Marine Corps through 2040, and is expected to spend approximately $30 billion funding the production by Oshkosh according to Bloomberg.

That is a lot of sales for Lockheed Martin, the world' largest defense company, not to be reporting to their fat-cat stock holders, not to mention the huge amount of the money spent on all the lawyers. 

The first part of the contract is worth $6.7 Billion , Oshkosh Defense News and the DOD just removed the stop work order for Oshkosh to start the build in 2016.

Here is where "The Rainmaker" comes in.  Oshkosh Corp. (Symbol OSK, $38.87) whole stock capitalization of the company is currently only $2.98 Billion dollars.  Lockheed Martin could just buy the whole company probably with an offer of $5 or $6 Billion dollars just to get Oshkosh defense.  They could make an offer at $65 - $70 a share and still be well ahead of the  game. It just seems like an obvious thing to do to me. Heck, they could even sell off the other parts of the truck manufacturing to Navistar or PACCAR. 

So my first speculative choice for 2016 is to own shares of Oshkosh Corp. (OSK) and then to see what happens. I don't think Lockheed Martin has much of a chance suing the Pentagon and winning. 

Don't feel bad for Lockheed Martin though, they get plenty of military contract builds.  They just want all the contracts to go to them because they are the big dog on the street!

So pick up some shares of OSK to start your new 2016 year. You get a 1.96% dividend while you wait for the "Rainmaker" to happen and you will own at worst a $39 a share company that is going to earn $3.52 per share in 2016. Not too shabby either way it goes.

Have a great New Year's Eve party and smoke some cigars, just like the fat-cats at Lockheed Martin. It is good to get one over on the big dog!

Freewilly

"We're going to the mattresses" as they said in the movie "The Godfather". Not to stick our cash in them, (the mattress), but to get a little more strategic and defensive as the FED goes to raise interest rates"

Dow Jones Industrial Average 17265.21 (Way Down) Week ending 12-11-2015

Clemenza make the red sauce. We are going to the mattresses! We need to be somewhere where it is safe from this crazy stock market. Need to hide out for awhile.

Marty Zweig's voice in the back of my head, 

       "Don't fight the FED!"

These are perilous times in the stock market. Where ETF's sell off good stocks, bad stocks, whatever stocks, regardless of how the companies are doing, just to raise cash. Then there is Third Avenue Management junk bond fund. In a conference call on Friday, Third Avenue said it would bar investors from getting their money back! Carl ICann, activist investor, is calling the high yield junk bond market a "power keg", waiting to explode with a lack of liquidity or credit available. You starting to get the picture? High yield junk bond holders sleep with the fishes.


Then there is Janet Yellin out there, like
Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo , about to raise interest rates and put the first bullet in an already faltering economy for jobs and retail sales that are nowhere to be seen.
So what is an investor to do?

You carefully and slowly need to do some value investing.



After the sell-off on Friday, I bought some shares in Johnson and Johnson (Symbol JNJ, $101.60) with a 3% dividend and a forward PE of 15.85 and a Return on Equity of 21%. These are the type of investments you will need to hold in 2016. Shoot for 15% combined gains with the dividend instead of shooting for 40% returns and ending up face down in a salt marsh in New Jersey.

So you will have a nice Christmas dinner with the Family. You'll eat some pasta, drink a little red wine, maybe buy some Time Warner, (Symbol TWX, $65.47) with a forward PE of 12.42, a PEG Ratio of 0.97, and a Return on Equity of 19.30%. This stock TWX, trading at just 2.24 times book ,will give you ownership of HBO, so you can watch all the gangster movies that you want. This stock has been beat up because of un-bundling in the cable industries, but it has been way overdone at this point. Besides, they have already spun Time Warner Cable (TWC) out in to a separate stock.

