2012 Top Stocks Market, Best Stock Investments For 2012, Hot Stocks to buy in 2012

Technical Term for Q4 GDP Report: Meh

2012-02-14T03:21:00.001-08:00

The advance report on fourth-quarter gross domestic was even more underwhelming than the headline 2.8% annualized growth rate reported Friday morning. Stripped of the effects of inventory building, the U.S. economy grew at less than a 1% annual rate in the latest quarter.

Real final sales (GDP less inventory changes) expanded at an anemic 0.8% annual pace in the fourth quarter, a sharp slowdown from the third quarter’s healthy 3.2% rate. That paints a different picture from the apparent pick-up in headline GDP growth from the third-quarter’s 1.8% yearly rate. The difference reflects the shift to inventory building in the fourth quarter from a drawdown in the third quarter.

Also helping real GDP to look better in the latest quarter was an extraordinarily low GDP deflator of just 0.4%, down from 2.6% in the third quarter, which mainly represented falls in import and export prices. A lower inflation adjustment translates to better real growth. Before inflation adjustment, nominal GDP grew at just a 3.2% annual rate in the fourth quarter and was up only 3.7% from the fourth quarter of 2010.

The Federal Reserve’s favored inflation measure, the core personal consumption expenditures deflator, slowed to a 1.1% annual rate in the fourth quarter from 2.1% in the previous quarter. On a year-over-year basis, the core PCE was up 1.7%, under the Fed’s implied 2% inflation target. That helps explains the confidence on the part of the central bank to hold its fed-funds target near zero all the way through 2014.

These tech stocks have plenty invested in other companies' ideas

2012-02-12T05:07:00.001-08:00

Imitation isn’t just the sincerest form of flattery — it’s also often the best way to do business. Investors reap the rewards of powerful imitation on the part of companies that are themselves seen as innovators. Even the mighty Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) knows a good idea when it sees it. Before the iPhone redefined the mobile device market, Nintendo (PINK:NTDOY) already had proven that touchscreen technology was desirable to consumers with its Nintendo DS portable gaming handheld. Nintendo in turn noted that people liked the sleek, simple design of Apple’s iPod and MacBook before making its Wii game console in the same mold.

Here is a look at who is copying who these days, and why a little mimicry might go a long way in bulking up business — or why it might tarnish a company’s reputation with consumers.

Google, Facebook and the New Gmail

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) looks at Facebook and sees the lost opportunity of the century — a social network whose access to 800 million users will make it the leader in display advertising revenue by the end of the year. (Facebook is projected to pull in $2.19 billion in display revenue, while Google will take in $1.15 billion.)

It’s no wonder, then, that Google has spent recent years playing at being Facebook. The recently opened Google+ is in many ways a literal Facebook clone that incorporates Google’s other services like Gmail and Google Docs. Now, however, Google’s copying of Facebook is reaching into its other services. A Thursday report at Venture Beat said an accidentally published YouTube video showing off an upcoming redesign of Gmail showed that the email service looked somewhat familiar. As writer Tom Cheredar pointed out, the new layout — filled with white space, new organization tools that use images rather than text descriptors (a tiny trashc! an inste ad of the word “trash,” etc.), and a stream of messages that look less like emails and more like conversations — is almost identical to Facebook’s messaging service.

On the surface, the switch is logical. Gmail has 260 million users, but 800 million Facebook users can’t be wrong. Google has to tread lightly, though, and not force Gmail users to adopt the new format — otherwise, it will have another Google Buzz on its hands.

Netflix, Amazon and Streaming Subscriptions

Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) might be having a tough time these days, but the problem has been with its public relations, not its product. People don’t like to pay more for things, but Netflix’s growth from 10 million users to more than 20 million users in just two years proved people sure do like streaming movies and television from the Internet to their TVs.

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has taken Netflix’s business model and is using it to transform itself into a service company in addition to being the Web’s biggest retailer. In January, Amazon began offering streaming video to Amazon Prime subscribers, positioning itself as a direct competitor to Netflix — but rumors suggest Amazon is going to apply the subscription model to more than just movies. In particular, Amazon is said to be preparing to offer a Netflix-style library of e-books, so Amazon Prime subscribers can access all the different entertainment they want on the new Kindle Fire tablet.

Offering many e-books for a blanket subscription rate is dangerous when individual e-book sales still are a growing business, but considering Wall Street analysts estimate that Amazon Prime is growing 20% year over year and total Amazon revenue grows 1.5% for every million Amazon Prime subscribers, the new model might yield far better results than plain ol’ electronic! books.< /p>

Microsoft, Google and the New Windows

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) remembers the good old days, back when “Apple” was a word to be snickered at and “personal computer” was just shorthand for a device running Windows. The latter still holds true — Gartner, Inc. projects that the majority of PCs, 42%, will run Windows 7 by the end of 2011 — but the computer technology business ain’t what it used to be.

People are buying tablets and smartphones more than they’re buying PCs, and Windows is low on the mobile technology totem pole. Windows devices accounted for just 4% of the global smartphone market as of the second quarter, according to IDC. Windows 8, which made its debut in September, has been designed to follow Google’s Android model, an operating system that’s malleable enough to run on tablets and phones. Microsoft’s big hook, of course, is that Windows 8 also will run on PCs.

The company has a tough sell on its hands. Android phones makes up 52% of the global smartphone market, so manufacturers don’t have much incentive to switch to Windows. Early word on Windows 8 has been positive, though, so Microsoft’s all-device approach might work out yet.

As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here. Follow him on Twitter at?@ajohnagnello?and?become a fan of?InvestorPlace on Facebook.

PLSB another distribution deal..Makes 15 since Sept...VELA basing focus after doubling last week

2012-02-11T19:52:00.001-08:00

Focus:

5-10

PZZI continues to base in mid 5s....Recall discussions could become the next large scale fast food operation...

PZZI11:35AM 5.6401 0.0101 0.18%41,249

PZZI

Fast Pizza, Fast Growth: Pie Five Pizza Co. Opens Fifth Location in North Dallas GlobeNewswire10:41am EST

Under 1

ABHD remains steady, strongest climbing chart in Jan? (from .35)

ABHD.OB11:14AM 0.94 0.05 5.06%85,883

Recall discussions on alliance with Waste Management...Also Water Fracturing technology gaining momentum.....Likely to ramp into 2012

PLSB not doing much on the news, but keep in mind distribution deals continue to mount....The stock kinda snuck up behind our back the last couple days from .38 or so.....Not complaining as finally in the money here (recall entry bout a month ago at .41).....Remain very confident in this one as rapidly gaining market/shelf share....

0.45 0.01(2.27%) 10:24AM EST

PLSB.OB

Pulse's Cabana(TM) 100% Natural Lemonade Available in 61 Toot'n Totum Convenience Stores in Amarillo, Texas Marketwire09:00am EST

Company Chairman and CEO Mr. Zhen Jiang Wang notes, "We are very pleased to have doubled our sales from last year by exceeding our stated target of $50 million. We continue to expand largely due to our superior distribution and logistics strategy powered by our government licensing

Pennies:

ATRN best chart from prior mention...best carryover...Still no news we can locate....

0.09 0.02(38.15%) 11:57AM EST

FCPG some flexing going on...as if delayed reaction....recall good news friday forecasting to double...

First China Pharma Projects Sales Results Double Over Previous Year EarningsMarketwire(Thu, Jan 26) ? ? ? VSUL recent lifting from .05 again....Going to say probable back to .10-.12 as it's done several times in last qtr..channeling .05-.12......Constant reminding rapid growth in corp id tagging sector.... ? Visualant Receives Second Patent on Its Spectral Pattern Matching TechnologyBusiness Wire(Thu, Jan 19)??? 0.08 0.00(4.58%) 9:46AM EST ? ? ? ? ? BFAR continues to build off of .05....Could be the next runner like VELA last week..... BFAR.PK10:55am EST0.0620 0.0110 21.57%39,900 ? Constant reminding trading well below book..... ? ? ? ? Observing basing in mid .07s with VELA following last weeks doubling to .10.....Focus on morning long support at .07 currently.... VELA.PK11:29am EST0.0730 0.0271 27.07%4,728,649 ?One hell of a chart this last week. Finally getting recognition it deserves from all the 4G-LTE development deals in last qtr (CASC and NGSN in particular)and their growing partnership with ZTE Corporation. Recent Acquistions in Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro projected to significantly impact, especially with VeraNet base already in tact....May have incorrectly stated projected subscriber count prior, but still see Go Movil subscriptions growing steadily in Peru...Anticipating expansion for additional 4G spectrum in Lima which also think could also significantly impact..Expect a return to valuation As Revenues begin to unfold and ramp into 2012.... ? ? ? ? ? ? Recall we forwarded UFFC writeup prior. 0.14 0.01(9.37%) 12! :03PM ES T 52wk Range:0.04 - 0.24Volume:124,899Avg Vol (3m):139,226Market Cap:6.76M ? ? ? UFood Restaurant Group Partners With Euro Cafe for Co-Branded Concept Locations in Multiple Trade ChannelsMarketwire(Mon 8:00AM EST) UFood Restaurant Group Announces 26 Unit Area Development Agreement for Global Military Base Expansion With MBUF, LLCMarketwire(Wed, Jan 25) UFood Restaurant Group Begins Construction of Two UFood Grill Units at Salt Lake City International Airport, Driving National Expansion of the ConceptMarketwire(Mon, Jan 23) UFood Restaurant Group Announces Franchise for 10-Unit Development in British Columbia, CanadaMarketwire(Tue, Jan 17) ? ? ? ? ? ---------- Spotlight Stock: REPCF ? ? ?Outside input on REPCF worth forwarding...Speculative into April 2012 review. ? ? RepliCel Provides Quarterly Update on First-in-man Clinical Trials VANCOUVER, BC �C January 30, 2012 - RepliCel Life Sciences Inc. (the ��Company�� or ��RepliCel��) (OTCBB: REPCF) is pleased to report that the six-month post injection follow-up period of its TS001-2009 clinical trial is nearing completion. To date, 17 of 19 subjects have had their six-month follow-up visit, during which time subjects had their overall health evaluated. This included subjective and objective assessment of verum and placebo injected sites and digital images were taken of the scalp and injection areas. The digital images will be used to assess any treatment response and any post-injection changes in scalp health compared to baseline and between the two treatment areas. The remaining two patients are scheduled to complete their follow-up visits before the end of March. Four patients will complete 12-month follow-up visits in that same time frame. To date, no serious adverse events have been reported post injection in any of the 10 men and 9 women participating in the study. The TS001-2009 study team will be performing a thorough review of the collected study data throughout the months of March and April 2012. Once complete, the treatment groups will be revealed ! (��un-bl inded��) to the data analysis team and the data will be analyzed. RepliCel remains on schedule to release the initial review of efficacy results in April 2012. Subject efficacy at 6-months post injection is the first step in measuring a treatment response. All subjects will continue to participate in the post injection follow-up period of the study until August 2013 and a review of final safety and efficacy results will commence before the end of 2013. The continued follow-up period is a key component of the study to confirm treatment safety profile and response trends at 6, 12 and 24 months. The initial data from RepliCel��s 6-month subject follow-up will be used in the Company��s Investigational Medical Product Dossier (IMPD), which is presently being developed for a Phase IIb dose-ranging clinical trial of 100 patients that is expected to commence in fall 2012. The protocol will be submitted to the EMEA, FDA and Health Canada for review. A final decision on the location of the trial is pending. About RepliCel Life Sciences The Company has developed RepliCel?, a natural hair cell replication technology that has the potential to become the world��s first, minimally invasive solution for androgenetic alopecia and general hair lossin men and women. RepliCel? is based on autologous cell implantation technology that replicates a patient��s hair cells from their own healthy hair follicles and, when reintroduced into areas of hair loss, the Company hopes to initiate natural hair regeneration. Patents for the technology have been issued by the European Union and Australia and are pending in other major international jurisdictions. The RepliCel? procedure has been developed over the past nine years by the Company��s recognized research scientists and medical experts �C specialists in the fields of hair growth, hair biology and dermatology. Additional information on RepliCel is available at www.replicel.com.? Tobin Smith Founder & CEO| NBT EQUITY GROUP, INC. REPCF 1.90 0.00(0.00%) Jan 27

No More Angling for the Best Seat; More Meetings Are Stand-Up Jobs

2012-02-10T02:36:00.001-08:00

Atomic Object, a Grand Rapids, Mich., software-development firm, holds company meetings first thing in the morning.

Employees follow strict rules: Attendance is mandatory, nonwork chitchat is kept to a minimum and, above all, everyone has to stand up.

Stand-up meetings are part of a fast-moving tech culture in which sitting has become synonymous with sloth. The object is to eliminate long-winded confabs where participants pontificate or tune out. Francesca Donner has details on Lunch Break.

Stand-up meetings are part of a fast-moving tech culture in which sitting has become synonymous with sloth. The object is to eliminate long-winded confabs where participants pontificate, play Angry Birds on their cellphones or tune out.

Atomic Object even frowns upon tables during meetings. "They make it too easy to lean or rest laptops," explains Michael Marsiglia, vice president. At the end of the meetings, which rarely last more than five minutes, employees typically do a quick stretch and then "go on with their day," he says.

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Holding meetings standing up isn't new. Some military leaders did it during World War I, according to Allen Bluedorn, a business professor at the University of Missouri. A number of companies have adopted stand-up meetings over the years. Mr. Bluedorn did a study back in 1998 that found that standing meetings were about a third shorter than sitting meetings and the quality of decision-making was about the same.

The current wave of stand-up meeting is being fueled by the growing use of "Agile," an approach to software development, crystallized in a manifesto published by 17 software professionals in 2001. The method calls for compressing development projects into short pieces. It also involves daily stand-up meetings where participants are supposed to quickly update their peers with three things: What they have done since yesterday's meeting; what they are doing today; and any obstacles that stand in the way of getting work done.

Enlarge Image

Paul J. Hart

A large stand-up meeting at Grand Rapids, Mich., tech ! firm Ato mic Object.

If employees are late to this meeting, often called a "daily scrum," they sometimes must sing a song like "I'm a Little Teapot," do a lap around the office building or pay a small fine, says Mike Cohn, president of Mountain Goat Software, Lafayette, Colo., an Agile consultant and trainer. If someone is rambling on for too long, an employee may hold up a rubber rat indicating it is time to move on. Companies make exceptions to their no-sitting rules if a worker is sick, injured or pregnant—but usually not for workers outside the office telecommuting on Skype.

One Microsoft Corp. development group holds daily meeting in which participants toss around a rubber chicken named Ralph to determine who gets to speak next, says group member Aaron Bjork.

As Agile has become more widely adopted, stand-ups have spread along with it. VersionOne, which makes Agile-development software, polled 6,042 tech employees around the world in a 2011 survey and found that 78% held daily stand-up-meetings.

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Office outfitters are responding by designing work spaces with standing sessions in mind. Furniture maker Steelcase Inc.'s Turnstone division, for example, recently introduced the "Big Tab! le," a l arge standing-height table designed for quick meetings.

Mitch Lacey, a Bellevue, Wash., tech consultant and a former Microsoft employee says that some of his former colleagues used to hold stand-ups in an unheated stairwell to keep meetings brief.

Holding meetings before lunch also speeds things up. Mark Tonkelowitz, an engineering manager for Facebook Inc.'s News Feed feature, holds 15-minute stand-ups at noon, sharp. The proximity to lunch serves "as motivation to keep updates short," he says.

Sometimes people cheat a bit. "We have some very good slouchers and leaners," says T.A. McCann, founder of Gist, a Seattle contact-organization tool acquired last year by Research In Motion, which holds a 10 a.m. stand-up three days a week.

Obie Fernandez, founder of Hashrocket, a Jacksonville, Fla., software design firm, says his team passes around a 10-pound medicine ball during stand-ups. For newcomers unaware of the practice, "it's pretty mean," he says, "but really the main thing you want is to avoid people pontificating."

Participants frown upon late arrivals, and some data-obsessed engineers have even computed the costs of tardiness. Ian Witucki, a program manager at software firm Adobe Systems Inc., calculated the cumulative cost over the course of a typical 18-month product release cycle of starting the stand-up just a little bit late every day.

The total—about six weeks of work for two employees—equaled the amount of time the firm could spend building one major feature on each product, he says.

Soon after, the team imposed a $1 fine for latecomers. Now staffers run down the hall to make it on time, says Mr. Witucki.

Jason Yip, a principal consultant at ThoughtWorks in Sydney, Australia, plays music such as Bob Marley's "Get Up, Stand Up," to round up colleagues. "It acts like a Pavlovian bell," he says.

Meanwhile, the Starr Conspiracy, a Fort Worth, Texas, advertising, marketing and branding agency, signals its daily stand-up̵! 2;which it calls "the huddle"—with a few bars of the song, "Whoomp! (There It Is)," says partner Steve Smith.

"I'll be at a football game, hear the song and all of a sudden I have the urge to huddle up," says Mr. Smith.

Steelcase's Turnstone unit, which has been doing stand-up meetings for about a decade, for years played Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire," to begin meetings. It recently switched to Elvis's "A Little Less Conversation"—a reminder to keep meetings brief, says general manager Kevin Kuske.

There are occasions when even a stand-up takes too much time.

At Freshbooks.com, a Toronto-based company that makes online accounting software, teams try to do daily 10 a.m. stand-ups. But on days when everyone is too swamped to gather around the company Ping-Pong table, team members will shout out their status updates from their desks, which are arranged in a circle.

They call those meetings "sit-downs."

Write to Rachel Emma Silverman at rachel.silverman@wsj.com

Which Popular IPO Looks Best? - SmartMoney.com

2012-02-09T07:59:00.001-08:00

You know the IPO drill: First-day pop, then quick fizzle. The question is, what's worth buying (or selling) once the initial hubbub is over? While investors will have to wait until spring to get in on the highly anticipated Facebook IPO, we look at a few popular companies that are already trading shares.

Also See

Why Facebook's Millionaires May Never Be Happy
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Buy: Spirit Airlines

The airline debuted last May at $12, but analysts say Spirit Airlines (SAVE) is poised to fly higher. Spirit is known for its affordable flights around Florida, Latin America and the Caribbean (it recently offered $11 one-way tickets on some routes), but it also charges for water and overhead-bin space. It uses those small charges to keep fares down, says Bob McAdoo, an airline analyst at Avondale Partners. The carrier recently announced an agreement with Airbus to add 75 new planes to its fleet, which analysts say will allow for expansion in its popular vacation market. Annual revenue is forecast to grow around 25 percent in 2012, to $1.3 billion.

Sell: Pandora Media

Since 2000, Pandora Media (P) has used its Music Genome Project to create Internet radio station lineups so listeners get songs they love. But the stock has been facing the music since its IPO at $16 in June. New rivals such as Spotify are giving the Oakland, Calif., firm a run for its money, with Spotify providing 15 million songs, 17 times as many as Pandora. Some analysts value the stock at $4 a share. Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy says Spotify isn't a direct competitor and that 4 percent of radio listening is done thro! ugh Pand ora, up from 2 percent in 2010.

Hold: LinkedIn

One of the most anticipated IPOs of 2011, the stock of social-networking website LinkedIn (LNKD) is still up more than 50 percent from its $45 debut in May. In November, the firm sold 8 million more shares at $71 each in a secondary offering. Some analysts have been skeptical of the firm's valuation; LinkedIn's price-to-expected-earnings ratio is 137 (the P/E of the S&P 500 is 12). Ken Sena, an analyst at Evercore Partners, expects long-term growth for the firm but says the stock is fairly valued right now. LinkedIn declined to comment about its stock, but last fall CEO Jeff Weiner said the firm aims to push its profit margins much higher.

OCZ Ups Competition With FIO, Says Sterne Agee

2012-02-08T22:42:00.001-08:00

Sterne Agee’s Alex Kurtz today reiterates a Buy rating on shares of enterprise storage vendor OCZ (OCZ), and a $13 price target, writing that a meeting with the company’s management here at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas suggest the company may be able to take business away from Fusion-IO (FIO), and may already be doing so.

Kurtz writes OCZ?CEO Ryan Petersen was asked if he’s stealing Fusion’s business with Facebook.

“From his response it sounded like they are in a strong position to contend for business in the Social Media space but he wouldn��t directly comment on Facebook,” writes Kurtz.

“Our discussions with contacts close to the social media website have always suggested additional suppliers would be qualified, and we believe OCZ has competitive products for this market.”

Note that Lazard Capital��s Edward Parker contemplated the matter of Facebook switching vendors back in December.

Kurtz also likes the company’s acquisition of privately held Sanrad of Mahwah, New Jersey, announced on Monday. Sanrad’s “application acceleration” gear may help propel OCZ’s competitiveness, as it helps alleviate problems enterprises encounter when running VMWare’s (VMW) software “vSphere” and “vMotion”:

The challenge of IO contention within vSphere is creating new challenges for PCIe-based storage in the host [��] The SANRAD/VXL architecture works at the host level to provide application acceleration in lieu of a software agent in the OS approach that ioTurbine is pursuing with Fusion-io. SANRAD��s approach creates a pool of virtualized cache which enables seamless vMotion support that in turn provides scalable cache coherency across physical clusters. We would also note that SANRAD��s background ! as a vir tual storage appliance company provides SANRAD with a technical skill set around storage virtualization that appears somewhat unique in this market.

Similar thoughts about Stec (STEC) competing with Fusion-IO were offered last week by Richard Shannon of Craig-Hallum, I’d note.

OCZ shares today are up 6 cents, or 0.8%, at $7.68.

DrStockPick.com Stock Report! 8/21/09, ANN, JDAS, RODM, SCD, HUM, YASH

2012-02-07T05:16:00.001-08:00

DrStockPick.com Stock Report!

Friday August 21, 2009

Ann Taylor Stores Corporation (NYSE: ANN) today reported results for the second quarter of fiscal 2009, ended August 1, 2009, which reflected a solid gross margin rate, significant expense savings and better-than-anticipated sales at LOFT.

JDA(R) Software Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: JDAS) today reported that in connection with its hiring of Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing Jason B. Zintak on August 18, 2009, the compensation committee of the Company’s Board of Directors approved equity awards to Mr. Zintak consisting of 50,000 restricted stock units of the Company, one third of which will vest 12 months from the date of hire, with the remainder vesting ratably over a 24-month period commencing 12 months from the date of hire. Mr. Zintak also received 50,000 restricted stock units of the Company, which vest in tranches 45 days following the attainment of certain performance milestones that will be determined within 90 days of the effective date of employment. Additionally, Mr. Zintak’s inducement awards allow him to earn a target performance share award equal to 30,000 shares (up to a maximum of 37,500 shares) of the Company’s common stock, which will be based upon the achievement of the Company’s 2009 annual EBITDA target, as previously established by the Company’s Board of Directors. In the event of a change in control of the Company, the vesting of all outstanding unvested equity awards granted to Mr. Zintak will accelerate as of the date of the change in control unless the acquiring company assumes the equity awards or provides substitute equity awards. These awards! have be en granted outside of the terms of the Company’s 2005 Performance Incentive Plan by the Compensation Committee of the Company’s Board of Directors in reliance on NASDAQ Marketplace Rule 5635(c)(4) as an inducement to Mr. Zintak to join the Company.

Rodman & Renshaw, LLC, a subsidiary of Rodman & Renshaw Capital Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: RODM), today announced that former news anchor for the CBS Evening News, Dan Rather, will moderate “A Conversation” with Dr. Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, at Rodman & Renshaw’s Annual Global Investment Conference. The “Conversation” will open the Annual Global Investment Conference on Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 8:15 A.M. and cover critical topics facing our global economy.

The replay of the LMP Capital and Income Fund Inc. (NYSE: SCD), conference call, held live on August 11, 2009 at 4:15 p.m. (Eastern Time), is now available. Harry “Hersh” Cohen, Peter Vanderlee and Michael Clarfeld of ClearBridge Advisors discussed the Fund’s recent portfolio manager changes and concluded with a question and answer session.

It wasn’t just the athletes getting exercise at this year’s National Senior Games in Palo Alto, Calif. Over the 15 days of the games, Humana’s (NYSE: HUM) Freewheelin bicycle-sharing program recorded more than 2,400 rides in excess of 11,000 miles. Humana, a leading health benefits company and the presenting sponsor of the Senior Games, teamed with the city of Palo Alto to provide 120 bikes for use during the games.

Yasheng ECO-Trade Corporation (OTCBB: YASH) announced today that it and Yasheng Group, an agriculture conglomerate, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (”MOU”) with Pfau, Pfau ! & Pf au LLC (”Pfau”) to establish a joint venture to develop and operate three properties currently owned by Pfau, one of which includes roughly 28,000 acres in Central California.

Can Debt Relief Companies Really Help You Reduce Debt

2012-02-06T15:25:00.001-08:00

When a person discovers himself drowning in deep overwhelming debt, he or she may seek for the services rendered by a debt relief company. However, to those who have never sought help among such companies, they may be questioning about what can a debt relief company can actually do.

In here, we will be probing on what these company can do to alleviate grave financial dilemma and we will also further analyze if such companies can actually lead an individual to debt freedom.

Debt relief companies have trained negotiators that will get in touch with the debtor’s creditors. The negotiator will work his way out to a settled financial obligation that is lesser than the amount to be paid. This would mean that the debtor will be having lesser debt obligations, and their debt would be minimized for as much as 30 to 50% or more.

As the negotiator can greatly reduce the debt obligation of the debtor, however, there are some immunities. An example is that, the creditor may not be willing to work with the negotiator and the debtor may be left to paying the entire amount. Nonetheless, a trained negotiator will have greater chance to settling a lesser amount of debt obligation, then a debtor, as a negotiator has actually much experience in doing so. Thus, many companies have professional partnerships with creditors that make negotiation easier for all parties.

However, one must realize that some debt relief firms only offer resolutions to unsecured debts like hospital bills, medical bills, department and major credit card, and personal loans that are not related for any forms of collateral. This would also mean that secured debts has to be negotiated or paid by the negotiator himself or be arranged in another method of payment.

Briefly, while debt relief companies certainly alleviate one’s financial obligation and the company is important in the negotiation, still the debtor has to recognize that not all debts will be minimize, and that he or she is tasked to pay debts that ! are not acknowledged by the negotiation.

Thus, debt relief companies can help the debtor make steps towards getting debts controlled, have negotiations, and achieve lesser financial obligations. Finally, the debtors is still responsible at having debts paid according to debt settlement agreements and also other debts that are not included in the agreement.

Find out more about Debt Relief Companies, stop by Debt Consolidation Programs, where you can find out all about debt consolidation advices.

AnnTaylor Stores Corp. (ANN) Closes Higher after Q1 Results

2012-02-05T20:57:00.001-08:00

Shares of AnnTaylor Stores Corp. (NYSE: ANN) jumped more than 8.55% in today's trading. The stock reached a high of $22.05 in trading. It closed 8.55% higher at $21.96, with volume up from daily average of 2.48 million to 5.23 million. New York City-based AnnTaylor is a specialty retailer.

The spike in the stock came after the company reported its first-quarter results. The company reported diluted EPS of $0.38. In the same period last year, the company reported a loss per share of $0.04. Net sales increase from $426.7 million to $476.2 million. Same-store sales increased 14.1% in the quarter. Kay Krill, president and CEO of AnnTaylor said that fiscal year 2010 has been off to an excellent start. Krill said that the results were driven by a positive response from clients to its spring collections. He said that the company will continue to focus on delivering strong gross margins and manage inventory levels. The company ended the first quarter in strong financial position, with $207 million in cash and cash equivalents.

For the second quarter, the company is expecting total net sales to reach $500 million. Gross margin is expected to improve 250 basis points over the second quarter of 2009. For the full year, the company is expecting sales to reach $1.950-$1.975 billion. The company is expecting gross margin improvement of 150 basis points for the full year.

With a 52-week range of $6.33-$25.54, AnnTaylor stock has seen a lot of price fluctuations in the past year. The stock has a beta of 1.88, which gain implies that it has been volatile. Currently, the stock is trading above its 50-day and 200-day moving averages. The stock has 5 Buy and 3 Outperform ratings against 7 Hold and 1 Sell rating.

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MI Developments Inc. (USA) recently Stroke its 52 Week High Price - NYSE:MIM

2012-02-05T07:15:00.001-08:00

MI Developments Inc. (USA) (NYSE:MIM) achieved its new 52 week high price of $32.99 where it was opened at $32.89 up 0.57 points or +1.76% by closing at $32.92. MIM transacted shares during the day were over 179,016 shares however it has an average volume of 292,243 shares.

MIM has a market capitalization $1.54 billion and an enterprise value at $1.72 billion. Trailing twelve months price to sales ratio of the stock was 4.19 while price to book ratio in most recent quarter was 1.57. In profitability ratios, net profit margin in past twelve months appeared at 10.39% whereas operating profit margin for the same period at 12.73%.

The company made a return on asset of 1.69% in past twelve months and return on equity of -5.27% for similar period. In the period of trailing 12 months it generated revenue amounted to $361.88 million gaining $7.73 revenue per share. Its year over year, quarterly growth of revenue was 9.60% holding 253.10% quarterly earnings growth.

According to preceding quarter balance sheet results, the company had $90.74 million cash in hand making cash per share at 1.94. The total of $298.72 million debt was there putting a total debt to equity ratio 30.97. Moreover its current ratio according to same quarter results was 1.25 and book value per share was 20.59.

Looking at the trading information, the stock price history displayed that its S&P500 52 Week Change illustrated 3.38% where the stock current price exhibited up beat from its 50 day moving average price of $29.12 and remained above from its 200 Day Moving Average price of $29.27.

MIM holds 46.85 million outstanding shares with 40.12 million floating shares where insider possessed 50.58% and institutions kept 33.00%.

Galvanizing Lines

2012-02-03T04:37:00.001-08:00

Galvanizing lines could include machinery for coil joining prior to the galvanizing process. Though steel might be welded soon after galvanizing, it will take unique safeguards one example is ventilation on account of fumes. Galvanizing could be the procedure of coating steel with zinc. “Coating” is kind of in the misnomer, however, considering that the zinc genuinely becomes location with the steel. The primary reason steel is galvanized will be to stop rust and corrosion. When steel is drizzled with zinc and uncovered to air, the pure zinc undergoes a reaction with oxygen to make zinc oxide. The zinc oxide responds with co2 to create zinc carbonate. Zinc carbonate is genuinely a dull grey, robust material that constantly stops further corrosion.

Welding galvanized steel not just causes fumes, but if you weld covered metals, the coating melts and could contaminate the bottom metal and filler metal. If zinc will get in towards the weld, it’ll lead to cracks identified to as “zinc transmission cracking” which makes the weld in general weakened. This is usually prevented by using welds which include below .2% plastic within the welds. Nonetheless with galvanizing lines, it really is typical to total any coil joining before the galvanizing approach. Programs for galvanized steel contain use inside safety obstacles, household appliances, vehicle regions of the physique, hand railing, walling, and roofing. Metal containers are frequently galvanized, and galvanized steel is often used in tubes for cooling and heating systems. Besides hot dip galvanizing, metal may very well be galvanized by electroplating, which deposits a layer of zinc from an aqueous electrolyte. This types an really thin, powerful bond.

Thermal diffusion galvanizing produces a zinc coating much like that created by hot dip galvanizing. With thermal diffusion galvanizing, zinc is applied as a powder coupled with accelerator chemicals. The metal and zinc compound are sealed up inside a drum, and al! so the d rum is rotated within an oven. The accelerator chemicals make the iron-zinc diffusion, or alloying, happens in a lower temperature than does hot dip type galvanizing. Thermal diffusion galvanizing leads to a far more uniform coating that’s more put on-resistant. The procedure also removes requirement for caustic, acidity, and flux baths to organize the various components for hot sinking.

Due to the fact hot dip galvanizing lines use coiled steel, the efficiency from the lines could possibly be enhanced by using bigger coils or by placing a single step to turn into listed on the finish of 1 coil to the begin of the following, hence supplying the equipment acquiring a continuous feed that cuts down time considerably. A sequence of machinery which involves a coil joining operation just before hot dip galvanizing may well go for example this: pay-off reel – leveller – popping shear – welding machine – entry loop accumulator

Typically a welding machine, regardless of whether portable or fixed, consists of a TIG finish welder. TIG indicates tungsten inert gas. This sort of welder produces warmth by possessing an arc of electrical energy going from the tungsten electrode towards the metal welding surface. A sheath of argon gas combined with co2 surrounding the electrode keeps the weld as neat and absolutely free from debris as you possibly can. The trailing coil finish is first sheared and situated inside the weld station. Then your major finish from the following coil is sheared and situated. The welding is automated. TIG welding is perfect for coil joining nevertheless it might be damaging completed manually. You will discover TIG machines for coil joining in which the coil finishes to become became a member of are offered in, instantly welded by means of the machine, and also the not too long ago continuous sort of steel then flows onto an entry accumulator.

Find out more info about Galvanised Steel with my top recommended Galvanizing blog.

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thermal diffusion galvanizing

Basic Energy Services, Inc price grew and Hit 12 months New High - NYSE:BAS

2012-02-02T19:11:00.001-08:00

Basic Energy Services, Inc (NYSE:BAS) achieved its new 52 week high price of $37.76where it was opened at $35.82 UP 2.42 points or +6.88% by closing at $37.59. BAS transacted shares during the day were over 1.52 shares however it has an average volume of 816,355 shares.

BAS has a market capitalization $1.59 billion and an enterprise value at $2.14 billion. Trailing twelve months price to sales ratio of the stock was 1.79 while price to book ratio in most recent quarter was 5.18. In profitability ratios, net profit margin in past twelve months appeared at -4.87% whereas operating profit margin for the same period at 3.07%.

The company made a return on asset of 1.52% in past twelve months and return on equity of -13.37% for similar period. In the period of trailing 12 months it generated revenue amounted to $831.33 million gaining $20.90 revenue per share. Its year over year, quarterly growth of revenue was 72.10%.

According to preceding quarter balance sheet results, the company had $13.77 million cash in hand making cash per share at 0.33. The total of $562.69 million debt was there putting a total debt to equity ratio 196.54. Moreover its current ratio according to same quarter results was 2.41 and book value per share was 6.79.

Looking at the trading information, the stock price history displayed that its S&P500 52 Week Change illustrated 23.60% where the stock current price exhibited up beat from its 50 day moving average price of $29.25 and remained above from its 200 Day Moving Average price of $23.67.

BAS holds 42.20 million outstanding shares with 22.40 million floating shares where insider possessed 1.99% and institutions kept 87.80%.

Your Vote for CEO of the Year - Bezos (Amazon) or Page (Google)?

2012-02-02T14:39:00.001-08:00

Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

Turning over a new year inevitably leads to selections for “CEO of the Year.”? Investor Business Daily selected Larry Page of Google 3 weeks ago, and last week Marketwatch.com selected Jeff Bezos of Amazon.? Comparing the two is worthwhile, because there is almost nothing similar about what the two have done – and one is likely to dramatically outperform the other.

Focusing on the Future

Both share a willingness to focus their companies on the future.? Both have introduced major new products, targeted at developing new markets and entirely new revenue streams for their companies.? Both have significantly sacrificed short-term profits seeking long-term strategic positioning for sustainable, higher future returns.? Both have, and continue to, spend vast sums of money seeking competitive advantage for their organizations.

And both have seen their stock value clobbered.? In 2011 Amazon rose from $150/share lows to almost $250 before collapsing at year’s end to about $175 – actually lower than it started the calendar year.? Google‘s stock dropped from $625/share to below $475 before recovering all the way to $670 – only to crater all the way to $585 last week.? Clearly the analysts awarding these CEOs were looking beyond short-term investor returns when making their selections.? So it is more important than ever we understand what both have done, and are planning to do in the future, if we are to support either, or both, as award winners.? Or buy their stock.

Google participates in great growth markets

The good news for Google is its participation in high growth markets.? Search ads continue growing, supplying the bulk of revenues and profits for the company.? Its Android product gives Google great position in mobile devices, and su! pporting Chrome applications help clients move from traditional architectures and applications to cloud-based solutions at lower cost and frequently higher user satisfaction.? Additionally, Google is growing internet display ad sales, a fast growing market, by increasing participation in social networks.

Because Google is in high growth markets, its revenues keep growing healthily.? But CEO Page’s “focus” leadership has led to the killing of several products, retrenching from several markets, and remarkably huge bets in 2 markets where Google’s revenues and profits lag dramatically – mobile devices and search.

Because Android produces no revenue Google bought near-bankrupt Motorola to enter the hardware and applications business mirroring Apple – a big bet using some old technology against what is the #1 technology company on the planet.? Whether this will be a market share winner for Google, and whether it will make or lose money, is far from certain.

Simultaneously, the Google+ launch is an attempt to take on the King Kong of social – Facebook – which has 800million users and remarkable success.? The Google+ effort has been (and will continue to be) very expensive and far from convincing.? Its product efforts have even angered some people as Google tried steering social networkers rather heavy-handidly toward Google products – as it did with “Search plus Your World” recently.

Mr. Page has positioned Google as a gladiator in some serious “battles to the death” that are investment intensive.? Google must keep fighting the wounded, hurting and desperate Microsoft in search markets against Bing+Yahoo.? While Google is the clear winner, desperate but well funded competitors are known to behave suicidally, and Google will find the competition intensive.

Freddie Mac draws Republicans' attention

2012-02-02T10:14:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The one thing Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich seem to agree on about Freddie Mac is that it played a significant role in the housing bubble -- and the subsequent financial meltdown that followed when it burst.

But many experts in the field question that view, saying Freddie Mac and fellow mortgage finance company Fannie Mae were relatively small players in the rapid growth of subprime and other risky home loans while the housing bubble inflated -- and were relatively late to the game at that.

"An easy way to sum it all up is if Fannie and Freddie never existed we still would have had the housing bubble, the subprime crisis and the collapse of the housing market," said Guy Cecala, CEO of Inside Mortgage Finance, which publishes trade publications following the different part of the mortgage market.

"That being said, as the two single largest players in financing of mortgages, it's hard to say they (Fannie and Freddie) had no involvement because, of course, they did," he added.

Freddie has become a hot button topic in the next Republican primary in Florida. For one thing, there's still economic pain in the state due to the problems in housing and foreclosure.

In addition, the Romney campaign sees a chance to tie Gingrich to that pain, since Gingrich is reported to have received $1.7 million from Freddie Mac for consulting work. The latest Romney commercial starts off saying "While Florida families lost everything during the housing crisis, Newt Gingrich cashed in." (Paycuts coming for new bosses at Fannie/Freddie)

Romney supporters campaigning in Florida hammered Gingrich about his ties to Freddie on Monday.

Has Obama's housing policy failed?

"One of the most devastating blows to the Florida economy, of course, has been the housing market, and one of the principal culprits in the demise of the housing market was the role of Congress and ... Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae," said former Minnesota G! ov. Tim Pawlenty, a Romney supporter, in a call with reporters.

Gingrich has responded he did no lobbying for Freddie Mac, and said he will try to have his Freddie Mac contract released to the public in the next week to prove that. He claims that he told Freddie its business model was broken, and told Republican members of Congress not to approve the bailout of Fannie and Freddie that have so far received $183.8 billion in taxpayer funds to cover losses.

Gingrich has not denied the $1.7 million amount that his firm reportedly received from Freddie, which was first reported by Bloomberg News. A person familiar with his work for the company told CNNMoney that the figure is "generally accurate."

He has heaped almost as much scorn as Romney on Freddie and Fannie. The former House speaker says they "played a critical role in the financial crisis," blaming Democrats in Congress for using them to impose unworkable affordable housing guarantees that distorted the housing market and created the crisis.

Freddie spokeswoman Sharon McHale said the firm couldn't comment on the charges being made against it in the political campaign, given that it is operating under government conservatorship.

But experts said the firms' involvement in riskier home loans had little to do with their Congressional mandates to make housing affordable for the poor. Instead, they had everything to do with their attempt to compete with Wall Street firms that combined subprime mortgages into securities and sold them to investors.

"There's really no doubt that the worst of the bubble is due to the Wall Street guys," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal think tank. "They (Fannie and Freddie) got in because they were profit-making enterprises and they were losing market share."

Cecala agrees with Baker that Freddie and Fannie's participation in subprime mortgages was driven not by Congress but by competitive pressures fro! m banks such as Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), IndyMac, Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) and Countrywide Financial, which was bought by Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500).

"That's a joke, that Fannie and Freddie's affordable housing goals somehow created this," he said. "It was plain and simple greed."

Is ZAGG Going to Burn You?

2012-02-02T05:29:00.001-08:00

There's no foolproof way to know the future for ZAGG (Nasdaq: ZAGG ) or any other company. However, certain clues may help you see potential stumbles before they happen -- and before your stock craters as a result.

A cloudy crystal ball
In this series, we use accounts receivable and days sales outstanding to judge a company's current health and future prospects. It's an important step in separating the pretenders from the market's best stocks. Alone, AR -- the amount of money owed the company -- and DSO -- the number of days' worth of sales owed to the company -- don't tell you much. However, by considering the trends in AR and DSO, you can sometimes get a window onto the future.

Sometimes, problems with AR or DSO simply indicate a change in the business (like an acquisition), or lax collections. However, AR that grows more quickly than revenue, or ballooning DSO, can also suggest a desperate company that's trying to boost sales by giving its customers overly generous payment terms. Alternately, it can indicate that the company sprinted to book a load of sales at the end of the quarter, like used-car dealers on the 29th of the month. (Sometimes, companies do both.)

Why might an upstanding firm like ZAGG do this? For the same reason any other company might: to make the numbers. Investors don't like revenue shortfalls, and employees don't like reporting them to their superiors.

Is ZAGG sending any potential warning signs? Take a look at the chart below, which plots revenue growth against AR growth, and DSO:

Source: S&P Capital IQ. Data is current as of last fully-reported fiscal quarter. FQ = fiscal quarter.

The standard way to calculate DSO uses average accounts receivable. I prefer to look at end-of-quarter receivables, but I've plotted b! oth abov e.

Watching the trends
When that red line (AR growth) crosses above the green line (revenue growth), I know I need to consult the filings. Similarly, a spike in the blue bars indicates a trend worth worrying about. ZAGG's latest average DSO stands at 55.8 days, and the end-of-quarter figure is 58.3 days. Differences in business models can generate variations in DSO, and business needs can require occasional fluctuations, but all things being equal, I like to see this figure stay steady. So, let's get back to our original question: Based on DSO and sales, does ZAGG look like it might miss it numbers in the next quarter or two?

The numbers don't paint a clear picture. For the last fully reported fiscal quarter, ZAGG's year-over-year revenue grew 99.0%, and its AR grew 105.5%. That looks OK. End-of-quarter DSO increased 3.3% over the prior-year quarter. It was down 6.5% versus the prior quarter. Still, I'm no fortuneteller, and these are just numbers. Investors putting their money on the line always need to dig into the filings for the root causes and draw their own conclusions.

What now?
I use this kind of analysis to figure out which investments I need to watch more closely as I hunt the market's best returns. However, some investors actively seek out companies on the wrong side of AR trends in order to sell them short, profiting when they eventually fall. Which way would you play this one? Let us know in the comments below, or keep up with the stocks mentioned in this article by tracking them in our free watchlist service, My Watchlist.

Add ZAGG to My Watchlist.

Cashing In on Coal Stocks

2012-02-01T15:36:00.000-08:00

Spring is here, which means I’m back on my bike… burning rubber on the open road. Speaking of burning things, I want to take a moment to talk to you about one of nature’s most profitable dirty-little secrets: coal.

I’ve shown you how to profit in oil. Then, I led you down the path of profits in what I called “agflation.” Today, I’m going to show you how to make a bundle burning coal.

Coal is the next great commodity. Not solar panels. Not windmills. Not triple-A batteries or algae.

Good old-fashioned coal. The same by-product that we’ve all been digging for and burning for centuries.

It may not be the cleanest form of energy, but with oil spiking at more than $100 a barrel, the world is turning to coal to heat its homes, run its factories and keep its employees on the clock.

Whether you like it or not, coal is King. It always has been. And it always will be.

Burn Baby Burn!

For eco-conscious Americans, we don’t like to talk about coal unless there’s a miner trapped underground somewhere in West Virginia. It’s dirty. It smells. It ruins the environment.

This is all true.

But when you sit back and think about the overwhelming global dependence on coal, and the profits you could be making, the numbers are simply mind-blowing.

See, dirty coal can easily get converted to liquid K-fuel. And in this form, coal from the Rockies can get to electrical plants in say, India, where their inventory has dipped to just seven days.

In fact, India remains entirely dependent on coal (in the form of K-fuel) to meet its rapidly growing demand for electricity. Yet, it has not one single mine.

Here in the U.S., we mine coal in more than 38 states.

As for China…

The country runs on coal and coal alone. Remember the headlines just two months ago coming out of China? The middle of the country was hit by bli! zzards t hat froze trains tracks and sent most of the country into darkness. And why was that? Trains couldn’t deliver the coal the country’s top producers needed to burn to heat the more than a billion Chinese homes.