But if you really want to be singing sweet tunes like Johnny Fontane in the Godfather, then there is only one stock you need buy, Apple Inc.(Symbol AAPL, $113.18). This company is trading at a forward PE of 10.71 and should be trading at $200.00 a share. The only thing holding this one back is its sheer size. It should trade at a Trillion dollar market capitalization. It has a current dividend of 1.86%. It has spent this year treading water and building up more intrinsic value. 42.90% Return of Equity. A PEG Ratio of 0.80.


As of July 2015, Apple Inc. has $203 Billion dollars on its balance sheet. AAPL can pick and choose what new businesses it wants to go into including automotive software, movie streaming and TV software applications, Watch and personal health applications business, virtual reality software applications, Apple cash and payment systems with the I-Phone. You own this one and you can sleep like a baby at night.

It is 70 degrees here in Pennsylvania, USA and you are supposed to be out Christmas shopping. I would avoid most of the retail stocks here, (except for Apple of course, they have brick and mortar stores too!)
All the best,

Freewilly

" We are heading into Black Friday so a few ideas for playing the arrival of Star Wars. Plus some work on refining my GARP/Value investing combo picks"

Dow Jones Industrial Average 17,824.00 (UP)   Week Ending 11/20/2015

The death star is coming!  The coming release of Disney's (DIS) first release of the Star Wars movies is quickly approaching. You could buy Disney of course, but I think there are some better ways to play this gigantic blockbuster.

First, you could buy the stock of
Electronic Arts, ( Symbol EA, $72.42) which has the rights to produce the Star Wars video game series.

  
Monica Gerson from Benzinga reported: 

"Electronic Arts has released a new game – the Star Wars Battlefront. The game is a 12-40 player online shooter set in the Star Wars universe and is available both online and at retail. Although the game has received relatively weak early reviews, it is still expected to be a mass-market hit and sell at least 13 million units in the quarter, analyst Ben Schachter mentioned, while adding that this could prove to be a conservative estimate.

The stock of EA has 15 Buy ratings on it and should perform well here. The company has done $4.52 Billion dollars of sales in 2015 and has Net Income of 875 Million dollars.

Another way to go, is to jump on the Star Wars toy bonanza and buy the stock of Hasbro Inc. (Symbol HAS, $75.49). I had read an article in the Wall Street Journal that said that Star Wars toys were already crowding out Snoopy and Peanuts on the toy shelves at stores even though there is a Peanuts movie out too. Hasbro has a 1.4 PEG Ratio and earnings should be on a steady climb for the next few years. Both EA and Hasbro stock prices have already done well in 2015 up 54% and 37% Year to date. Happy holidays for both of these winners.

So now on to some stocks that have good PEG Ratio's and Return on Equity, but yet also are trading at less than 3 times Price to Cash Flow and that are trading at less than 2 times Book Value.

Gannett Company Inc., (Symbol GCI, $17.00) is a spin-off from TEGNA, the old Gannett Company with broadcasting businesses.  GCI, with $2.96 Billion in revenues, is the spun-off publishing company, which adopts the name Gannett and  owns newspapers in 92 markets, including USA TODAY, and plans to acquire more papers and other media assets. Oddly they are looking to buy A.H Belo, that I discussed in last weeks blog, who owns the Dallas Texas newspaper. Carl Icann happens to own 7.4 million shares of this company. 

GCI has a Price to Book of 1.81 and a forward PE of 9.9. The company list a Return on Equity of 34% and pays a 4.71% dividend.

TEGNA had spun this company off because of the decline in newspaper advertising revenues. The company trades at 7.85 times Price to Cash Flow. Year to date the stock is up 20.82%.  I could see this stock trading to the $20 to $22 area, so a nice gain on your investment with a dividend kicker.

PDL BioPharma Inc. (Symbol PDLI, $4.00) according to their website,  "Manages a portfolio of patents and royalty assets, consisting primarily of its Queen et al. antibody humanization patents and license agreements with various biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.  PDL pioneered the humanization of monoclonal antibodies and, by doing so, enabled the discovery of a new generation of targeted treatments for cancer and immunologic diseases for which it receives significant royalty revenue.  PDL is currently focused on intellectual property asset management, acquiring new income generating assets, and maximizing value for its shareholders."