In fact, my Intelligence Report’stop coal miner has just contracted to build K-fuel conversion plants across China. Nearly 20 plants have already come on line in the last two years, and the pace is quickening as China struggles to keep lights on!

3 Reasons Why Coal Is the New “Black Gold”

Without a doubt, coal is the burning briquette of opportunity for investors in the good ol’ U.S. of A. In fact, I expect to double my own money in this form of black gold in the next six months. If you don’t believe me yet, here are three more reasons you need to add some Kingsford to your portfolio:

1. Oil at $100. At these levels, power stations switch out of oil, out of natural gas and hand out shovels. (I’m actually not joking.) Coal is the cheapest energy on the plant now and, happily, most of it can be found in our own backyard.

2. Coal got green (as “green” as it’s going to get). Coal’s big drawback has always been that it burns dirty. Clean it up, convert in into liquid diesel, and you’ve turned low-grade coal you’d otherwise discard in slag heaps into a $3-a-gallon at the pump high-test.

3. China and India need it big-time. When the lights in China go out, the “Miracle” comes to a spluttering halt real quick. But China ruined its only real resource by strip mining and became dependent on others for coal. “Others”…like us.

Double or Nothin’ with Down and Dirty Coal

Without a doubt, coal is the biggest and brightest energy play we’ve seen in decades.

Not solar power…

Not ethanol…

Not wind or grass clippings…

Coal.

The c! oal supp ly crisis I’ve outlined briefly here has the potential to double your money in 6 months, just as food did for my Intelligence Reportsubscribers over the past 6 months and oil did this time last year. Stop burning a hole in your portfolio with overpriced oil plays.

Coal is back. And it’s hotter than ever!

Sign up for your risk-free trial subscription to Richard Young’s Intelligence Report and he’ll show you which top coal producers are raking it in for his Intelligence Report subscribers!

Romney's Taxes: $3 Million

2012-02-01T10:52:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON—GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney paid a 14% effective income tax rate in 2010 after making $3 million in tax-deductible charitable donations and drawing most of his income from investments, according to a summary of Mr. Romney's 2010 tax form provided by his campaign.

Mr. Romney reported $21.7 million in income. He paid $3 million in federal taxes, slightly more than the $2.98 million he made in charitable donations. At least $1.5 million of his charitable donations went to the Mormon Church.

Of Mr. Romney's 2010 income, he noted a capital gain of $12.6 million, taxable interest of $3.3 million, ordinary dividends of $4.9 million and smaller sums of gains and losses on business income, refunds and other income.

Enlarge Image

Reuters

Mitt Romney answered reporters' questions in Tampa, Fla., on Monday.

Mitt Romney addresses the release of his tax returns and describes his plan for tax reform in this clip from the Republican Presidential debate courtesy of NBC.

His 2010 return also showed that he had a financial account in Switzerla! nd that was closed in 2010 and that he generated income from overseas investments. He also reported financial accounts in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

Mr. Romney's campaign released his full tax filings for 2010 and an estimate for his 2011 taxes Tuesday. Late Monday, the campaign provided the Wall Street Journal with a preview of those forms.

Romney Advisers Defend Tax Returns
Boehner Defends Romney Tax Rate
Wealth Report: Romney Is in Top 0.0025%
Deal Journal: Romney's Income vs. Wall Street Pay

In an estimate of his 2011 taxes, the Romney campaign said Mr. Romney would pay $3.23 million in federal tax on $20.9 million in total income. He said he would have itemized deductions of $5.7 million, including $4 million in charitable donations. About $2.6 million of the money that Mr. Romney gave to charity in 2011 went to the Mormon Church.

Democrats and Mr. Romney's GOP rivals have long called on the candidate to release his tax forms. During the Republican debate Monday night, after previously resisting, Mr. Romney said that he will make public two years of tax releases and no more. He said two years of forms "will satisfy the interest of the American people."

"I pay all the taxes that are legally required, not a dollar more," he said. "I'm proud of the fact that I pay a lot of taxes." His tax bill is significantly higher than the amount paid by most Americans.

The rel! ease of the tax information is unlikely to end a problem that has dogged Mr. Romney on the campaign trail. Rich Galen, a Republican strategist who used to advise Mr. Gingrich, said the Romney release puts him ahead of his rivals' disclosure, "so the number of years isn't the issue; the issue will be the sophisticated use of the existing tax code."

Poll Tracker

WSJ's guide to the latest political polls

On the Issues

Read where each Republican hopeful stands on major issues in the campaign.

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More photos and interactive graphics

Mr. Romney, who would be one of the richest GOP nominees in history, has stumbled at times when he has tried to show sympathy for struggling Americans. He has joked about being unemployed and recently said he feared getting a pink slip early in his career. In his 2008 run for the nomination, the issue didn't register. Today, his rate has become a proxy for a broader debate about how to revamp the U.S. tax code.

Of Mr. Romney's $21.7 million in 2010 income, he noted a capital gain of $12.6 million, taxable interest of $3.3 million, ordinary dividends of $4.9 million and qualified dividends of $3.3 million. His 2010 tax return indicated he had a "bank account, security account or other financial account" in Switzerland. That account was closed in 2010, aides to Mr. Romney said. It was ! not clea r whether Mr. Romney received any income in 2010 from the Swiss account.

He reported gross income from "various countries" of $1.5 million. He filed more than one Form 8621, which are used for interests in offshore corporations, and at least one Form 8865, for an interest in an offshore partnership.

Mr. Romney received about $500,000 in "author/speaking" fees, according to his tax filing.

The 2010 tax filing lists Mr. Romney's occupation as "executive" and his wife, Ann, is listed as a "homemaker." The address listed is in Belmont, Mass.

The former Massachusetts governor told reporters last week he pays a roughly 15% tax rate because most of his income results from investments, not a salary. The top rate on Income from long-term capital gains and dividends is typically is 15%, considerably less than the top rate of 35% levied on regular salary income.

That preferential rate for investment income, which was instituted as part of the Bush tax cuts to spur investment, is the basic reason why the Mr. Romney and his wife have an effective rate of around 15%.

On the stump, Mr. Romney talks frequently about providing certainty to middle-class families. He wants to eliminate taxes on dividends and capital gains for households that earn less than $200,000 a year.

The Romneys filed five forms in 2010 disclosing transactions relating to investment funds that could raise red flags with the IRS. The government requires taxpayers to report some transactions that have characteristics that might suggest the use of tax shelters, such as generation of a large loss. Not all transactions reported under this requirement are tax shelters.

A Romney spokesman said to his knowledge none of the transactions could "remotely be considered" tax shelters. The transactions were performed by third parties, not by the Romneys.

Mr. Romney is worth between $84.8 million and $264.7 million, according to a financial-disclosure form released by the Romney campaign last year when he ent! ered the presidential campaign. Campaign aides have said the actual figure is near the higher end, between $190 million and $250 million.

Much of that wealth is held in tax-deferred individual retirement accounts. Typically, earnings generated inside IRAs aren't taxable until they're distributed.

An IRA allows investors to defer taxes. Income from the account, when eventually withdrawn, will be taxed at ordinary-income rate, not the lower capital-gains rate that might have applied if Mr. Romney had held the investments outside the fund.

Mr. Romney and his wife still have enough wealth outside their IRAs to generate large amounts of taxable income. Much of that income is from financial investments, including private-equity funds, and takes the form of capital gains and dividends, according to the financial-disclosure form.

Ann Romney, for example, recently held interests in 18 funds run by Bain Capital; several of those holdings were valued at more than $1 million each.

—Laura Saunders contributed to this article.

Write to Brody Mullins at brody.mullins@wsj.com and John McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com

Southwestern Energy and Hecla Mining Among Stocks Dropping to 52-Week Lows Today

2012-02-01T06:16:00.001-08:00

As the U.S. financial markets ended Wednesday flat during a quiet start to earnings season, investors and traders looking to specific companies for news on how to trade specific sectors today. Here are some companies that saw low points for their stock price due to the respective news released:

Hecla Mining Company (NYSE:HL): Hecla Mining plunges rapidly after dropping its forecast for 2012 silver production from to 9.5 million to 7 million ounces. The outlook change came as its Lucky Friday silver mine was shut down by the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Activities at the mined had ceased since November. The shares closed at $4.61, down $1.23 or 21.06 percent. Their 52-week trading range has been $4.82 to $11.08.

Southwestern Energy (NYSE:SWN): Baird drops Southwestern to Outperform on valuation. Baird probably reacted to turbulent gas prices, but the company has drained 32 percent of value since October. The shares closed at $29.92, down $2.59 or 7.97 percent. Their 52-week trading range has been $30.94 to $49.25.

UniTek Global Servic (NASDAQ:UNTK): UniTek Global Services Board of Directors leadership changes.? Chief Executive Officer (NYSE:CEO) C. Scott Hisey and President and Chairman of the Board Peter Giacalone have resigned from the company.? The resignations were by mutual agreement and effective immediately. Mr. Giacalone also resigned from UniTek��s Board of Directors, but Mr. Hisey will remain a Board member and continues with the company as a special consultant.? Mr. Hisey will assist with the leadership transition, provide liaison to customers, and participate in business development.

The board has decided that an interim Office of CEO will be co-managed by Dan Yannantuono, CEO of DirectSat, a division of UniTek, and Ronald J. Lejman, CFO and treasurer of UniTek and has launched a search for a new permanent CEO. The shares closed at $3.40, down $1.15 or 25.27 percent. Their 52-week trading range has been $3.! 84 to $1 0.65.

Exco Resources Nl (NYSE:XCO): An unusually warm winter in the Northeast combined with shale production send gas prices to their lowest in ten years, down 7.8 percent to $2.77. Bank of America/Merrill rates EXCO Resources an underperform with a target of $11. The shares closed at $8.91, down $0.27 or 2.94 percent. Their 52-week trading range has been $9.15 to $21.04.

NRG Energy (NYSE:NRG): The shares closed at $17.59, down $0.04 or 0.23 percent. Their 52-week trading range has been $17.41 to $25.66.

Further Reading: Mergers and Acquisitions: Apple Buys Anobit, Blackstone JV>>

To contact the reporter on this story: Jim Wilkerson at staff.writers@wallstcheatsheet.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Damien Hoffman at editors@wallstcheatsheet.com

Introducing the 24/7 Wall St. Wire

2012-02-01T01:39:00.001-08:00

EU nations, led by Germany, have approved a permanent bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, which has 500 billion euros. But that does not mean a rescue for Greece. On the contrary, if the European Union views Greece as beyond salvage, it may reserve the money for aid to the more viable economies of Spain, Portugal and perhaps Italy. Greece still has not settled a dispute with its private bond holders. And, it remains at odds with Germany over how much?control it should have over its own budget. The irony of the situation is that, just as the money to save Greece is in place, Greece kills its chances to get any of it.

Changes at RIM

The independent directors of Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) did what they should have long ago. They decided that the company ought to have one person as CEO and another as chairman. Co-chief executive officers Jim Balsillie?and Mike Lazaridis?also had control over the board as RIM ruined its own fortunes with a series of bad decisions about how it should evolve from a BlackBerry-driven company to one with a larger set of smartphones. In the meantime, the firm's share price dropped by more than 80%. There has been little mention of the board's important but cloaked role in the trouble.

EU Unemployment

The European Union's statistics office Eurostat?reported that unemployment in the 17-nation area reached 10.4% in December. That is an indication of?the struggle the region faces as it tries to repair its finances and stay out of a regionwide recession. Some data show that Germany has dodged the fate of its neighbors, but that is the only bright light among the nations in the alliance. The unemployment number will raise the issue for the 1,000th?time about whether austerity can ever be compatible?with the actions needed to stimulate economies and employment.

Apple Retail Chief

John Browett?of Dixons Retail will join Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) as the head of its 361-store retail opera! tions. W hy Apple did not promote one of its own executives is a mystery. It hardly matters. Apple's retail locations are constantly?swamped with customers and, even as the company adds?stores rapidly, that is not likely to change. Browett will get to ride the wave of that success without the slightest need to do anything but hang on.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Beyond the Tablet Wars: Apple, Amazon, and the?Cloud

2012-01-31T21:03:00.001-08:00

Much has been written on the battle between Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL ) and Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN ) . Certainly Steve Jobs' passing has made us all reflect, and perhaps on a?much deeper level than before, on the man and the empire he?created.

In many ways, the companies are more alike than they are different. What makes them both remarkable players is their ability to take the long view. Their business strategies focus on what customers will want a?decade from now, not just next holiday season. Because they look at the future this way, both companies are comfortable breaking big rules along the way. And to date, they've both delivered, in ways that have exceeded even what their biggest supporters expected. Which is perhaps what makes this next round of battle most interesting.

No doubt both Apple and Amazon each have amassed an increasing share of the consumer wallet over the last few?years.

Apple's strategy has been to focus on a?specific type of consumer: one who is comfortable with a?higher price point, is keen on sleek design, and is drawn to an integrated software/hardware solution that's easy even for your mother to use. Not to mention that along the way Apple built a?brand cachet that started with its "Think Different" campaign and remains unmatched today. All of this means that Apple might be losing the bottom 30% of the market. But does Apple care? Recent figures confirm that Apple is capturing more than 50% of the profits with just 5% of the computer market. Next quarter's projections have it snapping up even more, with 60%. And that's without even trying to account for the value of Apple's extended?ecosystem.

Amazon's strategy, on the other hand, is to redefine entire markets, like books. In its software and its irresistible services, it takes a?steady, go-big-or-go-home approach. It's created the world's biggest electronic marketplace and is counting on th! e invest ment its consumers have made in the Amazon ecosystem: their Kindles, their Amazon MP3s, their Prime subscriptions, and their streaming?movies.

Enter the Kindle Fire, the first real competitor to the?iPad.

How will the Kindle Fire launch affect Apple's 80% share in the tablet market -- and could it in the end only help to spur interest in the iPad? In the short term, Amazon will face big losses -- as much as $20 per tablet -- but the move will spur sales and help win over the low-end segment of market. It's a?gamble, but one Amazon is smart to make if it wants to compete with the iPad -- and startups like Spotify -- on music and movie?downloads.

But is the tablet the important thing, or is it the services to which the device connects you? In the end, I?believe the digital economy is about the services you consume and the experiences you derive from them. Like PCs before them, tablets, too, will become a?mere?commodity.

Build it and they will?come
As Apple builds out its iCloud and Amazon continues to expand Amazon Web Services, and as both companies secure customer loyalty within their respective clouds, this is where the real war will be fought. The real value in the hardware lies in its ability to connect the consumer to a?cloud-services world worth living and working in. The war will be won by the company that continues to evolve, innovate, and personalize those services, making them so useful, delightful, and entertaining that the consumer won't dream of leaving. Think of a?small business that builds its sales database, calendaring, and accounting program within a?cloud that also holds birthdays, favorite restaurants, music and photos -- a network on top of a?network, all interconnected.

Now consider how to turn that loyalty into revenue. The ongoing lifetime value of each consumer is directly related to the volume of digital content and services he or she consumes -- and consumers who buy on a?recurring basis have the power to boost the bottom line in! dramati c ways. Getting a?loyal customer to sign up for a?recurring subscription, or renew an existing one, for example, is much easier than luring a?brand-new customer if done right. The company that takes better care of its current customer base now, even marginally, will, I?believe, have the upper?hand.

History tells us that there's only room for three to four players in mature markets, and two healthily duking it out for the leadership position -- spurring innovation with each new release and each new customer acquisition. Amazon will continue its relentless effort to disrupt entire industries, and Apple will always focus on expanding the boundaries of what's possible in the mobile, entertainment, and computing worlds. Thanks to the foundation both companies have worked tirelessly to build, the best is probably yet to?come.

Gene Hoffman Jr. is chairman and CEO of Vindicia, which provides strategic online billing solutions to merchants selling digital content, including online game publishers such as Activision Blizzard and Atari/Cryptic.

More from Xconomy.com:

Startup School: Round Two: The 2010 Xconomy Guide to Venture Incubators
Why Facebook Places Will Make Foursquare Into a Footnote
Kendall Square Wants an Entrepreneurial Walk of Fame and So Should Every Innovation Hub

China May Withhold Carbon Offsets After 2015 to Meet Own Goals, ADB Says

2012-01-31T16:28:00.001-08:00

China may decide to withholdemission-reduction offsets to comply with its own climatetargets after 2015, limiting supply to the European Union, saidan official at the Asia Development Bank.

��The establishment of domestic emissions-trading systemsin China will provide a market for domestically issued emissioncredits if China decides not to offer Certified EmissionReductions to international buyers,�� said Pradeep Perera,senior energy specialist in ADB��s East Asia Department. ��Chinahas already started a domestic process for issuing emissioncredits for emission-reduction projects closely following theClean Development Mechanism procedures,�� Perera said Jan. 27 ina phone interview from Manila.

Surging supply of offsets from the so-called CDM helpeddrive prices in the European Union to four-year lows earlierthis month. That market, the world��s biggest, banned supply fromnew projects in most emerging nations including China after2012. Still, China has supplied 59 percent of all credits issuedsince 2005, and based on projects already registered maymaintain that portion of the market through this year, accordingto United Nations data and forecasts.

Certified Emission Reduction credits for December haveplunged 66 percent in the past year as Europe��s sovereign-debtcrisis curbed demand. They were down 5.3 percent yesterday at3.78 euros ($4.96) a metric ton on the ICE Futures Europeexchange in London as of 5 p.m. EU allowances for December fell5.1 percent to 7.77 euros a ton.

Guangdong Market

At the UN climate talks in December 2010, China promised tolower the amount of carbon pollution created per unit of output,or its carbon intensity, 40 percent to 45 percent by 2020 from2005 levels. A program to curb the increase of greenhouse gasemissions in China��s Guangdong province will probably be thelargest of the nation��s seven test climate-protection systems,according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Guangdong is seeking to cut the carbon intensity of itseconomy by 1! 9.5 perc ent in the five years through 2015, NewEnergy Finance said Jan. 24 in a research note. Other regionshave looser targets.

��For the purpose of pilot provincial emissions tradingsystems, it is likely that an absolute emission cap will be setfor the economic sectors in the geographical areas covered,��Perera said. ��Based on the experience and lessons learned fromthese pilot ETS, a national ETS is likely to be establishedafter 2015.��

��Counting Twice��

That national level market will probably help determinewhether China achieves its voluntary pledge to cut emissionsintensity by 2020, the official said. ��At this stage it is notclear how the emission cap for this national level ETS will beset and whether it would be an absolute cap.��

Perera declined to comment on whether China may use its ownoffsets to meet its voluntary target.

Doing so might leave the nation open to accusations that itis counting emissions reductions twice, said Trevor Sikorski, ananalyst in London for the investment banking unit of BarclaysPlc. ��That may lead to criticism,�� Sikorski said Jan. 27 byphone.

It��s unclear whether China��s floor price of about 8 euros aton is limiting supply from that nation, Sikorski said. It��sonly possible that China��s policies on offsets will help tightenthe EU��s carbon market, he said. ��There��s a potential for thatto happen, but it probably won��t.��

Halt in Supply

Post-2012 letters of approval from China��s NationalDevelopment and Reform Commission, the nation��s regulator, arespecifying volume limits that might suggest a halt in supplyaround 2015, Sikorski said Aug. 25. Those letters are needed inorder to receive UN approval for credits.

ADB is providing a $750,000 equivalent grant to lay thegroundwork for cap-and-trade in Tianjin municipal area whichcould begin operation as early as 2013, Manila-based ADB saidJan. 25 in astatement on its website. That followed a requestfrom China, Perera said. ADB will help design the platform,i! ncluding the trading rules and regulatory framework, as well assupport the commissioning of the platform, the development banksaid at the time.

"Experts" Grow Bullish on Japan …But We See Reasons For Caution

2012-01-31T11:50:00.001-08:00

KYOTO, Japan - Japan's Nikkei 225 is half the relative price of the U.S. Standard & Poor's 500 and is the cheapest that it's been in nearly three decades. This has led many Western analysts to conclude once again that it's "time to invest" in Japan.

I don't "buy" it - and you shouldn't, either.

To be sure, there are still world-class businesses here and many Japanese companies are in the best competitive positions they've been in for years. And yet, bluntly speaking, I've never seen a more-nightmarish situation. And here's why:

Japan's domestic market is a demographic disaster that's characterized by a rapidly aging population and an impossibly low birth rate - neither of which suggest that domestic consumption will improve anytime soon.
Modern Japan is almost entirely reliant on exports. If exports can't take up the slack caused by the domestic disintegration I've just mentioned, the Nikkei will fall further - as will corporate profits, lending and payrolls. To bridge the gap, Japanese corporations and Japanese companies will have to repatriate assets that are already under pressure abroad, further strengthening the yen at a time when the opposite is actually needed to spark growth. This repatriation is already happening to a small degree; but the real risk is that it becomes a self-perpetuating, self-defeating cycle - instead of the byproduct of the global financial crisis that it's been up to now.
Nominal gross domestic product (GDP) has not expanded meaningfully in 30 years, and the country's debt as a percentage of GDP is nearly 200% - the highest on the planet. Even Greece - the poster-child for the ill effects of an over-reliance on government debt - has a debt-to-GDP ratio of "only" 115%. (For a look at the countries with the biggest debt-to-GDP ratios - and for some insight on the trouble all that debt can cause - check out the accompanying chart.)
S o far, Japan has been able to finance its debt internally, drawing its huge pool of domestic savings. By 2015, however, this Asian giant could be forced into the external financial markets (just like the United States) as a means of funding this domestic debt. That's when Japan's aging population is projected to begin consuming more assets for retirement than its work force is saving. This will likely double Japan's long-term debt costs, and it will likely cause the stock markets to deflate further in response to interest rates that may actually triple to accommodate the increased risks of external financing. Japan's largely internally financed 10-year note late last week touched 1.16%, the lowest level in 18 months. The comparable externally financed 10-year U.S. ended the week at 3.11%.
Government reform here has bogged down, the victim of controversy and political mediocrity. Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan - elected in early June - is the fifth person to hold that post in the last four years. The story is even worse when it comes to cabinet-level posts: Kan's choice as the new minister of finance - the conservative Yoshihiko Noda - became the ninth finance minister in the past four years. Many Japanese I know have simply turned apathetic, believing that nobody in the Japanese Diet is going to stick around long enough to make any meaningful changes.
Even now, after 30 years of stagnation, Japanese firms still have some of the highest manufacturing costs on the planet, and remain generally inflexible when it comes to adaptation. Worse still, it's my belief that Japan's "old guard" still doesn't fully understand the competitive threats their country faces from Korea and China - despite the fact that China, and not the United States, is now Japan's single-largest trading partner.
Prices at supermarket chains have fallen for 13 straight years, according to the Japan Chain Stores Association, and wages have been largely stagnant for decades. Neither is a ha! rbinger of better times to come.

With such a negative outlook on Japan, you'd think that "shorting" Japan - or even abandoning it altogether - would be the investment strategy that I advocate. But that's not the case. For me, in fact, this is quite problematic.

For one thing, years of living and working in Japan has demonstrated time and again that the Japanese have an admirable, intangible quality they refer to as kesshin - which loosely translates to "quiet resolve," or "determination." Americans might refer to it as "guts," or "true grit," but this quality or spirit actually runs much deeper than that and reflects a Japanese person's innate refusal to give up or give in - no matter the odds.

There's also some reason for hope in the corporate realm. Many Japanese companies - especially the bigger, more-established ventures - have cut their ties to the U.S. market, and have consciously focused their sales efforts on China, even if they don't yet fully understand the nature of the competition they are unleashing in the process. In doing so, these Japanese companies hitched their horse, however hobbled it might be, to a stronger wagon.

Personally speaking, I'd rather invest in the stronger wagon (China) because the path to profits is more direct. But if you just can't bring yourself to "give up" on Japan - for whatever reason - here's where I suggest that you look for the best potential profit opportunities. Consider:

Japanese companies that are selling into China's infrastructure boom, which include players in the heavy-machinery, construction-equipment and green-energy. Companies such as Fujitsu Ltd. (OTC ADR: FJTSY), Mitsubishi Corp. (PINK ADR: MSBHY) and Komatsu Ltd. (OTC ADR: KMTUY) have all experienced solid gains thanks to China even though their stock prices do not yet reflect the growing trade there. Those are almost more a "China" story than a "Japan" story.
Industrial materials suppliers that supply the bigger Japanese compan! ies prod ucing end-use products in the industries I've just mentioned to China. Pay special attention to such areas as industrial ceramics and solar manufacturing.
And think about Japanese shipping companies. After all, the stuff China needs has to get from 'Point A' to 'Point B.' Most shippers - such as Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd. - have suffered deep losses as a result of the global financial crisis and could logically benefit as the need to move goods north resurfaces. That means you may be able to snap them up at a bargain even if you are early to the party.

If you do decide to invest in Japan, do so with this Japanese proverb in mind: "Ishi no ue ni mo san nen" - which loosely warns us that you have to sit on a rock for three years in order to break it.

[Editor's Note: Keith Fitz-Gerald knows Asia. For more than two decades, the noted author, investor and commentator has worked in, traveled throughout and actually lived in the Asian markets that so many others now claim to be "experts" on.

But as the preceding essay underscores, having immersed himself in the Asian investing and business venues that he now writes about and invests in for more than 20 years, Fitz-Gerald not only has insights that few others possess, he has the kind of contacts that few others can rival.

The upshot: When other "experts" are saying to "Buy Japan," Fitz-Gerald is saying to "stand clear."

Who are you going to listen to?

Investors can benefit from these insights. In his advisory service, The New China Trader, Fitz-Gerald makes those years of insights and global contacts available to his readers. For more information, please click here.]

CRWE, Crown Equity Holdings Inc. $250,000 License Agreement with Velvet International, Inc.

2012-01-29T22:56:00.001-08:00

CRWE, Crown Equity Holdings Inc., CRWE.OB

DrStockPick News Report!

Dr Stock Pick HOT News & Alerts!

Crown Equity Holdings Inc., $250,000 License Agreement

with Velvet International, Inc.

Tuesday August 25, 2009

Crown Equity Holdings Inc., $250,000 License Agreement with Velvet International, Inc.

Crown Equity Holdings Inc. (OTC BB: CRWE) announced recently that it has entered into a license agreement with Velvet International, Inc., which granted Velvet a license to use Crown Equity’s system and proprietary technology for rendering financial public relations and advertising services. Velvet’s non-exclusive license is a world-wide license with the right to sub-license the methodology and system to other users. Velvet paid $250,000 to Crown Equity as a license fee. Crown Equity will use this fee to further improve and refine its system and expand its operations.

Crown Equity presently owns and operates over 1300 websites and has agreements to provide financial public relations for several companies.

About Crown Equity Holdings, Inc.

Crown Equity Holdings, Inc. is a family tree of company division businesses, which started in 2003 as a group of professionals in the securities industry who assisted private companies in going public.

Based in Las Vegas, Nevada, Crown Equity Holdings, Inc. (CRWE.OB) continues to provide small business owners with the knowledge required in taking their company public, as well as offering brand awareness through advertising and IR/PR campaigns.

Crown Equity Holdings, Inc. has successfully ! assemble d a portfolio of multiple business divisions with a diverse brand of products and services having strong market potential.

With companies such as: Crown Trading Systems, Inc., CTS Products, CRWE News, CRWE Domains, CRWE Newswire, Stock IR and DrStockPick.com this company is out to increase its value while increasing their products and services.

For further details, please visit the Company’s website at http://www.crownequityholding.com.

For further information, please contact info@crownequityholdings.com.

Forward-Looking Statement: This release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All forward-looking statements and/or Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 are inherently uncertain as they are based on current expectations and assumptions concerning future events or future performance of the company. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are only predictions and speak only as of the date hereof. Risks and uncertainties applicable to the company and its business could cause the company’s actual results to differ materially from those indicated in any forward-looking statements.

Source: Crown Equity Holdings, Inc.

Contact Information:

Kenneth Bosket, ken@crownequityholdings.com
Crown Equity Holdings, Inc.
9663 Saint Claude Avenue.
Las Vegas , NV 89148
USA
Phone: 702-448-1543
Fax : 702-258-9007

2 Positive Signs for Denbury Resources

2012-01-29T18:34:00.001-08:00

Denbury Resources (NYSE: DNR ) carries $1 billion of goodwill and other intangibles on its balance sheet. Sometimes goodwill, especially when it's excessive, can foreshadow problems down the road. Could this be this be the case with Denbury?

Before we answer that, let's look at what could go wrong.

AOL blows up
In early 2002, AOL Time Warner was trading for $66.27 per share.

It had $209 billion of assets on its balance sheet, and $128 billion of that was in the form of goodwill and other intangible assets. Goodwill is simply the difference between the price paid for a company during an acquisition and the net assets of the acquired company. The $128 billion of goodwill in this case was created when AOL and Time Warner merged in 2000.

The problem with inflating your net assets with goodwill is that it can -- being intangible after all -- go away if the acquisition or merger doesn't create the amount of value that was expected. That's what happened in AOL Time Warner's case. It had to write off most of the goodwill over the next few months, and one year later that line item had shrunk to $37 billion. Investors punished the stock along the way, sending it down to $27.04 -- or nearly a 60% loss.

In his fine book It's Earnings That Count, Hewitt Heiserman explains the AOL situation and how two simple metrics can help minimize your risk of owning a company that may blow up like this. Let's see how Denbury Resources holds up using his two metrics.

Intangible assets ratio
This ratio shows us the percentage of total assets made up by goodwill and other intangibles. Heiserman says he views anything over 20% as worrisome, "because management might be overpaying for the acquisition or acquisitions that gave rise to the goodwill."

Denbury has an intangible assets ratio of 13%.

This is well below Heiserman's threshold, and a sign that any growth you see with the ! company is probably organic. But we're not through; let's also take a look at tangible book value.

Tangible book value
Tangible book value, which is simply what remains after subtracting goodwill and other intangibles from shareholders' equity (also known as book value, see box). If this is not a positive value, Heiserman advises you to run away because such companies may "lack the balance sheet muscle to protect themselves in a recession or from better-financed competitors."

Denbury's tangible book value is $4 billion, so no yellow flags here.

Foolish bottom line
Denbury Resources appears to be in good shape in terms of the intangible assets ratio and tangible book value. You can never base an entire investment thesis on one or two metrics, but there are no yellow flags here. If any companies you're researching do fail one of these checks, make sure you understand the business model and management's objectives. I'll help you keep a close eye on these ratios over the next few quarters by updating them soon after each earnings report.

Keep up with Denbury Resources, including news and analysis as it's published, by adding the company to your free, personalized watchlist.

Here's How Under Armour May Be Failing You

2012-01-29T13:54:00.000-08:00

Margins matter. The more Under Armour (NYSE: UA ) keeps of each buck it earns in revenue, the more money it has to invest in growth, fund new strategic plans, or (gasp!) distribute to shareholders. Healthy margins often separate pretenders from the best stocks in the market. That's why we check up on margins at least once a quarter in this series. I'm looking for the absolute numbers, so I can compare them to current and potential competitors, and any trend that may tell me how strong Under Armour's competitive position could be.

Here's the current margin snapshot for Under Armour over the trailing 12 months: Gross margin is 48.2%, while operating margin is 10.4% and net margin is 6.4%.

Unfortunately, a look at the most recent numbers doesn't tell us much about where Under Armour has been, or where it's going. A company with rising gross and operating margins often fuels its growth by increasing demand for its products. If it sells more units while keeping costs in check, its profitability increases. Conversely, a company with gross margins that inch downward over time is often losing out to competition, and possibly engaging in a race to the bottom on prices. If it can't make up for this problem by cutting costs -- and most companies can't -- then both the business and its shares face a decidedly bleak outlook.

Of course, over the short term, the kind of economic shocks we recently experienced can drastically affect a company's profitability. That's why I like to look at five fiscal years' worth of margins, along with the results for the trailing 12 months, the last fiscal year, and last fiscal quarter (LFQ). You can't always reach a hard conclusion about your company's health, but you can better understand what to expect, and what to watch.

Here's the margin picture for Under Armour over the past few years.

Source: S&P Capital IQ. Dollar amounts in millions. FY = fiscal year. TTM = trailing 12 months.

Because of seasonality in some businesses, the numbers for the last period on the right -- the TTM figures -- aren't always comparable to the FY results preceding them. To compare quarterly margins to their prior-year levels, consult this chart.

Source: S&P Capital IQ. Dollar amounts in millions. FQ = fiscal quarter.

Here's how the stats break down:

Over the past five years, gross margin peaked at 50.3% and averaged 49.4%. Operating margin peaked at 14.2% and averaged 11.7%. Net margin peaked at 9.1% and averaged 7.0%.
TTM gross margin is 48.2%, 120 basis points worse than the five-year average. TTM operating margin is 10.4%, 130 basis points worse than the five-year average. TTM net margin is 6.4%, 60 basis points worse than the five-year average.

With recent TTM operating margins below historical averages, Under Armour has some work to do.

If you take the time to read past the headlines and crack a filing now and then, you're probably ahead of 95% of the market's individual investors. To stay ahead, learn more about how I use analysis like this to help me uncover the best returns in the stock market. Got an opinion on the margins at Under Armour? Let us know in the comments below.

Add Under Armour to My Watchlist.

Negotiate Your Salary in a Down Economy

2012-01-29T04:30:00.001-08:00

In today��s economy, the percentage of employees across all industries who will receive a raise is down…way down.

You��re probably working harder than ever to hang onto your job and receiving less financial payback than you should. As friends and colleagues continue to get laid off or struggle with unemployment, you don��t feel justified in ��pushing it�� to demand the pay increase you know you deserve. You feel lucky to even have a job. You��re afraid to rock the status quo and risk being rejected, demoted, or worse, fired.

Joel Garfinkle, acclaimed career coach and author of Land Your Dream Job and four other impactful career guidance books insists that now is a better time than any to ask for your well-deserved raise.

Read on to learn why it��s necessary to negotiate a salary increase in a down economy and how to go about doing it successfully.

Why ask now?

Your fear isn��t rational

��Never in my 13 years of being a career coach, has anyone ever been fired for asking for a raise,�� says Garfinkle.

In this economy, it��s difficult to predict if your boss will be financially able to grant you more pay. But Garfinkle asserts he can guarantee your boss is going to have more respect for you if you spend the time to ask for a raise. It��s this respect that��s going to differentiate you from your colleagues when it��s time for lay-offs and promotions. Asking for a raise is a crucial strategy to solidify your importance to your company and retain your job. That��s right, you��re actually less likely to be fired if you ask for a raise. How��s that for ammunition?

The art of asking

In a down economy, it��s very important to remember that your boss is under more stress now than ever. Address this by entering the salary discussion with a phrase like, ��I realize the company is financially strapped more than in years past, but there are a lot of things I��ve achieved to increase our profitability. I��d like us to take a second look at my! compens ation together.��

Confidence

No matter where, how or when you negotiate for your raise, the most important thing to have in your arsenal is confidence. Drum it up by doing ample prep work before entering the salary conversation. Garfinkle recommends creating a list of fact-based, quantifiable data to illustrate your accomplishments. Make sure you state the financial impact each item had on the company. Here are the things to include:

1. Goals met
2. Responsibilities filled
3. Projects completed successfully
4. Problems solved
5. Experience gained
6. Expectations exceeded
7. Positive feedback and praise from colleagues and clients
8. Innovative ideas
9. Successes of your group or department

If compiling your dollars-and-cents argument hasn��t helped with complete confidence, consider these additional strategies from Garfinkle:

Know your monetary value. Human Resources departments agree that it costs them one and a half times your salary to hire a new person due to training costs. The dollar amount you��re asking for is minor in comparison to that �C not to mention the hassle your superiors would face in finding someone new.

Envision your ��impossible�� number. One of Garfinkle��s greatest strategies for gathering confidence is to have a salary number in mind you feel you could never ask for. Structure your argument with the hard data you would need to make a case for that ��impossible�� amount.

Avoid emotions. Stick with numbers. Ego-driven or emotional arguments such as ��My staff really responds to my leadership.�� or ��I deserve the raise.�� are easy to refute. Facts like ��I increased sales by a $3,000 dollars.�� or ��Under my leadership, employee turnover rate was reduced 25 percent.�� are much harder to turn down.

When to start negotiating

It depends on the circumstances, but it��s customary to ask for a raise every 12 to 18 months. If you received a raise that��s too low, it��s fine to ask your boss! if you can have another discussion in 4 to 6 months.

So how do you know if your salary compares to that of your industry peers? Garfinkle recommends the calculation tools on the following web sites to assess how your pay measures up: Jobnob.com, SalaryExpert.com, and the ��Pay and Benefits�� tab on the Bureau of Labor Statistics web site. When you know you��re not making as much as others who hold comparable positions, you can be more aggressive in asking for a raise.

Garfinkle asserts the best times to approach your boss are after you��ve completed a huge win for the company or at any time when you know that your boss is feeling good about you. Choose the least stressful time of the week for your boss: whether it��s Wednesday afternoon or after she��s met a huge deadline. If it��s appropriate in your office culture, ask your boss to meet you for coffee so you can discuss what you��ve done for the company in a low-commitment environment outside of the office.

What to expect

When you��re going in to ask for a raise, you need to be prepared for rejection. Garfinkle coaches his clients to expect rejection, so that they are ready with their retort.

Get ready for phrases like ��We can��t afford it�� or ��No one else has gotten a raise, so why should you?��

��No�� is a green light

Take an initial rejection as an invitation to pursue different avenues of negotiation. When your boss throws out her defensive ��no�� phrase, restate the positive points you made about yourself earlier and then calmly and compassionately ask if other perks are feasible. Extra health benefits, tuition reimbursement, work-from-home days and professional group or gym memberships are great ways for your employer to compensate you if they can��t afford to give you a raise. The money you save with extra employee benefits may seem like small potatoes compared with the raise you were gunning for, but the dollars saved will add up at the end of the year.

If you walk away with no additional comp! ensation , make sure you set up a re-evaluation meeting in six months. Ask your boss what tangible things you can do between now and then to get a raise. Then do them.

Now that you��ve got the guidelines, asking for a raise may still seem daunting. Get started anyway! Check out the salary calculators. Envision that impossible number, and get cracking on the reasons your company should increase your pay. The bottom line is: no one��s going to give you the money you deserve, unless you ask for it and explain why you deserve it!

The Twitter-24/7 Wall St. Market Report (7/29/2010)–Exxon Earnings, Kindle Price Cut

2012-01-28T14:47:00.001-08:00

Twitter has, by most estimates, 100 million members, which makes it one of the largest social networks in the world. All major media companies are on Twitter and some have more than one million Twitter users. It raises the question of whether there is wisdom in crowds.

24/7 Wall St. will look at the Twitter posts at Reuters Biz, WSJ, Financial Times, CNN Money, MarketWatch, CNBC, and 24/7 Wall St. each day to see which stocks are most frequently mentioned. It is clear that in this area of social media these tweet are a sign of which companies the Twitter universe is interested in. These financial sites are followed by a combined 625,000 Twitter users which makes them a sizeable sample of Wall St.'s interests. In some cases, we will publish the actual tweets from the sites.

MarketWatch: Exxon Mobil nearly doubles second-quarter net; revenue hits $92.5 billion on higher output http://on.mktw.net/araOgP

CNN Money: Exxon Mobil profit soars 85% year-over-year in the second quarter to $7.56 billion; revenue rises to $92.5 billion. $$

FT: Amazon rolls out new e-reader: Amazon is aiming to take digital reading into the mainstream as it rolls out a new … http://bit.ly/aXjVDa

WSJ: Amazon will start selling a WiFi-only Kindle for $139 tomorrow in a bid to go “mass market” http://on.wsj.com/cxtznM

WSJ: Apple is investigating complaints that its latest mobile operating system causes problems on the iPhone 3G http://on.wsj.com/acobs8

Yahoo! Finance: #Report: Most large US metro areas saw spike in foreclosure warnings between January-June http://yhoo.it/bwIdkO

Yahoo! Finance: Amazon CEO hopes new #Kindles, including a model costing $139, stoke desire for its e-readers http://yhoo.it/9mfviD $$

DailyFinance: RealtyTrac: Foreclosure Activity Up in 75% of Metropolitan Areas http://bit.ly/b3SNhp

DailyFinance: Amazon Introduces New ‘Mass-Market’ Kindle at $139 http://bit.ly/aBILwF

Douglas A. McIntyre

Are Vision & Dental Plans Worth It?

2012-01-28T10:14:00.001-08:00

It��s open enrollment season, and that means you may be deciding whether to change or add to the insurance coverage you currently have.?And while most people recognize that medical coverage is necessary, dental and vision plans might seem less essential.?In many ways they are: healthy people can go without a dentist or optomologist for a few years. But in the long term, the benefits of a dental or vision plan may pay off. This is especially true if you are covering family members.

First of all, let’s get clear on what these plans cover:

Dental Plans

Dental plans can come in many forms: HMOs, PPOs, and indemnity plans. Dental HMOs work well for people who only need basic preventive care. They usually cover routine care 100%, but have big cost shares for more complex care. You are also required to stay within a network of dentists.

PPOs offer more coverage and allow you to see any dentist, but they will pay more when you see an in-network dentist. For example, a PPO plan may pay 80% for an in-network dentist, but only?50% on an out-of-network dentist.

Finally, indemnity plans offer the most freedom: you can see any dentist you want, but the premium and co-insurance is usually higher. Indemnity plans are ususally only offered through employer group plans are are not available for individuals to purchase. The average dental plan can range from $15 to $75 per month, depending on the type.

Vision Plans

Vision plans offered through employers are often just discounts–not true insurance. They are only designed to cover vision exams and glasses or contacts. For pretty much anything that is a real health issue (such as cataracts, detached retinas, or injuries to the eye), you should turn to your medical insurance. Still, your vision plan should cover basic eye health such as screening for eye disorders, glaucoma tests, and tests for your eyes’ ability to change focus or focus at different distances.

Ind! ividual vision plans are more rare. You can find them if you shop around, but if you are only planning to purchase frames or lenses and already have a current prescription, the plan may not be worth the benefits.

Here��s how to decide if these plans might be right for you:

Review the Benefits

As with any insurance product, make sure you know what you’re buying. For a dental plan, the exams, x-rays, basic care, and which dentists you can see are most important. If you have children, you may also want to consider orthodontic benefits. For a vision plan, how frequently exams are covered and how much is allowed for glasses or contact lenses is key.

Compare Other Out-of-Pocket Costs

Don’t forget to consider the deductible, co-pays, and coinsurance in the plan. After all, it’s not really a health plan if you’re still paying on your own. Watch out for plans that have a deductible for preventive care, because you will most likely be paying out-of-pocket for the very services you intended to have the plan cover. A good cost-comparison method can be to look back and see how much you actually used these services in the past (which a site like Simplee or Cake Health can help with).

Consider your Timeframe

Will your health insurance situation will be changing in the future? Are you pretty much?caught up on your dental exams and vision prescription? If so, you might decide that you can go without dental and vision benefits for the moment. Remember, they are meant to provide routine, preventive care and basic eyewear. For medical issues, you have your health plan. However, putting this routine care off for too long could result in more expensive cavities or eye diseases later. If in doubt, check with your doctor. How long is too long?

The bottom line? If your employer offers dental or vision, odds are, it’s a good benefit for a small cost.??My company, Simplee, recently took a look at the denta! l expens es of our members for 2011 and found that a typical family of four saved about 60% with their dental plan, including premiums:

But, as always, read the details and understand your own history to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth.

Timely Ten: Best blue chip dividend buys

2012-01-27T06:24:00.001-08:00

Our primary purpose is to assist investors in growing their capital and income base from which to derive cash for their current and future needs.

To that end we believe that high-quality stocks purchased at historically low-price-to-high-yield offers the best potential for downside protection and upside appreciation.

Our current Timely Ten list is our reasoned expectation based on our methodology and experience for what we believe will perform best over the next five years.

Do we believe that all 10 will go up simultaneously or immediately? Of course not.

Our four-plus decades of research and experience, however, leads us to believe that these stocks, purchased at historically ndervalued levels, are well positioned for both growth of capital and income.
Whether you are looking to build a portfolio from scratch, are partially invested and looking to add new positions, or fully invested and in need of some affirmation and hand holding, The Timely Ten represents our top ten current recommendations.

The Timely Ten consists of undervalued stocks that generally have a S&P Dividend & Earnings Quality rating of A- or better, and have a history of exemplary long-term dividend growth.

These stocks also have a P/E ratio of 15 or less, a payout ratio of 50% or less (75% for Utilities), debt of 50% or less (75% for Utilities), and technical characteristics on the daily and weekly charts that suggests the potential for imminent capital appreciation.