That all sounds wonderful but here is the real important stuff.. The company has a Return on Equity 56.5% and a low PEG Ratio of  0.17.

PDL BioPharma has Revenues of $529.5 million  and a forward PE of 5.73. The Price to Book Ratio on the stock is 1.10 to 1 and the stock is trading at a Price to Free Cash Flow of 3.23.

There is more, the company pays a current dividend of 15.02% , (I doubt they will maintain this), and PDLI is in great financial shape with a Current ratio of 3.2 to 1. 

This company works on Royalty revenues from the companies that it invest in and have been quite successful. 2016 earnings are projected to be much softer,but still OK. I see a target here of $6 -$7 dollars per share on the stock price.

I asked for this book for Christmas for further learning in "Value" investing. I will let you know if Santa brings it. My hope is to bring you the best investing advice and that you continue to read my blog articles. Have a Happy and healthy Thanksgiving and holiday season.

Sincerely,

Freewilly

"This past week I had an epiphany to the virtues of "Value Investing" and how successful it can be. So I am combining my "Growth At a Reasonable Price" tenets with some traditional "Value Investing" tenets and want to see what results"

Dow Jones Industrial Average 17,910.33 Week ending 11-06-2015

Last weekend my wife and I attended a memorial gathering for a friend who was a gifted architectural historian. It was held at an estate of a gracious couple who were also friends of his. An intimate gathering to celebrate his life. Until we were introduced to our host, I had been unaware he is one of the great "Value" investors of our time.

Discussing stocks would have been inappropriate for this occasion, (although he did mention Warren Buffett a few times). Hopefully when we have the opportunity to meet again and he and I can discuss value investing as this is a topic I wish to pursue further.

Firstly let me say that I have limited expertise on this "Value Investing" subject, Anyone reading this blog that wants to "Value invest" should simply buy the stock of the world's leading experts, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, and may purchase shares of Berkshire Hathaway  Inc "B" stock (Symbol BRK.B , $136.33). This stock currently has a 1.38 price to book value. 

Anything written beyond this point is just a grand experiment!


So here is the spicy soup mix of screening that I came up with. I took PEG Ratio of less than 1.5, and ROE of 15% or higher, (My GARP tenets), and combined them with Value tenets of Price to Book value of 1.5 or less and Price to Cash Flow of 3 or under. Maybe a DaVinci Code for modern investing, ha,ha!  Here is what came up in the screening.

Iconix Group Inc. (Symbol ICON, $6.90)  a stock that got obliterated last week has a Book Value of 20.02. Even I can recognize this as a good value deal. PEG 0.18, ROE 14.40%, Price to Book 0.34 and Price to Cash Flow 1.91. 

A.H. Belo Corp.(Symbol AHC, $5.52) has a book value of $5.60 a share and is in the newspaper business. Who would want to own that? (Warren Buffett actually owns some newspaper companies, Washington Post). This company has an ROE of 65.5%, Price to Book 0.99, Price to Cash flow 1.42, and pays a 5.8% dividend. 

AU Optronics Corp. (Symbol AUO, $2.95) is a semiconductor company. It has a PE of 4.28, a PEG of 0.09, a ROE of 12.40, a Book value per share of $5.97, a Price to Book value of 0.49, and Price to Cash flow of 1.95.

The next one, and a few of these aren't perfect, is Concord Medical Holdings Limited, (Symbol CCM, $5.09) PEG Ratio 0.43, PE 8.63, ROE 10.50%, Book Value $6.54, Price to cash flow 11.86 (higher then my screen), Price to book 0.78. 