Our latest Timely Ten selections are:

Union Pacific (UNP) - yielding 2.2%
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) - yielding 3.5%
Coca-Cola (KO) - yielding 2.8%
United Technologies (UTX) - yielding - 2.5%
Eato! n (E TN) - yielding 3.2%
CVS Caremark (CVS) - yielding 1.5%
Abbott Labs (ABT) - yielding 3.5%
Northrop Grumman (NOC) - yielding 2.4%
Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) - yielding 32.4%
Becton, Dickinson (BDX) - yielding 2.5%

Goolsbee: ¡®Groundhog Day¡¯ Over Payroll Tax Cut Will Continue

2012-01-27T02:16:00.001-08:00

Austan Goolsbee, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, appeared on Bloomberg T.V. with Margaret Brennan Tuesday to discuss the Republican field of candidates, the payroll tax cut fight and the overall state of the economy.

On the economy as a factor in the President Barack Obama's re-election chances:

The data over the last month or two has actually been coming in pretty positive. And if you saw the unemployment rate coming down substantially over the next three quarters of the year, probably would be somewhat of a positive. I think by the lingering fears of what's going on in Europe probably mean that it's the private forecast that will have some growth but not really rapid rampant growth mean the economy's going to remain a big issue.

On the possibility of another round of quantitative easing by the Fed:

You've seen the Fed saying that they want to engage in doing the twist. They've had quantitative easing. I think that some of the effectiveness of what the Fed is going gets smaller and smaller each time they try it. The interest rate's basically 0%. So it's hard to use monetary policy to try to juice the economy. And I don't think you're going to see much more the kind of gridlock you've seen in Washington on the fiscal side. So for anybody who's thinking, well, Washington ought to be the savior, I do think they've got to get over it. That's likely not going to be the main driver of recovery. It's got to come from the private sector.

On the possibility of another payroll tax fight in Congress:

Yes, it's a mess. Look, the fact that every two months, we're going to have the same ground hog day thing that we've had before where one side threatens that they're going to shut down the government, or they're going to crush the economy or they're going to do whatever unless they get their demands, and then they go back and forth and then at the last minute, come up with some small deal that kicks the can a month or a week or whatever down the road, it doesn't make sense. We've got to get out of that dynamic. But I don't foresee that we'll be able to, in rapid basis, until maybe after the election.

On advising the president on the economy:

He's doing what he's got to do in that we should pass, extend these tax cuts. We've got to raise the debt ceiling. And we should be doing whatever we can in Washington to help

facilitate the private sector leading the recovery. Now, you don't have any other choices but to try to do that. If one side is going to prevent that from happening or the other side is going to prevent it from happening, there's not much you can do. But I think we saw the dynamic on this payroll tax cut extension that although there was a lot of bluster, at the end, both sides basically agreed that it was needed for the economy. And so they did it. I assume there will be another fight like that. But in the end, they're going to do what's the right for the short run, at least. And then hopefully, somewhere along the way, we'll have the discussion about what are the candidate's growth strategies and what are their plans for the grand bargain because those are the things that really matter.

On whom he thinks the Republican nominee will be:

I don't know. I've had a good time watching all of the ups and downs. And it's giving me flashbacks to 2008. But thus far, it seems like it's going to be a pretty close contest. So I'm interested to see what happens.

Air Products Announces Plan to Divest Homecare Business in Continental Europe to The Linde Group

2012-01-26T21:24:00.001-08:00

The Linde Group will buy the homecare business of Air Products. The operation is based in Europe

The total purchase price for Air Products’ Continental Europe Homecare business will be euro 590 MM, subject to terms agreed upon completion.
The agreements cover the sale of Air Products’ patient-based oxygen-therapy, sleep-therapy and infusion-therapy services in Continental Europe. This business serves a total patient base around 260,000 in all five countries and had revenue of approximately euro 210 MM last year.

Are Shorts Watching This Number at KAR Auction Services?

2012-01-26T16:32:00.001-08:00

There's no foolproof way to know the future for KAR Auction Services (NYSE: KAR ) or any other company. However, certain clues may help you see potential stumbles before they happen -- and before your stock craters as a result.

Why might an upstanding firm like KAR Auction Services do this? For the same reason any other company might: to make the numbers. Investors don't like revenue shortfalls, and employees don't like reporting them to their superiors.

Is KAR Auction Services sending any potential warning signs? Take a look at the chart below, which plots revenue growth against AR growth, and DSO:

Source: S&P Capital IQ. Data is current as of last fully reported fiscal quarter. FQ = fiscal quarter.

The standard way to calculate DSO uses average accounts receivable. I prefer to look at en! d-of-qua rter receivables, but I've plotted both above.

Watching the trends
When that red line (AR growth) crosses above the green line (revenue growth), I know I need to consult the filings. Similarly, a spike in the blue bars indicates a trend worth worrying about. KAR Auction Services' latest average DSO stands at 252.9 days, and the end-of-quarter figure is 228.9 days. Differences in business models can generate variations in DSO, and business needs can require occasional fluctuations, but all things being equal, I like to see this figure stay steady. So, let's get back to our original question: Based on DSO and sales, does KAR Auction Services look like it might miss it numbers in the next quarter or two?

The numbers don't paint a clear picture. For the last fully reported fiscal quarter, KAR Auction Services' year-over-year revenue grew 0.4%, and its AR grew 4.8%. That looks OK. End-of-quarter DSO increased 4.4% over the prior-year quarter. It was up 5.7% versus the prior quarter. Still, I'm no fortuneteller, and these are just numbers. Investors putting their money on the line always need to dig into the filings for the root causes and draw their own conclusions.

Add KAR Auction Services to My Watchlist.

Will Live Nation Entertainment Fumble Next Quarter?

2012-01-26T11:58:00.001-08:00

There's no foolproof way to know the future for Live Nation Entertainment (NYSE: LYV ) or any other company. However, certain clues may help you see potential stumbles before they happen -- and before your stock craters as a result.

Why might an upstanding firm like Live Nation Entertainment do this? For the same reason any other company might: to make the numbers. Investors don't like revenue shortfalls, and employees don't like reporting them to their superiors.

Is Live Nation Entertainment sending any potential warning signs? Take a look at the chart below, which plots revenue growth against AR growth, and DSO:

Source: S&P Capital IQ. Data is current as of last fully reported fiscal quarter. FQ = fiscal quarter.

The standard way to calculate DSO uses average accounts receivable. I prefe! r to loo k at end-of-quarter receivables, but I've plotted both above.

Watching the trends
When that red line (AR growth) crosses above the green line (revenue growth), I know I need to consult the filings. Similarly, a spike in the blue bars indicates a trend worth worrying about. Live Nation Entertainment's latest average DSO stands at 25.1 days, and the end-of-quarter figure is 25.1 days. Differences in business models can generate variations in DSO, and business needs can require occasional fluctuations, but all things being equal, I like to see this figure stay steady. So, let's get back to our original question: Based on DSO and sales, does Live Nation Entertainment look like it might miss it numbers in the next quarter or two?

The numbers don't paint a clear picture. For the last fully reported fiscal quarter, Live Nation Entertainment's year-over-year revenue shrank 2.5%, and its AR grew 4.0%. That looks OK. End-of-quarter DSO increased 6.6% over the prior-year quarter. It was down 11.7% versus the prior quarter. Still, I'm no fortuneteller, and these are just numbers. Investors putting their money on the line always need to dig into the filings for the root causes and draw their own conclusions.

Add Live Nation Entertainment to My Watchlist.

MELA Sciences Inc. (MELA) Surges more than 30%

2012-01-26T11:58:00.000-08:00

MELA Sciences Inc. (MELA) Surges more than 30%

Shares of MELA Sciences Inc. (NASDAQ: MELA) jumped more than 30% in today's trading. The small cap stock reached a high of $8.06 in trading. At last check, it was up 28.97% to $7.79, with volume up from daily average of 260,000 to 2.23 million. Ney York-based MELA Sciences is a medical device company that focuses on designing, developing and commercializing a non-invasive, point-of-care instrument that is used in the early diagnosis of melanoma.

MELA Sciences today announced that the company's pre-market approval application for its MelaFind? will reviewed by the U.S. FDA appointed General and Plastic Surgery Devices Panel. Commenting on the development, Joseph V. Gulfo, MD, MELA's president and CEO, said the company was pleased to see the review process move forward. Gulfo said that the company had positive and constructive interactions with the FDA, which culminated in the company submitting its formal response to the FDA's questions on the pre-market approval application, earlier this month. He said that the company is now preparing for the panel meeting on August 26. Gulfo believes that MelaFind will become a valuable tool in detecting melanoma at the earliest and most curable stage.

The company also announced the findings of its Internet-based U.S. reader study that was performed with the help of 155 physicians, which included 110 dermatologists and clinical information from 130 lesions that were enrolled in the trial. The findings show that the MelaFind's sensitivity was 96.9% against dermatologists' average sensitivity of 72%.

The small cap stock has 52-week range of $5.51-$12.24. It has a beta of 1.21. The stock, currently, trades above its 50-day and below its 200-day moving averages. The consensus recommendation on the stock is Hold. I! t has 2 Outperform ratings and 1 Hold rating, at the moment.

About BeaconEquity.com

BeaconEquity.com is committed to producing the highest-quality insight and analysis of small cap stocks, emerging technology stocks, hot penny stocks and helping investors make informed decisions. Our focus is primarily on the underserved OTC stocks market, or "penny stock" market, which has traditionally been shunned by Wall Street. We have particular expertise with renewable energy stocks, biotech stocks, oil stocks, green energy stocks and internet stocks. There are many hot penny stock opportunities present in the OTC market everyday and we seek to exploit these hot stock gains for our members before the average daytrader is aware of them.

IRS Reopens Overseas Disclosure Program, While Congress Considers Business Profit Repatriation

2012-01-26T07:28:00.001-08:00

The US Internal Revenue Service is reopening its Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Progam (OVDP) in an effort to collect income taxes from US taxpayers who have parked their funds in overseas banks. This is the third time the IRS has offered the program, which has brought in more than $4.4 billion in 2009 and 2011.

In 2009 and 2011 the IRS reports that 33,000 Americans took advantage of the voluntary program. The agency also noted that since the closure of the 2011 program, "hundreds" of taxpayers have voluntarily sought to disclose offshore assets, and these people will be eligible under the reopened program.

This time, the IRS has set no closing date, choosing instead to keep the program open indefinitely. The catch is that both the terms under which offshore accounts must be declared and taxed could change, usually for the worse from the taxpayer's point of view. Here's how the IRS commissioner put it:

As we've said all along, people need to come in and get right with us before we find you. We are following more leads and the risk for people who do not come in continues to increase.

The penalty rate is currently set at 27.5% for most taxpayers, but a 5% or 12.5% penalty can be applied in certain instances. Then comes the iron fist in the velvet glove: "As under the prior programs, taxpayers who feel that the penalty is disproportionate may opt instead to be examined."

A different, related issue is the repatriation of the profits earned by US companies in their offshore operations. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has just completed a study entitled "��Tax Cuts on Repatriation Earnings as Economic Stimulus: An Economic Analysis" which shows that the stimulative effect of previous tax holidays for overseas corporate earnings was limited.

From the report's summary:

Viewed in the current debate on how to most efficiently stimulate the economy, economic theory suggests that the simulative effect of a temporary tax cut for! repatri ations may be offset, or more than offset, by exchange rate adjustments that would reduce net exports. In addition, how businesses use repatriated earnings will impact the stimulative or contractionary effect of a tax cut for repatriations. For example, repatriated earnings will have a larger stimulative effect, or smaller contractionary effect, the greater the degree to which they are used to increase current investment. A smaller stimulative effect or a larger contractionary effect will result, in contrast, if more of the repatriated earnings are used to shore up "cash-flow" issues or pay dividends.

One study cited in the CRS report estimated that for every $1 in repatriated funds, stock buybacks increased by $0.91. Technically using the repatriated funds to repurchase shares is illegal, but "because of the fungibility of money, firms that use part of the repatriation to repurchase shares may not violate the law."

The American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 resulted in the repatriation of $312 billion and qualified deductions of $265 billion. Two industry groups, pharmaceuticals/medicines and computers/electronics, together accounted for 50% of repatriated funds.

And one tax holiday is expected to lead to another:

The empirical evidence also suggests that corporations expect the temporary rate reduction to recur. According to several researchers, unrepatriated earnings have rapidly grown since 2005.?In fact, since the last repatriation rate reduction, unrepatriated earnings for all corporations have grown by 72% to $958 billion and by 81% to $639 billion for firms that repatriated under the American Jobs Creation Act.

The IRS's voluntary disclosure program and the various repatriation schemes under consideration offer an interesting contrast in how the government treats individual vs. corporate offshore cash. It's much easier to collect from individuals, even rich ones with Swiss bank accounts, than it is to collect from multi-national corp! orations , so the government goes where the money is easiest to get, not where most of it is piled up.

Paul Ausick

Cramer's 'Mad Money' Recap: Long-Range Themes (Final)

2012-01-26T02:43:00.001-08:00

Investors need to believe in something and show the confidence to stick with those beliefs no matter how the markets may gyrate, Jim Cramer said on the "Mad Money" on Wednesday.

He said investors must have conviction and then outlined a few long-term trends that investors should cling to for the next several years.

Cramer said he always values flexibility and bring opportunistic in with stocks, but without a world view, a long-term picture of the world, it's just too easy for investors to get shaken out when the next big market correction is upon us. That's why these long-term themes are so important. Investors can use them for years to come.

Theme No. 1: the Global Food Shortage

Cramer said the world's insatiable need for more and better food is not going away anytime soon. Whether it's producing enough grains to feed the world or keeping up with the world's rising middle class that's clamoring for more chicken and steak, it's pretty clear that farming is going to be good business for awhile.

Cramer said the formula for playing the global food shortage is an easy one. Food prices are up, farmers have more money. When farmers have more money, the buy more equipment and plant more seeds. That means stocks like John Deere (DE), a stock which Cramer owns for his charitable trust, Action Alerts PLUS. and fertilizer giant Potash (POT) are perfect stock picks for the long haul.

Theme No. 2: the Global Energy Shortage

Just like the world needs more food, it's also clearly apparent to anyone who's filled a gas tank recently that the world also needs more energy. With the rising global middle class seeking more and more electricity for their homes, Cramer said investors need to avoid focusing on a single fuel or technology and instead focus in another direction.

Cramer said more important than whether governme! nts subs idize things like solar energy is saving the energy we already produce. One way that's done is with better heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems from companies like Ingersoll Rand (IR), Johnson Controls (JCI) and Watsco (WSO). With ever increasing energy efficiency standards around the globe, these companies have a bright future.

Another company on the leading edge of saving energy is Honeywell (HON). This diversified industrial player is a leader in automation and control systems that could cut U.S. energy consumption by 20% to 25%.

Others in the energy saving space are Emerson Electric (EMR), another Action Alerts PLUS name, and Eaton (ETN). Eaton's lighting control systems could shave another 10% to 30% off of energy bills, while Emerson's data center business is helping large computer data centers cut their energy usage by almost 40%.

Theme No. 3: Homeland Security

Cramer's third long-term theme was that of homeland security. He said sadly the threat of terrorism is will be with us for a long time, so we might as well make some money off this enormous defense theme.

Among Cramer's picks in this space were American Science and Engineering (ASEI), a company that makes X-ray scanners to detect explosives including mobile scanners used in Afghanistan.

Also on Cramer's wish list are Fortinet (FTNT), a network security play and Verint (VRNT), a company that makes software used by law enforcement to analyze digital communications.

Cramer also gave the nod to NICE Systems (NICE), an Israeli compa! ny that makes high quality analytics software for video surveillance. Using NICE software, companies or government agencies can automate such arduous tasks as watching for unattended bags in airports or bus stations.

Cramer said the bottom line when it comes to homeland security is that counter-terrorism and network security are big businesses that aren't going away anytime soon. He told investors that these stocks are for the long term, and they shouldn't chase them higher in the open market.

Theme No. 4: Healthy Eating

With over two-thirds of all Americans being overweight and nearly half of them obese, any company that can deliver high-quality food that's delicious and healthy will be in the sweet spot, Cramer said.

According to Cramer, there are a lot of great companies in this space, including Whole Foods (WFMI), Hain Celestial (HAIN) and Panera Bread (PNRA), but one of his absolute favorites remains Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG).

Cramer said the analysts on Wall Street have a hard time discerning a Whole Foods from a Safeway (SWY) or a Chipotle from a McDonalds (MCD), but the fact remains that places that teach people how to eat better are in a class by themselves.

In the case of Chipotle, Cramer said the company's "food with integrity" motto has caught on, which is why customers are willing to pay up for the company's burritos, which are not only tasty, but also healthy.

In the case of Whole Foods and Hain Celestial, Cramer said these two companies have essentially become a healthy food "seal of approval" for consumers. Panera Bread has become another place to get fresh, healthy food, and consumers have taken notice in droves, he said.

Cramer said investors should be willing to pay up for brands like Chipotle, Hain and Panera because they stan! d for so mething so much more than just a restaurant or a brand at the grocery store. He said these companies all need to be on investors' long-term shopping list.

Theme No. 5: Precious Metals

Cramer's said it a thousand times: No portfolio is complete without some exposure to gold. He said gold is one of the easiest stories to understand.

Cramer said in a nutshell, it's getting harder and harder to find the shiny stuff at a time when the world is demanding more and more of it. Whether it's the rising middle class wanting to show off their new found wealth, or governments stockpiling the precious metal as a hedge against their devaluing currencies, gold, along with other metals, can easily justify their record-setting prices.

Cramer said gold is an asset class in and of itself, and its increasing scarcity makes it a safe investment for every portfolio.

Cramer once again reminded viewers that there are many ways to invest in gold, from gold bars and bullion, to coins and jewelry, to ETFs like the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) to the gold mining stocks themselves. Of the latter, Cramer gave the nod to Goldcorp (GG), along with Barrick Gold (ABX), International Tower Hill Mines (THM) and Novagold (NG).

Cramer said like the homeland security stocks, there's no need to rush into the gold stocks. Cramer said he would be a buyer on any pullback or weakness in any of these names.

In his conclusion, Cramer said investors don't have to agree with all of the theme's he outlined in today's show. He said what's important is that investors believe in something long-term, and have the conviction to see it through the next time the market sells off. He said if investors are patient and calculating, his shopping list of long-ter! m themes will serve them well.

-- Written by Scott Rutt in Washington D.C.

To watch replays of Cramer's video segments, visit the Mad Moneypage on CNBC.

Want more Cramer? Check out Jim's rules and commandments forinvesting from his latest book by clicking here.

For more of Cramer's insights during the Lightning Round,clickhere.

>To order reprints of this article, click here: Reprints

HSBC Pursues South African Bank to Claim Key Spot in African Trade Financing

2012-01-25T12:56:00.001-08:00

European banking leader HSBC Holdings PLC (NYSE ADR: HBC) yesterday (Monday) announced it's in talks to gain a controlling stake of South Africa's Nedbank Group Ltd. (PINK ADR: NDBKY). The acquisition would expand HSBC's presence in Africa's trade growing financing market.

Europe's largest bank aims to gain 70% of Nedbank's shares and plans to bid on insurer Old Mutual PLC's (PINK ADR: ODMTY) 52% stake, worth $7 billion. Nedbank is South Africa's fourth largest bank and focuses on commercial banking services, operating in 33 African countries.

The hot pursuit of South Africa's banking industry is fueled by the rapid trade growth the country is experiencing with Asia - especially China.

"Over time, the value of this deal would lie in leveraging off HSBC's strengths in Asia and the growing Asia-Africa trade links," JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) analysts wrote in a note Monday.

HSBC derives more than 80% of its profits from outside the United Kingdom and half its pretax profits in 2010's first half came from Asia. But it has struggled to compete with British counterparts Standard Chartered PLC and Barclay's PLC (NYSE ADR: BCS) in securing African business. Acquiring Nedbank would give HSBC profit potential from both ends of the strengthening trade routes.

"There are a lot of raw resources in Africa and many banks, including HSBC and Standard Chartered, have seen the advantages of financing trade flows between Asia and Africa," Bruce Packard, an analyst with Seymour Pierce, told The Wall Street Journal.

HSBC has been fiercely pursuing Nedbank to obtain the business before rival Standard Chartered, and finally looks close to winning the race.

HSBC said last month it wanted to build up business in Africa as more Asian countries trade with the continent. HSBC's Chief Executive Officer Michael Geoghegan wrote in the company's interim repo! rt publi shed this month that "the re-emergence of China's economy will drive the biggest change to global trade patterns in the generation ahead," with trade flows hitting $5 trillion in the next five years.

The purchase also would give HSBC a gateway to expand to the rest of the continent. South African banks have been growing their businesses northward as investor interest spreads to other nations.

"This is great for the local banking industry," Chris Gilmour, a Johannesburg-based analyst with Absa Investments, told Bloomberg. "HSBC and Nedbank will be able to power their way into the rest of Africa, mainly concentrating on Chinese development deals involving multinational banks and companies. The HSBC brand will probably prevail over the Nedbank brand."

While HSBC has had a small presence in South Africa and operates five branches there now, the purchase would give it 443 retail branches in South Africa and offer significantly higher chances at securing trade financing deals in commercial banking.

South Africa: An Ideal But Difficult Entry Point

Africa is seen as an integral part in future trade deals with Asia and Latin America. The International Monetary Fund is predicting 5% economic growth for Africa this year and 5.75% growth in 2011.

China beat most emerging economies to Africa's cache of commodities, and competing nations like Brazil and India are clamoring to get a piece of what's left.

About 13% of all Africa's exports go to China, everything from gold, silver, cotton, cocoa, copper, aluminum ore, and oil. Trade between Africa and China has grown 40% a year since 2001, reaching a record-high $107 billion in 2008. That was enough for China to top the United States and European Union as the continent's largest trading partner.

Total trade value between China and South Africa was $14.29 billion in 2009. South Africa-based De Beers' 2009 diamond sales in China quintupled to 2.3 million stones! , and mo re than 10% of South Africa's base metals exports are China-bound.

South Africa is the continent's strongest and most advanced economy, making it the ideal launch pad for foreign business to develop a solid African presence. It commands about 20% of Africa's gross domestic product (GDP).

"With 30% of exports destined for Asia, and China now its largest trading partner, South Africa's prospects are brighter than ever," HSBC spokesman Paul Harris said in a statement.

Gaining entry into Africa's banking business isn't easy since the government previously announced it wanted to limit the number of local banks that are acquired by foreign institutions. The South African government has also created complex business rules to favor its own citizens, complicating deals involving new countries entering the region.