One stock that popped up based on Book Value but failed to pass a Warren Buffett tenet because of it being "Regulated by Government" is American International Group, (Symbol AIG, $61.93). Carl Icann is trying to remedy that situation by trying to get them to break up the company. Then they would no longer be in the "Too Big to Fail" category and under government scrutiny. Call these the "Honorable Mention" stocks.

AIG has a Book Value of near $80.00 per share with a Price to Book Value of 0.79. The current PEG Ratio is 1.16 and the forward PE is 11.32. It pays a dividend of 1.81% while you wait. The ROE is not great at 6.70 and the Price to Cash flow is off the charts at 25.25. But still may be a stock to look at.  General Motors (Symbol GM, $35.75) is another stock that might fall into this "interesting" category based on some, but not all of these Value screening criteria.

Another one in the honorable mention category in Mannatech Incorporated (Symbol MTEX, $25.10), which has had quite a run since September. PEG Ratio is 0.35 and PE is 6.06. Return on Equity is 34.60% and Price to book is 1.87. Price to Cash flow off the charts again at 13.73.  The recent run up in stock price may mean I am a little late to the game on this one. Still it makes the "Honorable Mention" category.

I may take a flyer out on ICONIX Brands, (symbol ICON), this week to test out my experiment. George Soros would tell me to double down on it if I am sure of myself. Let's see how the stock opens on Monday.

Have a great autumn weekend and enjoy your family and friends,

Freewilly

"This week the stock market doled out rewards and punishment with great clarity in regards to measuring stock prices. Amazon, Google, Netgear and Microsoft getting rewarded with gains and with Chipotle, Community Health, Pandora and Skechers getting taken down substantially in price. My pick this week, Visa (symbol V), has not been known to disappoint."

Dow Jones Industrial Average 17,646.70  (UP) Week ending 10/23/2015

This was a week in the market where there was no middle ground. If you did good, you were rewarded handsomely with a tremendous gain in stock price. If you did bad, on sales and earnings reporting, no quarter was given, and ETF's and institutional sellers came in pounding your stock price down, selling without showing any mercy. 

This has been a year of rotating financial stocks for me. I started with Discover Financial which although a great value it never made any headway in the stock market. I sold that 4 months ago and moved that money to American Express, another great value stock on paper. Luckily I dumped that on the afternoon before they reported earnings this week, where they were punished for a revenues and earnings miss and taken down 8%. 

 I decided to move into Visa (Symbol V, $77.07) which has done very well this year. The PEG ratio on the stock is higher than I like to pay, listed at 1.64 and 2.14 on two different websites. I do not like to pay over 1.5 PEG , but I decided that I needed to pay a premium to get into a better financial growth name in the space.  ROE on the stock is 21.01%.

VISA has been a stellar performer with a 1 year gain of 43.87% and a YTD gain of 17.57% and a 1 month gain of 8.63% , all according to the CNBC mobile website. Revenues are growing at 12% a year and Net income is growing at 16.36% per year.

VISA which operates in 200 different countries has just boosted their dividend up by 17% and it now returns 0.73%. The company has $39.429 Billion dollars in assets and has Zero Long Term debt. The Quick Ratio and the Current Ratio are 1.59 to 1.00, very solid numbers financially.

USAA has just announced that they are moving all their credit and debit cards over to Visa from Mastercard. Visa is also on the forefront of card "Chip" technology which should improve margins. 

Earnings at the company are growing at 11.6% per year and for 3 to 5 year it has been 20.4%. The forward PE on the company is 29.17 so it is valued like a growth stock.

Analysts are 17 Buy , 4 Out Perform, and 2 hold. This stock is a little more richly priced than I normally buy but I think it is necessary to own a good quality stock in the Financial area as a strong long term hold.

So buy some VISA stock, then relax and have yourself a nice meal, get a good night sleep, and wait for your stock to rise up in value. Visa is a good 1-3 year investment suitable for any investment account.

Hope your Fantasy Football team is doing good on this wonderful autumn day and have a great investment week,

Freewilly