"When Barclays bought Absa in 2005, it was a long drawn out process," Seymour Pierce's Packard told The New York Times, referring to another of the country's lenders, "and when I.C.B.C., the Chinese bank, bought a 20 percent stake in Standard Bank in 2007 it was reported that the South African authorities were reluctant to see it buy a larger stake."

Analysts report that HSBC would likely not have gone public with the deal if it were highly concerned with regulatory hurdles.

Tech Stocks to Highlight Week's IPOs

2012-01-25T08:23:00.001-08:00

A trio of companies plan to launch initial public offerings in the U.S. this week as the 2012 calendar begins to warm up.

Following last week's snoozy single deal from biodiesel company Renewable Energy Group Inc., which rose just 1% in its debut after cutting its price, two of the next three deals on deck look more appealing. The calendar is even busier a week later, with a half-dozen offerings already lined up.

This week's offerings include two tech companies, Guidewire Software Inc. and IntelePeer Inc., as well as a biopharmaceutical company, Verastem Inc. While the $50 million Verastem offering is unlikely to draw much interest, given that the company has neither revenue nor income and is still doing preclinical studies, both Guidewire and IntelePeer have an attractive feature: Their current owners are interested not in selling their stock, but in buying more at the IPO price.

Guidewire's two biggest owners, U.S. Venture Partners and Bay Partners, have indicated an interest in purchasing as many as 400,000 shares of common stock at the IPO price; at the top of the price range, that would cost $4.8 million. Guidewire is seeking to raise as much as $90 million. It is slated to begin trading Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "GWRE".

IntelePeer's largest shareholders, VantagePoint Capital Partners and Kennet Capital Management, are among a group interested in purchasing as much as $7 million of the offering. IntelePeer wants to raise as much as $83 million, and it plans to begin trading Thursday on the Nasdaq under the symbol "PEER".

Though such indications of interest don't commit the owners to actually buying, they are viewed positively by prospective investors. When a private-equity or venture-capital shop is keen to add to its shareholdings rather than sell in an IPO, it is seen as a vote of confidence for that portfolio company.

Of the two deals, Guidewire Software is likely to garner the most demand this week because it is a profi! table co mpany whose ClaimCenter software application was the property-and-casualty industry's most widely used web-based claims system as of January 2011, as measured by Gartner Inc. More broadly, the company makes software for property-and-casualty insurers to address aging technical infrastructure and inefficient paper-based procedures for underwriting and back-office functions.

Both sales and profit are rising. In its fiscal year that ended July 31, revenue rose 19% to $172 million, and the company reported net income of $35.6 million, more than double the $15.5 million of a year earlier. In the three months that ended Oct. 31, revenue rose 51% from a year earlier to $52 million, while net income jumped to $4.8 million from $1.9 million.

IntelePeer, which has never been profitable, makes software to deliver communication services to telecom companies and other businesses. The company booked revenue of $106 million in the first nine months of 2011, up 32% from the same period in 2010. It reported a net loss of $9.6 million, compared with a net loss of $7.8 million a year earlier.

The cloud-based software allows customers to interconnect, route and transport communications traffic, as well as build communication applications. Customers include Sprint Nextel Corp. and Qwest Communications International Inc.

Write to Lynn Cowan at lynn.cowan@dowjones.com

U.S. stocks poised for positive January

2012-01-25T03:42:00.001-08:00

MARKETWATCH FRONT PAGE

U.S. stocks are positioned to continue what has been an upbeat January, a month that tends to serve as a reasonable predictor of how the rest of the year will go. See full story.

Where to put your money if the bond bull stumbles

The strong demand and celebrity status for bonds troubles some investors and investment strategists. They sense that this great bond bull market will slow in 2012. Indeed, with more of their nest-egg tied to bonds, investors need to ask some hard questions. See full story.

Exploiting munis�� abnormally high yields

Other things being equal, tax-free municipal bonds should be yielding less than comparable Treasurys. But it is just the opposite today. A simple strategy would profit handsomely from a return to equilibrium, writes Mark Hulbert. See full story.

2012 Jeep Wrangler Sport

You can��t have more fun than in a Jeep, and updates for 2012 add comfort and a touch of class to the Wrangler��s unmatched offroad performance, says Ron Amadon. See full story.

Flacco, Smith: Championship QBs without the hype

Despite youth and on-field success, two NFL quarterbacks are still waiting for fan respect and big endorsement deals. See full story.

MARKETWATCH COMMENTARY

Instead of acknowledging that banks have become a part of government, we keep pretending they are private institutions, writes David Weidner. See full story.

MARKETWATCH PERSONAL FINANCE!

Gold has been one of the greatest investment stories of the decade, and despite some recent weakness, its safe-haven appeal is likely to continue. But regardless of the price gyrations in gold futures and demand, do we really know what the cost of gold is in human terms? See full story.

Union Pacific (UNP) 4Q Tops Estimates As Volumes Rise

2012-01-24T23:29:00.001-08:00

Union Pacific Corp. (NYSE: UNP), which is engaged in transportationbusiness, reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings, saying fourof its six units posted strong volume increases.

Earnings were $964 million or $1.99 per share for the fourth quarter,up from $775 million or $1.56 per share in the corresponding period oflast year.

Operating revenue rose 16 percent to $5.1 billion. Business volumes, as measured by total revenue carloads, grew 3 percent.

Analysts, on average, polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to earn $1.82 per share on revenue of $5.06 billion.

"Each of UP's six business groups reported freight revenue growth inthe fourth quarter driven by increased fuel cost recoveries and corepricing gains," the company said.?

UNP, which has been trading in the 52-week range between $77.73 and $112.52, ended Wednesday's regular trading at $109.82.

{$end}

External Hardwood Window shutters – Introducing Advantages to your Residence

2012-01-24T18:50:00.001-08:00

Home redecorating is usually a massive workout the ones do it to obtain a range of causes. Several think it over really to boost fulfillment amount of their house as well as helping the appeal of the decorations and outside the house. Alternatively, you will find individuals that accomplish prospect having an attention seeking more affordable in regards to house in today’s market.

Exterior window wood shutters are perfect inclusions in your house if you are after for any method of improve appeal of your house for the buyers. Essentially the most appealing reason to obtain shades to the exterior or perhaps inside of your respective residence is that they’re very stylish. You’ll get these types of window shutters individualized to fulfill your preferences so that they be in shape how huge your own windows.

Described any other artwork may be done to go along with the outer visual appeal in your house. That is undoubtedly virtually any engaging grounds for lots of people. However, there may be one more noteworthy objective the reason possible buyers will probably be delighted to find out these kinds of outer Xmas piano written music.

Setting up these window shutters enables you to manage conditions of your house correctly. Due to this, you can make an important personal savings about strength expenses no matter whether the conditions outside is exceedingly scorching. You can’t desire to increase the contract price of your house should you select for inexpensive venapro as these won’t previous lengthy. Buy window shutters made of hard hardwoods given that they have greater resistance on the upcoming thunderstorm.

Woodlands as an illustration teak wood as well as mahogany are specifically proofed resistant to the damaging connection between drinking water or perhaps oxygen. Wood and also a cedar plank is a couple of extra alternatives which can be typical because of the strength. Yet another thing to check on prior to you buying these folks is that if th! ey’ ;re almost all too simple to clean and maintain.

There are several businesses that present these kinds of outer timber window shutters but you must be sure that you pick a reliable which you obtain from. Make sure that the item will probably be associated with more time guarantee period of time hence putting yourself the more risk-free facet. Moreover, the actual window shutters have to be all too easy to setup along with lift off to have the ability to consider executing oneself.

Possessing different varieties of window shutters and also shutters.

Home Prices Stable, Sales Up in Canada

2012-01-24T09:13:00.001-08:00

Experts believe low interest rates continue to drive Canada’s residential real estate market as the country ends the year with increased annual sales and only slightly higher average prices. The Canadian Real Estate Association reports a 2.2% increase in overall sales over 2010 along with a 0.9% average uptick in prices. The market remains extremely balanced with new listing keeping pace with sales, resulting in a 4.6% increase in sales activity for the year ending in December. Continued stability is expected to be helped by a slowing of high-end sales that will further act to balance national price averages. For more on this continue reading the following article from Property Wire.

Residential property sales in Canada increased 1.8% from November to December, according to the latest figures published by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA).

Annual activity totalled 456,749 sales in 2011, up 2.2% from 2010 and the number of newly listed homes increased 3% month on month.

A simultaneous increase in sales and new listings kept the national resale housing in balanced territory, CREA said.

Prices have not increased much, the national average home price was up just 0.9% on a year on year basis in December, marking the smallest increase since October 2010.

Activity rose in more than half of all local markets, including some of Canada’s most active, with monthly declines posted in most of the remaining markets.

Actual, not seasonally adjusted, national sales activity came in 4.6% above year ago levels in December. It also stood above the five and 10 year average for December sales.

‘The momentum in sales activity provides clear evidence that low interest rates continue to draw homebuyers to the housing market. While buyers have become increasingly cautious, the hand off for sales activity going into the New Year suggests that Canada’s housing market will continue to benefit from low interest! rates i n 2012, and continue making a significant contribution to Canadian economic activity,’ said Gary Morse, CREA President.

With sales and new listings having climbed in tandem, the national housing market remained in balanced territory in December. The national sales to new listings ratio, a measure of market balance, stood at 54.8% in December, down slightly from 55.5% in November.

Based on a sales to new listings ratio of between 40 to 60%, just over half of local markets in Canada were balanced in December. This result is little changed from November.

The number of months of inventory represents the number of months it would take to sell current inventories at the current rate of sales activity, and is a further measure of the balance between housing supply and demand. Nationally, it stood at 5.8 months at the end of December, down from 5.9 months at the end of November.

While it has held fairly steady near six months since April 2011 onward, it peaked in August, with December marking the fourth monthly decline and a return to where it stood at the end of the first quarter.

The actual, not seasonally adjusted, national average price for homes sold in December 2011 was $347,801, 0.9% above the average selling price in December 2010, marking smallest increase since October 2010.

‘Momentum for national sales activity and average price remains positive but is slowing, which suggests that the continuation of low interest rates is not causing the Canadian housing market to overheat,’ said Gregory Klump, CREA’s chief economist.

‘High end home sales seem unlikely to spike again in the first quarter like they did at the beginning of 2011, so national average price momentum may wane further over the next few months. With interest rates widely expected to remain low throughout 2012, home ownership will remain affordable, and continue to support home sales activity,’ he added.

Poll: Do Taxpayers Really Want GM IPO Shares?

2012-01-24T04:36:00.001-08:00

Give taxpayers a shot at GM’s IPO shares! That is, assuming anyone wants the shares.? There has been an interesting development of late in the General Motors public offering.? It revolves making shares of the IPO available to Joe Public.? Effectively, this would allow Main Street America to get shares at the IPO price rather than just the institutions and wealthy investors who have relationships with their brokers.? We’ve only put in $50 billion.

The rebuttal here is a simple one… Does anyone from Main Street America want to buy the new GM shares at the IPO price?? This is a legitimate question and we want to know what you think.? After a big wave of selling in most of the stock market this week, do cab drivers, teachers, doctors, mechanics, government workers, and those in every other profession actually want to buy shares at the IPO price?? For starters, the terms of the IPO will not be known even if GM formally files for its IPO on Friday.? Again, we want to know what you think in a quick poll:

If the government wants this to be run fairly, it could easily use something like the OpenIPO process from W.R. Hambrecht.? It would be simple to do and it would severely cut the fees that had to be paid.? Hambrecht could leave it up to the individual brokerage firms and investment bankers to allocate these shares down on an individual basis.? The catch is that the American public would have to still have a brokerage account at a firm with funds in the account to order the stock.

The IPO market has not been great in 2010.? There are more than 20 IPOs that were busted.? There are many who would love the opportunity to get shares.? There are many who would pass. Maybe there is another notion.? Maybe GM should offer the shares first to GM car buyers in the United States and THEN to the public.

Many in the public probably! wonder if they’d even make any money buying GM.? Imagine the public outrage that would come if millions of Americans bought GM stock and the shares lost half of their value.? Then there is the positive case.? Imagine if millions of Americans doubled their money on this.? It wouldn’t repair every bit of damage, but it would be a start.

JON C. OGG

Tale Not Over For Dreamworks’ Dragon; Caris Upgrades

2012-01-23T14:48:00.001-08:00

Dreamworks (DWA) shares have been hurting since a weak box-office opening for its animated 3-D film How to Train Your Dragon. Heading into today’s session, the stock was off 11% since the film’s March 26 opening.

Caris & Co. analyst David Miller says the correction has created an attractive entry point.? This morning he upgraded the stock to Above Average from Average and raised his price target to $45.

Miller contends that the Dragon is performing well in family-friendly mid-week showings, which could imply long-term strength for the film. Additionally, he says, beginning today, more 3-D theaters will open up as Alice In Wonderland moves to 2-D screens in many locations. The net result should be 150 new 3-D screens for Dragon.

Miller concludes: “We now believe that Dragon has a lot more legs than implied by this latest correction in the stock price and that there is more ‘reward’ in this story than ‘risk’ in the near term.”

Dreamworks shares are up 37 cents, or 1% , today to $38.48.

This Tech Giant Steps into the Retail Ring

2012-01-23T10:12:00.001-08:00

The following video is part of our "Motley Fool Conversations" series, in which Austin Smith, consumer goods editor and analyst, and Andrew Tonner, technology and media editor and analyst, discuss topics across the investing world .

In today's edition, Austin and Andrew look at?Google, which has launched a service comparable to Amazon Prime, offering free shipping arrangements with a number of retailers. This is an important move because as an ad-based company, some of Google's most prized data are consumer spending habits (which it couldn't track because consumers were going straight to amazon.com instead of google.com).

This is just one of the interesting trends going on in the industry. To learn about larger implications, I invite you to take a look at The Motley Fool's special free report: "The Death of Wal-Mart: The Real Cash Kings Changing the Face of Retail." In it, you'll see which retailers are able to consistently outperform, and how two cash kings are planning to ride the waves of retail's changing tide. You can access it by CLICKING HERE.

A Research Case Builds Against Google (GOOG, MSFT, YHOO, AAPL, RIMM, ORCL, VZ)

2012-01-23T05:45:00.001-08:00

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) earned an ‘underperform’ rating and a $525/share price target from Wedbush Securities as the investment firm started coverage on the world’s leading search engine. Wedbush cited strong competition from Facebook and an increasingly fierce competitive landscape in mobile search as the primary reasons for the rating.? The implications and what was not said may be just as important as the case laid out in the research call.

It is true that Google remains in the sights of a diverse herd of followers. Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) are creeping up on Google’s dominant position in search. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Research in Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM) are among the competitors for smartphone operating system dominance, and Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) has just filed a major patent/copyright infringement lawsuit against Google. The only friend the company might have right now is Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ), which has reached an agreement with Google on mobile broadband access (net neutrality).

Painting a bulls-eye on yourself is what happens when you dominate one market and are making a lot of moves to enter others. The new Comscore July search numbers are out today, and Google’s share was down slightly from 66.2% in June to 65.8%. Yahoo gained a bit, from 16.7% in June to 17.1% in July, and Microsoft’s Bing search engine stayed flat at 11%.

Wedbush sees a far greater threat from Facebook’s nascent social semantic search tool called Open Graph. According to Wedbush, Facebook is “already driving more traffic to some leading Web sites” than Google and “is poised to dramatically grow its share of traffic generation just based on clicks from user news feeds.” There’s no arguing that Facebook’s 500 million members have an awful lot of clout, but Open Graph has raised some privacy concerns that have not yet been fully addressed by Facebook.

As far as! mobile operating systems go, Google’s Android has gotten some serious traction this year and has recently surged to third place in new shipments. Wedbush sees this move as a positive for Google, but does not believe that Android and other Google businesses will comprise even 10% of the company’s 2010 revenue.

Wedbush did not even consider the possible effects of the Oracle lawsuit filed late last week charging Google with seven patent violations and copyright infringement on its Java virtual machine running on the Android platform. This is a very serious threat to Google’s entire mobile strategy. Oracle has put Google in the position of having to settle, and admitting to some wrong-doing, or fighting it out in court, which will keep the charges in the public eye for months or, more likely, years. Worse, from Google’s point of view, would be the defection of smartphone makers to other operating system platforms.

Google does have its share of challenges going forward, and Wedbush has pointed out several of Google’s soft spots. It’s major challenge could be focusing on which of the soft spots to defend vigorously and which to use as cannon fodder. As much as it might like to think so, Google is probably not capable of attacking everywhere and defending everywhere at the same time.

Paul Ausick

Retire Here, Not There: State-by-State - SmartMoney.com

2012-01-23T00:59:00.001-08:00

Getty Images

California
Four Golden State gems that are more affordable than Santa Barbara.

Colorado
Four less-known havens for living the Rocky Mountain high life.

Florida
Naples beyond your budget? Here are four more affordable retirement havens in the Sunshine State.

Also See

Retire Here, Not There
Seven underrated retirement havens that are relatively affordable, delightful and full of opportunities for work and play.

New York
Priced out of the Hamptons? Here are four cheaper retirement destinations in the Empire State.

North Carolina
A look at four of the Tar Heel State's retirement gems.

Oregon
Forget Bend. Here are four less-pricey places to retire in the Beaver State.

South Dakota
Four affordable retirement destinations in the Mount Rushmore State.

Texas
Steer clear of Dallas and Houston. Here are four alternative golden year hotspots.

McDonald's Twitter Campaign Backfires

2012-01-22T20:36:00.001-08:00

When McDonald's(MCD) began promoting the #McDStories hashtag Wednesday on Twitter, the idea was to get people talking about their experiences with the fast-food giant. And in that sense, it was a rousing success: The phrase exploded in popularity as Twitter users across the country shared stories of their visits to McDonald's.

Unfortunately, McDonald's learned a harsh lesson in social media marketing: When you encourage people to talk about your company, they're not always going to say nice things.

While McDonald's own tweets on the topic tended along the lines of "When u make something w/pride, people can taste it," actual customers were less inclined to toe the company line. "I haven't been to McDonalds in years, because I'd rather eat my own diarrhea," read one top tweet by @Muzzafuzza. Another user, @Jetsonjetsonjet, referred readers toa viral video of a mouse crawling through a bag of hamburger buns.

Meanwhile, animal rights activist @michellevegan tweeted that "@McDonalds scalds baby chicks alive for nuggets," and linked to a site run by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. It was retweeted more than 100 times.

Yes, it appears McDonald's lost control of the narrative here.

Such dangers are inherent in using social media to promote your brand. Sometimes it's an isolated gaffe, as when the marketing professional running the Chrysler Twitter feed inadvertently tweeted his distaste for Detroit drivers. But trying to enlist the masses on Twitter or Facebook for brand promotion carries its own set of risks. When Wendy's paid to promote the #HeresTheBeef hashtag last year, users responded with bawdy innuendo and other tweets completely unrelated to hamburgers. And in the summer of 2010, Coca-Cola(KO) was forced to apologize when a complicated social media contest for Dr. Pepper resulted in a por! nographi c reference being posted to a teenager's Facebook page.

>>8 Shortcuts to Getting Richer

The counterargument is that there's no such thing as bad publicity and that it's better to err on the side of being open and communicative with consumers. But you have to wonder: Does one of the biggest fast-food chains in the world need more attention?

>To submit a news tip, email: tips@thestreet.com.

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Are Central Banks Buying Printing Presses?

2012-01-22T15:44:00.001-08:00

Gold and silver remain stuck in a range as Europe continues to keep investors waiting for the next headline.? Reuters reports, ��Europe divided on Friday in a historic rift over building a closer fiscal union to preserve the euro, with an overwhelming majority of countries led by Germany and France agreeing to forge ahead with a separate treaty, leaving the EU’s third biggest economy Britain isolated.��? It is still unknown when more definite action will take place to address the debt crisis.? A new treaty could take several months to negotiate, and may even require referendums in some countries.

Although many expected European Central Bank President Mario Draghi to outline a plan for bond buying (quantitative easing), he did not deliver such a plan.? Instead, the ECB cut its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to match a record low of 1%. It also unexpectedly introduced new three-year loans for banks and loosened collateral criteria by making credit claims such as bank loans eligible and reducing the rating threshold on asset-backed securities.? However, the ECB offering three year loans by accepting less desired collateral still injects liquidity into the banking sector.? The major beneficiaries of increased liquidity are gold and silver.? As Gresham��s law explains, the bad money will force out the good.

Investor Insights: Will Gold Help Japan Sell Debt?

With the future of euro in doubt, some central banks in Europe have started preparing for a breakup of the eurozone.? The WSJ reports, ��At least one��the Central Bank of Ireland��is evaluating whether it needs to secure additional access to printing presses in case it has to churn out new bank notes to support a reborn national currency, according to people familiar with the matter.? The central banks’ planning is preliminary, according to the people familiar with the matter. It doesn’t represent an expectation that the euro zone is headed for dissolution.��? Switzerland is also considering possible repla! cements for the euro to use as a currency peg.? Even though the euro may not collapse, preparations can be the difference between success or catastrophe.

On Wednesday, J.P. Morgan told clients they see less than a 20% chance of the eurozone breaking up, but should hedge against the possibility.? John Normand, J.P. Morgan��s global head of foreign-exchange strategy, explained the economic and financial impact of the eurozone collapsing would be worse than the implosion of Lehman Brothers in 2008.? Earlier this week, UBS also warned investors to hedge against the eurozone breaking up.? The bank stated, ��I suppose there might be some assets worthy of consideration-precious metals, for example.? But other metals would make wise investments too.? Among them tinned goods and small calibre weapons.��

According to Bloomberg, gold traders are more bullish on the precious metal as it offers protection from the debt crisis and counter-party risk.? ��Eighteen of 26 surveyed by Bloomberg expect the metal to advance next week, the highest proportion since Nov. 11. Holdings in exchange-traded products backed by gold rose 108.6 metric tons to a record from the start of October, the most since the second quarter of 2010, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The extra bullion is valued at $5.99 billion.��

If you would like to receive more professional analysis on equity miners and other precious metal investments,?we invite you to try our premium service free for 14 days.

(JAZZ, SLP, ENZ, CLNO, TST) Stock in Action by DrStockPick.com

2012-01-22T11:24:00.001-08:00

Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq:JAZZ) is a specialty pharmaceutical company that identifies, develops and commercializes innovative treatments for important, underserved markets in neurology and psychiatry. Our unwavering commitment to improving patient care is demonstrated every day through unique patient and physician programs and our ongoing collaboration with patients, physicians and advocacy groups. Building collaborative relationships that foster innovation is the key to our success.

Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq:JAZZ) and Azur Pharma Limited announced that the companies have agreed to combine in an all-stock transaction that creates a specialty pharmaceutical company incorporated in Ireland with a diversified portfolio of products currently marketed in the United States (US). The combined company would be named Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc.

Azur Pharma is a privately-held, profitable specialty pharmaceutical company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland with US operations in Philadelphia. The company markets ten specialty pharmaceutical products in the US in the central nervous system (CNS) and women’s health areas, with expected 2011 net sales of approximately $95 to $100 million.

The combined company is expected to have a diversified revenue base from 12 products currently marketed in the US in the CNS and women’s health areas. These include Jazz Pharmaceuticals’ currently marketed products, Xyrem?? (indicated to treat the two key symptoms of narcolepsy) and Luvox CR?? (indicated to treat obsessive compulsive disorder), and the Azur Pharma marketed product portfolio which includes Prialt?? (indicated for refractory severe chronic pain), FazaClo?? (indicated for treatment resistant schizophrenia), two additional CNS products and a portfolio of women’s health products led by Elestrin?? (for vasomotor symptoms associated with menopause). The combined company would also h! ave a pi peline of lower-risk development programs including line extensions for the clozapine franchise and certain branded women’s health products. Full prescribing information about each product is available on its website.

For further information see www.jazzpharmaceuticals.com.

Simulations Plus Inc. (Nasdaq:SLP) announced that it has submitted a bid to purchase substantially all of the assets of Entelos, Inc., in an auction supervised by and in accordance with certain bidding procedures approved by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware and pursuant to the provisions of Section 363 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The auction will take place on September 21, 2011, and, if the Company’s bid is selected as the highest or best bid, then a sale hearing is expected to be held on September 23, 2011, to approve the sale of the assets.

Simulations Plus, Inc. develops and produces software for use in pharmaceutical research and education, as well as provides contract research services to the pharmaceutical industry.

Enzo Biochem Inc. (ENZ)

Enzo Biochem, Inc., is a growth-oriented integrated life sciences and biotechnology company focused on harnessing biological process to develop research tools, diagnostics and therapeutics, and serves as a provider of test services, including exotic tests, to the medical community. Since ENZ was founded in 1976, their strategic focus has been on the development of enabling technologies in the life sciences field.

Biotechnology is essentially the use of technology to make biological processes benefit mankind. There are some advantages included below:
” The design of diagnostic kits
” The creation of genome analysis tools through bioinformatics
” Genetic engineering techniques to improve food crops
” Molecular biology method to help understand the nature of diseases
” Finding targets for drugs
” Mole! cular br eeding methods to help improve livestock
” Creation of genetically modified foods to feed the ever growing world population
” Use of DNA fingerprinting in the court of law
” Use of the PCR reaction to clone DNA and make millions of identical copies
” Use of stem cells to treat diseases
” Diagnosing genetic disorders

Enzo Biochem Inc. recently announced that it has added four highly experienced executives at its Enzo Life Sciences subsidiary to focus on rapidly evolving new pharmaceutical and clinical applications.

The officers, all filling newly created positions, are Bruce Taillon, PhD, as head of global technology business development, John D’Errico, PhD, to lead the commercial merchandising operations, Kara Cannon, as head of global marketing and Paul Munger, PhD, to lead Global Manufacturing.

Over the past two years, Enzo has been engaged in enhancing the Life Sciences subsidiary’s operating performance through added capabilities, greater integration and a more focused product mix. These efforts are all aimed at significantly expanding Enzo’s presence and marketing beyond the traditional academic and research laboratory core to greater penetrate the pharmaceutical and clinical customer base with new and cutting edge platform technologies.

For more information about Enzo Biochem Inc. visit its website: http://www.enzo.com

Cleantech Transit, Inc. (CLNO)

Cleantech Transit Inc. was founded to capitalize on technology advances and manufacturing opportunities in the growing clean energy public transportation sector. The Company has expanded its focus to invest directly in specific green projects. Recognizing the many economic and operational advances of converting wood waste into renewable sources of energy, Cleantech has selected to invest in Phoenix Energy (www.phoenixenergy.net). This project could benefit the Company’s manufacturing clien! ts world wide.

Biomass is a broad term used to describe any organic material or resource which is derived from plant or animal matter. This includes wood, food crops, grass and woody plants, agriculture and forestry residues, and organic components of municipal and industrial wastes. Biomass excludes organic material which has been transformed via geological processes to fossil fuels such as coal, oil or natural gas.

Biomass can reduce dependence on foreign oil through production of biofuels and provide a boost for agricultural and forest industries by turning low value wastes into high value fuels, chemicals and electricity. The chemical composition of biomass varies substantially, because of the broad range of materials involved, but the main components are moisture, carbohydrates or sugars, lignin, and ash.

Cleantech Transit, Inc. (CLNO) is pleased to announce it has met its funding requirement to secure the Company’s ability to earn in 25% of the 500KW Merced Project.

The Company is in the final stages of closing its initial interest in the Merced Project and is currently working on completing the necessary documentation and expects closing the transaction soon. As previously announced Cleantech has the option to earn up to 40% of the Merced Project and the Company plans to continue to work towards increasing its interest in the Merced Project as they move ahead.

For more information about Cleantech Transit, Inc. visit its website www.cleantechtransitinc.com

TheStreet, Inc. (Nasdaq:TST) announced the official re-launch of its two most popular premium services, RealMoney and RealMoney Pro (formerly known as RealMoney Silver). The services have been dramatically upgraded with a modern redesign and superior user interface along with even more actionable analysis, expert intelligence and state-of-the-art tools that subscribers can use to improve their investment strategies.

TheStreet, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates a! s a digi tal financial media company in the United States.

5 High-Risk, High-Reward Companies

2012-01-22T06:39:00.001-08:00

Disenchanted with the poor returns and high fees on mutual funds, some family members recently asked me to help them mold a good growth portfolio.

The working thesis I used for my recommendations was: "Invest first and foremost in companies that demonstrate exceptional levels of innovation, with special emphasis given to those that we believe will be around decades from now."

On Thursday, I offered up the four stocks I recommended as core holdings. On Friday, I talked about four more stocks worth investing in, but probably not at levels above 10% of their portfolios. Today, I'm offering up the five stocks that I told my family were high-risk, high-reward bets. Though there's no doubt these companies are innovative, their future could go in many directions.

Add these five to your watchlist to stay up to date on all the latest news, and at the end I'll offer you access to a special free report on a company that founding Fool David Gardner believes could be the next rule-breaking multibagger.

MAKO Surgical (Nasdaq: MAKO )
You know, I initially made this list just before the new year. Had I been privy to the information that MAKO just released, I might have included it as a less risky bet.

MAKO's RIO surgery system gives patients the ability to have less invasive knee-replacement surgery -- which leads to quicker recovery times than standard procedures. Recently, the company also got approval to perform robotic hip-replacement surgery.

When it comes to medical devices, adoption is the key to success -- especially with expensive systems like RIO. It seems, however, that the company may be reaching a tipping point, and that bodes well for the company.

I already own shares of MAKO, I have made a CAPScall on my profile, and I think prices are a relatively good deal today.

Add MAKO Surgical to My Watchlist.

Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU ! )
S ome may say Baidu isn't all that risky, and others will say that it isn't that innovative -- as it more or less emulates Google and just applies those lessons to business in China. To those people I would say this: first, a powerful Communist government should never be written off as harmless, and there's nothing wrong with copying innovation.

Clearly, Baidu shares have appreciated significantly over the past five years, up more than 900%. But there are still hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers yet to come online, and the company has consistently won over skeptics who doubted their ability to execute.

I will be purchasing shares of Baidu when trading rules allow, and I have made a CAPScall on my profile. I think any price below $110 would be an excellent opportunity to snatch up more shares.

Add Baidu to My Watchlist.

Solazyme (Nasdaq: SZYM )
Here at the Fool, we have mixed feelings about Solazyme. The company is able to take patented microalgae, give it feedstock, and have the algae produce tailored oils.

But here's the great thing about this company: It's focused on much more than just biofuels. The company is also able to make tailored oils -- at a cheaper cost -- for both the cosmetic and nutritional health industries. Not be ignored, however, are that its biofuels are also used by the Navy and have helped transport commercial airliners as well.

I believe Solazyme is pretty cheap right now. I've backed that belief up with my own money and on my profile.

Add Solazyme to My Watchlist.

Stratasys (Nasdaq: SSYS )
See if you can wrap your head around this: 3-D printers actually allow you to make 3-D things right in your own house. Sound like a story from The Jetsons? Well, believe it, because this budding technology could be the basis of the way things are made in the 21s! t centur y.

I've already called the company out as one that can benefit from a deleveraging, downshifting economy. As the technology gets more advanced, Stratasys' printers could help us make everything from T-shirts to bikes to even food.

I have made a CAPScall on my profile and will be buying shares when trading rules allow, but I'm going to take a wait-and-see approach before buying after that, to see how the company's partnership with Hewlett-Packard works out.

Zipcar (Nasdaq: ZIP )
Zipcar had its IPO in 2011 but hasn't had the greatest of starts since its birth on the public markets. However, I don't think that's indicative of this company's future. Buying a car is expensive, as are gas and insurance. Throw in the fact that as our population grows, cities are getting more crowded, parking spaces are becoming more scarce, and pollution is becoming a bigger problem, and you have a situation nearing a breaking point.

That's where Zipcar enters the scene. With Zipcar's having just turned its first profitable quarter, and with a fanatic fanbase of Zipsters pushing the company forward, I think now's a great time to buy shares of this car-sharing company. I've already bought shares, and that's reflected on my profile as well.

Add Zipcar to My Watchlist.

A name for this type of investing
Truth be told, the "growth" moniker may not be the most accurate for this type of investing. By focusing on innovation, I'm really zeroing in on what Fool Founder David Gardner calls Rule Breakers.

David runs a highly successful newsletter based on Rule Breakers, and they've recently assembled a special free report about The Next Rule Breaking Multibagger. Inside the report, you'll find out about a company that's poised the benefit from our aging population. Get the report today, absolutely free!

Big Banks Are About to Get Blasted by the Volcker Rule

2012-01-22T02:28:00.001-08:00

When the Volcker Rule regulations go into effect next year, its restrictions could slam the revenue of the fixed income trading operations of several major U.S. banks by as much as 25%.

The Volker Rule is one of the elements required by the Dodd-Frank financial oversight law, which was written to rein in the sort of excessive Wall Street risk-taking that led to the financial crisis of 2008.

A draft version of the rule was released this week by the U.S. Federal Reserve, which was approved by both the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) on Tuesday and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday (Wednesday).

The rule aims to ban proprietary trading, in which the banks traded for their own benefit rather than for the benefit of their customers, but also will address other areas such as hedge fund investing.

Since a significant chunk of the big banks' profits - especially that of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) - come from various forms of proprietary trading, the Volcker Rule stands to cost the industry billions in revenue.

To prevent cheating, complex compliance rules will require that banks prove that all their trading activities are for clients' benefit, and not proprietary. Compliance alone is expected to tack on another $2 billion in costs.

"[The Volcker Rule will] diminish the flexibility and profitability of banks' valuable market-making operations and place them at a competitive disadvantage to firms not constrained by the rule," noted a report by Moody's Corp. (NYSE: MCO).

The rule is named for former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who has made the case that such regulations are needed.

The new regulations will deal another blow to an already-struggling industry, which has watched earnings sag as a result of a falloff in equity trading volume, weak demand for loans, and costly legal headaches.
Although there's still time for the Volcker Rule to be tweaked before it takes effect on July 21, 2012, it will fundamentally change how the big banks operate.

The rule's impact on Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will be particularly brutal, especially if the final version imposes broader restrictions.

Golden Days Over

According to David Trone, an analyst at JMP Securities, the Volcker Rule would have cost Goldman $700 million, or 9% of its annual earnings, had it been in effect in recent years.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) estimates that 14% of Goldman's investment banking revenue would be affected by the proprietary trading restrictions. But if the rules include market making - which the draft rule clearly does -- 52% of Goldman's investment banking revenue and 40% of Morgan Stanley's would be affected.

Both banks have moved to wind down their proprietary trading, but have changed little in regard to their market-making operations.

Concern about the Volcker Rule's impact on revenue has forced the two firms to consider shedding their status as bank holding companies to evade the regulations. They both converted from securities firms to bank holding companies in Sept. 2008 to be eligible for the government bailout programs.

Another unsavory option would be to split off some of their investment banking operations, but that has costs as well.

"You have to ask which parts of the business are they simply not going to be able to continue to do or maintain the talented people who do it because those guys would have better options if they left the firm and went to a hedge fund," Roy Smith, a finance professor at New York University's Stern School of Business and a former Goldman Sachs partner, told Bloomberg Businessweek. "You don't want to be left with the third team running your expensive market-making trading desk."

Sending Busi! ness Ove rseas

The other big banks have less to fear. JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), and Citigroup (NYSE: C) derive less than 10% of their revenue from such activity.

"We emphasize that the revenue won't all go away, but just that GS and MS would be more impacted by the Volcker Rule," writes Nomura Holdings (NYSE ADR: NMR) analyst Glenn Schorr. "Nevertheless, we strongly believe that an overly restrictive set of rules is bad for everyone, will hurt liquidity in the markets, and will put U.S. banks at a competitive disadvantage."

Many see the loss of business to foreign banks - which won't be subject to the regulations unless they have personnel in the United States conducting the types of trades it covers - as adding to the rule's negative impact on banks.

For the big banks, there is no silver lining to the Volcker Rule, unless you count the fact that they still have time to lobby the government for changes. But given the public animosity toward Wall Street these days, any meaningful adjustments will be hard won.

"A draconian form of the Volcker Rule will likely have unintended consequences, such as reduced liquidity, higher funding costs for U.S. companies, less credit for small businesses, higher trading costs and lower investor returns, less ability to transfer risk, and competitive disadvantages for U.S. banks relative to foreign banks," Nomura's Schorr said. "We are hopeful regulators are mindful of these risks and doing their best to write fair, yet effective, rules."

News and Related Story Links:

Money Morning: It's Time to Bail on Bank Stocks
Money Morning: Avoid Financials: Bank Earnings Are Set to Slide
Money Morning: Don't be Fooled: U.S. Banks Aren't as Strong as They Look
Forbes: Volcker Rule Will Hit Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley Hardest
Bloomberg News: Volcker Rule Might Reduce Revenue at Fixed-Income Desks by 25%, Hintz Says
The New York Times: Regulators Advance Volcker Rule
CNN Money:
Day of reckoning for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley
Bloomberg News: Goldman May Drop Bank Status Over Volcker Rule, Hilder Says
Reuters: US Reveals Volcker Rule's Murky Ban on Wall St. Bets

Exports: Risk Of Recession Rising

2012-01-21T21:15:00.001-08:00

Maybe I'm a little jumpy, having just created a series of videos about business planning with a risk of recession.

Today's foreign trade data worry me. If the United States economy is going to turn down, then foreign trade is the most likely source of the slump. Consumers are fairly stable now, spending in pace with their income gains. Housing and non-residential construction are weak, but don't have much room to worsen. Government spending is not going to suddenly crash. The two major risk areas are exports and business capital spending.

The latest decline in exports may just be a blip. It's not unusual to have a sawtooth pattern, with the little dips being meaningless in the long run. That could be the case here. However, we know that Europe is slowing down and quite possibly in recession now. China's economy is growing less rapidly due to its inflation-fighting efforts. (For more details, see myChina economic forecast?article.)

{$end}

Gold and Silver Edge Higher While Hedge Funds Buy Miners

2012-01-21T12:18:00.001-08:00

On Tuesday, gold?futures for December delivery climbed $3.80 higher to settle at $1,782.20 per ounce, while silver?futures jumped 43 cents to settle at $34.46.

U.S. retail sales rose 0.5% in October, beating expectations and giving the economy a much-needed boost as it entered the final quarter of 2011. Last month��s gain followed a 1.1% increase in September.? Demand for automobiles climbed in October, while purchases of electronics jumped by the most in two years. Consumer spending, which accounts for roughly 70% of the U.S. economy, must continue its upward trend in order to bolster against the growing European credit crisis that continues to threaten sales overseas.

Investor Insights: What Are These 3 Hedge Funds Doing With Gold?

It was a mixed day for gold and silver miners.? Shares of Yamana Gold (NYSE:AUY) edged .30% lower, while AngloGold (NYSE:AU) edged .25% higher in afternoon trading.? Although the iShares Silver Trust (NYSEARCA:SLV) gained .50% before the close, shares of First Majestic Silver (NYSE:AG) declined by nearly 2%.

John Paulson, the founder and President of Paulson & Co., disclosed in his latest 13-F filing that Paulson & Co. reduced its massive SPDR Gold Trust ETF (NYSEARCA:GLD) position from 31.5 million shares to just under 20.3 million shares, representing a 36% decrease.? Although this large change may reflect a sentiment shift, many believe that Paulson liquidated GLD due to fund redemptions.? Paulson��s assets under management fell from $29 billion to $20.7 billion in the third quarter.

David Einhorn, the head of Greenlight Capital, announced a new stake in Barrick Gold (NYSE:ABX) of 1.35 million shares, while also adding a new stake of 1.9 million shares in the Market Vectors Jr. Gold Miners ETF (NYSEARCA:GDXJ).? Mr. Einhorn more than doubled his Mar ket Vectors Gold Miners ETF (NYSEARCA:GDX) position from 3.5 million shares to nearly 7.3 million shares in the third quarter.? Dan Loeb, manager and founder of Third Point LLC, also raised his stakes in Barrick Gold from 1.85 million shares to almost 2.3 million shares.

If you would like to receive more professional analysis on equity miners and other precious metal investments,?we invite you to try our premium service free for 14 days.

The Crowded Trade In Ailing Financials As Wall Street Chalks Up Slight Success

2012-01-21T07:36:00.001-08:00

An upbeat session celebrating better-than-expected economic readings and a critical decision on leadership of financial regulation fell victim, by the end, to the kind of listless trading that can characterize a summer day.

That leftthe equities marketin the thrall of one of the most remarkable, and prospectively over-done, trades that Wall Street has been witness to: the torrid piling into a handful of still-ailing – but cheaply priced – financial stocks.

How remarkable? More than a billion-and-a-quarter shares of Citigroup (C)changed hands Tuesday. More than 325,000 shares of Bank of America (BAC)traded on the day. Eight hundred and fifty thousandshares of Fannie Mae (FNM). And another 225,000 shares of Freddie Mac (FRE)turned overin the trading day.

By contrast, trading in the fifth most-active stock – General Electric (GE)- topped out at about 85,000 shares.

Given a relatively light trading session, in which less than6 billion shares changed hands, the four stocks combined for nearly half the total volume on the New York Stock Exchange.Citigroup alone represented one in every five shares that traded on the Big Board.

The gains cameamid further suggestions that investors have grown increasingly enthused abouthousing conditions, consumer spending and the vitality of the overall economy – althoughlittle of that bullishness manifested itself in the way the market fared in Tuesday’s trading session.

The S&P 500 Index (GSPC)finished the session a scant quarter-percent higher, though at 1028, it nevertheless qualified as its high for the year, and its best finish since Oct. 6.

Despite the relatively indifferent performance, the fundamentals that characterized the sessionhinted at a relatively constructive portrait of Wall Street’s underpinnings. The highlight of the session: the Obama Administration’s decision to reap! point Be n Bernanke as chair of the Federal Reserve. It’s a decision that might have sat better with Wall Street, which didn’t want some uncertainty about success that might have led to an eruption in interest rates, than it would with Main Street, where concerns about the condition of the housing market and jobs manifested themselves as the paramount concerns.

Meanwhile, a reading on consumer confidence came in stronger than had been forecast, as the Conference Board’s index rose to 54 in August, notching its first advance since May, reflecting a declining concern about the outlook for jobs.

The other data release in the session indicated that conditions in the housing market have begun to improve. The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index rose nearly 3% in the second quarter from the previous three months, the first increase in the barometer since 2006, and easily the biggest bulge in some four years.

Amidst all this, though, crude prices fell 3% on the day, as traders took profits after a five-day winning streak. As a result, energy names such as Baker Hughes (BHI), which fell 2%, Halliburton (HAL), which slid 3%, and Hess (HES), down 2%, lost ground in the session.

Why gold could lose its glitter in 2012

2012-01-21T03:26:00.001-08:00

The bloom is off the golden rose.

Investors who have recently jumped on the gold bandwagon will need plenty of patience this year, as the anemic global economy and better prospects for the U.S. dollar combine to dim gold��s allure.

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While buyers are likely to see their gold holdings rise in value for a 12th consecutive year, any advance is expected to be more modest than in recent years.

Muted returns from gold would test short-term traders. Yet those who own gold as a long-term answer to currency concerns and for portfolio diversification could find their patience is rewarded. Investing in gold-related companies is also a reemerging trend.

��I don��t think (gold) will be the slam dunk that it has been,�� said Jay Feuerstein, chief investment officer at 2100 Xenon Group, a Chicago-based managed futures fund. Short-term gold speculators are likely to have a tougher time with the metal this year, he added.

Dollar disciple

The absence of catalysts to drive buyers to gold is affecting both demand and price.

Gold ended at a record $1,891.90 an ounce last Aug. 22 as talk of additional quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve reached a fever pitch. But gold is down about 15% since then, closing Thursday at $1,647.70 an ounce. Prices fell 10% in December alone.

Still, gold managed a 10% gain for 2011, much better than the Standard & Poor��s 500-stock index SPX ?, which finished the year flat on a price basis.

/quotes/zigman/41663/quotes/nls/gld GLD 162.07, +0.85, +0.53%
/quotes/zigman/1652083 DXY 80.16, +0.08, +0.10%

Large and small investors alike have cut gold positions over the past year. Holdings in SPDR Gold Trust GLD , the largest exchange-traded! fund ba cked by gold, offer a good picture of the fund liquidation that has taken place in recent months.

The ETF��s gold holdings have remained around 1,250 metric tons for most of December and so far this year, but that��s still a 2.4% decrease from December 2010, when the fund had 1,281 metric tons. Holdings jumped 13% in 2010.

Gold investors have seen no signs that the Fed will ease anytime soon, while the euro zone debt crisis has taken the euro down several notches. EURUSD ?

European headlines still impact gold futures, to be sure, but increasingly the metal has traded on U.S. dollar moves.

Chinese Cities Ordered to Set Caps on Greenhouse Gas Emissions

2012-01-20T13:04:00.001-08:00

New markets will soon open in China to trade carbon caps. (Photo: AP)

China has ordered five of its cities and two provinces to set caps on their greenhouse gas emissions, preparatory to the opening of local carbon markets.

Reuters reported that a notice from the National Development and Reform Commission requested the cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing and Shenzhen, along with the provinces of Hubei and Guangdong, to set "overall emissions control targets" and to submit proposals on how they plan to allocate the targets.

Those provinces and cities were also ordered to put together a dedicated fund that will support the project, and to create comprehensive implementation programs.

The country has committed itself to cut its carbon intensity–the quantity of CO² produced per unit of economic growth–by 17% by 2015, and intends to do so through the use of “market mechanisms.” It further intends to reduce its 2005 levels of carbon intensity by 40–45% by 2020.

Guangdong, which is China's biggest CO²-emitting province, has already created an implementation plan that has been approved by the State Council, the country's Cabinet. The province has set a goal of increasing its use of nonfossil fuels to make up 20% of its overall energy consumption by 2015. It also intends to reduce its carbon intensity by 19.5%.

In addition to the seven official pilot projects, there are more than 100 entities in China that are attempting to establish their own regional CO² emissions trading platforms. Among these are the coal-rich province of Shaanxi and the northeast port city of Dalian.

The Secret To My Success, Wall Street Style

2012-01-20T08:22:00.001-08:00

The key to progress – at least to higher share prices – isn’t demonstrating success. It’s managing expectations.

As what’s expected to be another session of robust gains would show on Tuesday, corporate America is likely to turn in some frankly unsavory earnings. Top-line disappointments. Unfavorable year-over-year comparisons. Milquetoast guidance. Doesn’t matter: if the bar has been set low enough, simply hurdling it is enough. It’s Wall Street’s version of a suburban youth soccer league: everybody who competes gets a prize.

Who’s getting a prize Tuesday? Caterpillar (CAT)is going to getthe big one, with shares advancing 12%, after recording a 66% decline in net, but nevertheless beating estimates, and boosting its full-year view. DuPont (DD) is going to place, adding about 3%, after posting a 61% decline in its net as it struggled with weak demand, but beat estimates, despite a disappointing sales performance. Merck (MRK)has increased about 4%.

In one of the busier days in a busy weak of earnings reports – some 143 blue-chip companies are slated to report results this week – earnings are still looking weak by any historic measure, down about 35% on a year-over-year basis. But there have been enough incidents of outperformance to charm the folks who buy stocks, leading major market averages higher.

The S&P 500 (GSPC)had advancedin five of the last six trading sessions – the only time it failed, it finished nearly flat – and ticked above 950 points Monday, the highest reading the index has recorded this year.

Treasuries have weakened as investors forsake the flight-to-quality initiatives that characeterized the fitful start to the third quarter of the year. Oil has risen, as investors show fewer worries about the declining economy. The dollar is unchanged.

Tuesday’s session is slated to include an appearance by ! Ben Bern anke on Capitol Hill, where he will be delivering his semi-annual characterization of the economy to the House. In an op-ed written for the Wall Street Journal Tuesday, the central bank chairman pledged his determination to use the levers of theFed to combat any nascent inflation that might crop up down the road.

Nigeria Oil Shutdown Would Be ¡®Last Resort¡¯ as Strike Enters Second Week

2012-01-20T03:52:00.001-08:00

Nigerian oil union Pengassan said itwill only shut down oil output as ��a last resort�� in Africa��stop crude producer to give more time for negotiations withPresident Goodluck Jonathan��s government to end a strike now inthe second week.

The Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress,the country��s two biggest labor federations, called the striketo protest against higher fuel prices after the government saidon Jan. 1 it was ending subsidies it said cost 1.2 trillionnaira ($7.4 billion) last year.

The two federations have asked Pengassan ��to defer theshutting down of oil production and export,�� the union said inan e-mailed statement yesterday. The ��the postponement willenable labor and civil society groups explore ongoingconsultations and negotiations in resolving the currentnationwide strike.��

The work stoppage, which began Jan. 9, has limited trade instocks and the naira, closed ports and banks and sparked streetprotests. The cost to sub-Saharan Africa��s second-biggesteconomy may be more than $1 billion a day, according to Gregory Kronsten, head of macroeconomic research at FBN Capital Ltd. inLondon.

While oil output and exports remain unaffected by thestrike, Pengassan is poised ��to execute immediately thesystematic shutdown of oil production should the negotiationwith the government break down,�� the Lagos-based union saidyesterday in an e-mailed statement.

Daily Output

Nigeria pumped about 2.2 million barrels of oil a day lastmonth, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. At least 90percent of Nigeria��s crude is produced by Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA),based in The Hague; Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM); San Ramon, California-based Chevron Corp. (CVX); Total SA (FP) and Eni SpA (ENI) in joint ventures withthe state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corp.

��We��re holding the necessary consultations,�� LaborMinister Chukwuemeka Wogu told reporters in Abuja yesterday.��We expect to have an agreement soon.��

The government��s offer ! to reduc e fuel prices falls short ofthe unions�� demand for a full reversal and is unlikely torestore normalcy, the NLC and the TUC said in a joint statementyesterday. ��For the avoidance of any doubt, the indefinitestrikes, rallies and protests continue nationwide�� as of Jan.16.

Jonathan, who won a four-year term in April, had pledged touse savings to invest in power plants and roads in Africa��s mostpopulous country, which is roughly split between a mainly Muslimnorth and a predominantly Christian south.

Religious Violence

At the same time, he faces an increase in religiousviolence in parts of the north where he has declared a state ofemergency and says Islamic militants pose a worse threat to thecountry than the 1967-70 civil war.

More than 85 people have died in bomb and gun attacks sinceChristmas Day on churches in Abuja and in the north that theauthorities blame on Boko Haram, a militant Islamic groupinspired by Afghanistan��s Taliban movement.

Gasoline prices in Nigeria, where two-thirds of thepopulation of about 164 million live on less than $1.25 a day,had been capped at 65 naira a liter (0.3 gallon), leading to ashortage of investment in refineries that forced the WestAfrican nation to import about 70 percent of its fuel.

In opposing Jonathan��s reform, union leaders and protestgroups have focused their criticisms on government waste andcorruption, especially those associated with fuel imports anddistribution.

Investigation of Payments

The president has approved the investigation of fuel-importpayments and the prosecution of those found to have engaged in��any incidence of malfeasance, fraud, over-invoicing andrelated illegalities,�� Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke said yesterday in an e-mailed statement.

��No matter what happens, the government��s credibility isseriously dented, and they��ll have to earn it back,�� Bismarck Rewane, analyst and chief executive officer of Lagos-basedFinancial Derivatives Co., said by phone. ��! The real ity is thatthis is the beginning of new dispensation. People will demandproper governance, people will demand honesty.��

What's New for Tax Form 1040 - SmartMoney.com

2012-01-19T18:36:00.001-08:00

Any day now, you'll be receiving your 2011 W-2 and 1099s. So it's officially time to think about getting underway on your 1040 for last year. Before you start, be aware of some key changes from earlier years. Here is Part 1 of our two-part series on the most important new things to know when preparing your 2011 return.

April 17 is the 1040 Due Date

The April 15 filing deadline for Form 1040 falls on a Sunday this year, so the deadline would normally be extended to Monday, April 16 (the next business day). However, this year's deadline is Tuesday April 17 (The reason: Emancipation Day is a holiday in Washington, D.C., and it falls on April 16.) If your return won't be ready by then, you can extend the filing deadline all the way out to Oct. 15 by submitting an extension request to the Internal Revenue Service, using Form 4868, on or before April 17. Your request will be automatically approved.

New Procedure for Reporting Capital Gains and Losses

If you made taxable 2011 sales of stocks, mutual fund shares, other securities, or other capital assets (such as a vacation home or raw land investment), you must complete new Form 8949 (Sales and Other Dispositions of Capital Assets) in addition to filling out the familiar Schedule D (Capital Gains and Losses). The reason: under new rules that took effect last year, securities brokers must now report to sellers (like you) the basis of certain securities that were sold in taxable accounts. They also have to tell you if the resulting gains and losses were short-term or long-term.

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On new Form 8949, you must seg! regate g ains and losses from securities that are covered by the new broker reporting requirements from gains and losses that are not covered. The most notable types of covered securities are: (1) common stock that was acquired and sold in 2011 and (2) mutual fund shares that were acquired and sold in 2011 if all the shares were acquired in a single block.

If you made a 2011 sale of a covered security, the basis will be shown in Box 3 of the Form 1099-B (Proceeds from Broker and Barter Exchange Transactions) that you will receive from your broker by Feb. 15. In Box 8, the broker will tell you if the resulting gain or loss was short-term or long-term.

For the sale of a non-covered security, Box 6 of the 1099-B will be checked to indicate that the new broker reporting requirements don't apply. In such a case, Box 3 and Box 8 may be blank. Non-covered securities include all common stock and mutual fund shares acquired before 2011, common stock acquired in 2011 via a dividend reinvestment plan, and mutual fund shares acquired in 2011 if you acquired several blocks on different dates. (In 2012 and 2013, additional types of securities will be covered by the new broker reporting requirements, but that is an issue for another day.)

Warning: For sales of covered securities, there is no longer a virtually risk-free opportunity to fudge the tax results in your favor. Here's why. The IRS gets a copy of each 1099-B that is sent to you, and the new broker reporting requirements allow the IRS to determine the gain or loss from the sale of a covered security (because the 1099-B shows the sales proceeds and the basis) and whether the gain or loss is short-term or long-term (the 1099-B shows that too). Bottom line: take extra care when filling out Form 8949 for sales of covered securities.

Note: The new broker reporting requirements do not affect sales of securities held in an IRA or other tax-favored retirement accounts. Gains and losses from such sales ! have no immediate impact on your tax situation.

You Can Still Deduct Sales Taxes on Major Purchases (Like Vehicles and Boats)

The 2009 Stimulus Act created a temporary write-off for non-itemizers who paid state and local sales taxes on new vehicles purchased between Feb. 17, 2009, and 2/17/09 and Dec. 31, 2009. The write-off came in the form of an additional standard deduction allowance. Similarly, itemizers were allowed to claim an extra itemized deduction for new vehicle sales taxes. Both breaks expired at the end of 2009, and they were not reinstated for 2010 or 2011.

However the little-known truth is that itemizers who make the choice to deduct general state and local sales taxes instead of state and local income taxes can still deduct actual sale tax amounts on major 2011 purchases such as motor vehicles (including motorcycles, motor homes, and RVs), boats, aircraft, and certain home additions and renovations. The sales tax deduction option was scheduled to expire at the end of 2010, but the Bush Tax Cut extension legislation continued it through 2011.

Usually, the sales tax deduction option is only helpful for residents of states that have no personal income taxes and individuals who pay very low state and local income tax bills. However if you made one or more major purchases in 2011, the sales tax deduction option might be beneficial even if you don't fall into one of those categories. Remember: only itemizers can benefit from the sales tax deduction option. For more information, see the instructions to Schedule A (Itemized Deductions) at www.irs.gov.

JP Morgan Adds AT&T (T) To Analyst Focus List

2012-01-19T14:04:00.001-08:00

A little good news for AT&T (T) today. JPMorgan has added the stock to its analyst focus list and rates it “overweight”.

The firm commented: “We are adding AT&T to our Analyst Focus List as we expect the wireline business to perform better than very conservative expectations in 2009. In addition, we are more optimistic on AT&T’s wireless opportunity given better than expected wireless ARPU and margin trends in the quarter.”.

Looking at the telco’s valuation JPM said, “Shares are currently trading at 4.8x our 2009 EBITDA estimate, attractive relative to historical levels. In addition, we believe management guidance may prove conservative while upward revisions to Street estimates are likely.”

Douglas A. McIntyre

The Twitter-24/7 Wall St. Stock Market Report 7.19.2010 The Wisdom Of Crowds

2012-01-19T09:19:00.001-08:00

Among the most tweeted stocks on StockTwitsMACRO, USD, Nvidia(NASDAQ: NVDA), Zion Bancorporation (NASDAQ: ZION), Las Vegas Sands (NASDAQ: LVS)FT: BP shares fall amid fresh spill fears: BP's shares have fallen as much as 5 per cent amid fears that some of the c… http://bit.ly/9z2vIc

CNN Money: Boeing wins $9.1 billion order from Emirates http://bit.ly/bjJIz0

Yahoo! Finance: Healthscope recommends $1.72 billion takeover offer from Carlyle and TPG Capital http://yhoo.it/9bduZP

DailyFinance: Google to Stop Selling Nexus One Smartphone http://bit.ly/aze6Zz

DailyFinance: China Now World’s Top Energy Consumer, Displacing U.S. http://bit.ly/cr0RSZ

Daily Finance: Moody’s Downgrades Ireland’s Credit Rating http://bit.ly/cx68U0

Douglas A. McIntyre

VCs showing pause after leaner 2011 for deal activity

2012-01-19T05:08:00.001-08:00

I recently talked to an entrepreneur and asked him how much his company raised in venture capital financing. I thought he said $50 million, but he corrected me — it was $15 million.

It sounded low, considering I was getting used to hearing about $50 million-plus rounds. Probably just another sign of the bubbly vibe in Silicon Valley.

But now, it looks like that fervor is cooling off. Perhaps the main reason is that VC deals have not fared particularly well in terms of acquisitions and IPOs. According to a recent piece in the IPOPlaybook, I pointed out that the average return for social public offerings last year came to a sorry -29%. Even top-notch players like Pandora (NYSE:P), LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) and Groupon (NASDAQ:GRPN) have seen double-digit declines.

A report from VentureSource provides further confirmation of the liquidity issues. For 2011, there was a 14% drop to $53.2 billion in mergers, acquisitions, buyouts and IPOs. Yet firms still were able to increase capital raised by 26%.

It’s certainly a big disconnect, but it cannot last for long. As returns falter, investors in VC funds — such as endowments, pensions and other types of institutions — will start to rethink their allocations.

Consider one of the most aggressive VCs, Marc Andreessen (who operates Andreessen Horowitz). He says he is pressing the “pause” button on fundings, according to a piece in The Wall Street Journal. Interestingly enough, he probably has little choice — I’m sure his investors are making it vividly clear that a change is needed.

In Silicon Valley, fundings can freeze up quickly. It��s the nature of the business, which tends to go to extremes. But ironically enough, a slowdown could be good news for large VCs. After all, they already have invested heavily in their portfolio companies — like Twitter, Dropbox, Airbnb! and Fac ebook — which should put them in a strong competitive position, as their rivals will be starved for financing.

Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog IPOPlaybook, a site dedicated to the hottest news and rumors about initial public offerings. He also is the author of ��All About Short Selling�� and ��All About Commodities.�� Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli. As of this writing, he did not own a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

Darden: Don’t Count Olive Garden Out, Says Goldman

2012-01-19T00:15:00.001-08:00

Olive Garden has been a major drag on results at Darden Restaurants (DRI), which has otherwise been performing relatively well. But in a note today, Goldman Sachs analyst Michael Kelter argued that Olive Garden can make a comeback from recent weakness, and prove to be a big boost to Darden shares, which he rates at Buy. Olive garden accounts for 45% of Darden’s sales.

Olive Garden’s problem was that consumers started to think the food wasn’t a value. But sentiment appears to be shifting, Kelter wrote.

“However, as of our latest brand survey, conducted in early-mid December, Olive Gardens value rank began to recover relative to those of its competitors, suggesting that recent steps taken to re-emphasize to consumers the concepts value message are having an effect. Given the relationship between OGs value ranking and same-store-sales over the past year, this improvement may portend a turnaround in relative same-store-sales as well. This said, it is not our base case that results rebound immediately. Rather we are cautiously optimistic that this portends a turnaround when combined with other promotional efforts, the coming new menu and the impending new advertising campaign.”

One of the Most Successful Venture Capital Firms in the World is Buying this Stock

2012-01-18T01:09:00.001-08:00

Want to know what separates a mid-level financial advisor from a major Wall Street hedge-fund manager?

The ability to discern opportunity before the rest of the pack...

It's something not many can do, especially when it comes to investing... It takes a curious alchemy of financial understanding, subject-matter expertise, curiosity, synergetic aptitude, creative imagination and good, old-fashioned entrepreneurship...

If you want insight from this sort of brilliant mind, then I suggest reading Andy Kessler, the former hedge-fund manager.

But if you want to watch an entire firm with these sorts of qualities, the best place to look is Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers -- one of the most successful venture capital firms in the world. (A venture capital firm provides financial capital to early-stage, high-potential growth startup companies)

I won't talk too much about Kleiner Perkins, the firm's track record speaks for itself... It was an early investor in Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), AOL (NYSE: AOL), Compaq, Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: GS), Genentech and Intuit, just to name a few.

Then in 1999, long before "Google" was even a verb, Kleiner Perkins paired with Sequoia Capital and paid $25 million for 20% of the search engine -- Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is now worth about $200 billion today.

All told, if you add up all of Kleiner Perkins successful ventures, they have produced 250,000 new jobs, brought in more than $100 billion in new revenue, and created more than $650 billion in market cap.

As the chie! f invest ment strategist behind Game-Changing Stocks, I like to see where firms such as Kleiner Perkins are parking their cash -- their long history of savvy investment success is chief among its several areas of distinction.

Right now, Kleiner Perkins invests in four distinct areas: Greentech, China, Digital and Life Sciences... But an overwhelming number of their success has come from high-flying tech start ups.

And after looking through some of Kleiner Perkins most recent investments, I think they may have found another future success story in RPX Corp. (Nasdaq: RPXC), or "Rational Patent."

Rational patent is ultimately a response to the growing trend of patent litigation. If you follow financial news, then you're likely aware of how important having access to the right patents has become, especially for tech companies.

In fact, the need for patents led Google to buy out telecommunications giant Motorola for a whopping $12.5 billion in 2011. By purchasing the telecomm leader, Google gained access to Motorola's roughly 25,000 patents.

All-in-all, in 2010, a total of 2,727 patent lawsuits were filed, according to Rational Patent. In the first quarter of 2011 alone, another 918 hit the courts, which works out to annualized growth of 35% in one year. It's a messy business with an extreme amount of risk.

Companies with patent concerns can manage this risk by buying a membership in Rational Patent.

RPX holds a portfolio of some 1,600 patents -- nearly all of them from marquee names from the high-tech sector -- and clients pay RPXC $60,000 to $6.6 million a year to license all of the patents and thus avoid trampling on anyone else's proprietary technology, whether inadvertently or on purpose.

Rational Patent then uses its revenue to buy more patents, which attracts more members, and so it goes.

There are about 2,500 companies that could benefit from a membership, w! hich giv es RPX a huge amount of growth potential. That is reflected in its top line: Revenue is growing at a phenomenal pace.

What's more, happily, the company is profitable and has no long-term debt. With a market cap of $640 million and annualized 2011 net earnings of about $30 million, RPX is trading at 21.3 times earnings, or roughly equal to the Nasdaq Composite Index.

Risk to Consider: Let me warn you though, like any growth stock, investing in Rational Patent carries significant risk, because the company trades as a small-cap, you can expect greater volatility when the market roils.

Tips> > But, if you're an aggressive investor looking for a stock with big upside potential, then I think Rational Patent could be a smart play.

It's Time to Bail on Bank Stocks

2012-01-17T21:02:00.001-08:00

There was a time when bank stocks actually looked like good investments. And many, having racked up big gains over the past two years, proved to be just that.

But sadly, U.S. banks no longer offer the value and profit-making potential they did immediately following the financial collapse. In fact, they're actually heading for what could be a catastrophic decline.

Let me explain.

On February 18, 2009, I wrote a piece that said bank stocks should not be written off.

I observed at the time that the best U.S. banks had huge business strengths that were not fully undermined by the financial crisis. So I advised investors buy shares of the best among them.

As it turns out, that recommendation may have been too timid.

That is, most bank stocks - including some of the weakest and least investment-worthy - have surged since my article's publication.

Even following a lukewarm second quarter and last week's market meltdown, the top six banks - Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) - are in a relatively impressive position.

Take a look for yourself:

Goldman Sachs stock is up about 22%.
Bank of America is up 30%.
JPMorgan is up about 49%.
And Wells Fargo is up 55%.

Only Citigroup, down about 13%, and Morgan Stanley, down 20%, have seen their stock plunge.

But in light of this remarkable run up, and the disastrous pitfalls that lie ahead, now is the time to bail on bank stocks.

Margins are narrowing, government regulation is increasing, and the outlook for big deals is drying up.

In other words: The risks related to bank stocks are as present as they ever were - just the profitabi! lity is missing.

A New Investment Game

Truth be told, traditional bank lending is no longer as profitable as it once was. The lengthy recession has dampened opportunities, and corporations are building large cash reserves, reducing their need for bank financing.

Still, the bigger problem is that there's too much incentive right now for banks to borrow short-term at near-zero interest rates, and then invest in Treasuries.

Of course, now even that strategy is being squeezed by the continuing decline of Treasury bond rates. In the wake of Standard & Poor's U.S. credit rating downgrade, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell as low as 2.03% from a high this year of 3.77%.

Monetary policy remains bank-friendly - and the Fed has indicated it will stay that way until at least 2013 - but that window won't stay open forever. Rates eventually will have to rise to fend off inflation.

More importantly, trading profits have shown signs of turning into losses. The revelation a few weeks ago that Goldman Sachs - with more market and inside knowledge than any institution in the universe - took a loss on proprietary trading in 2006 - 2010 is a poor reflection on Goldman's bankers, as well as the potential for this business.

The bank-government relationship also has shown signs of souring.

Political Risks

Banks hired an army of lobbyists to comb regulations out of the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act and court the favor of politicians. But a lengthy recession and bleak employment figures have awakened people to the lack of small business lending by banks. Lending to small businesses is still down 25% from 2008 levels.

Another political risk is that the worldwide push for higher capital ratios shows no signs of diminishing. In an ideal world, that push would be extended to government debt, which at the moment is unfairly subsidized by having a zero capital ! allocati on, as if it were actually risk-free. But that's not the world we live in, and higher capital ratios inevitably mean lower profitability.

More dangerous, the new bipartisan commission charged with finding solutions to the nation's debt crisis have one obvious tax increase to propose: a limitation in mortgage tax relief, a subsidy which benefits the rich and wasteful at the expense of the poor and thrifty who pay off their mortgages and pay taxes at lower marginal rates.

Should this happen, the housing market would go into another tailspin, at least at the top end (where the tax relief is more significant - with interest rates as low as they currently are, a $200,000 mortgage does not carry enough interest to benefit much).

Sticking with the housing market, the scandals over mortgage repossessions has slowed their pace to a trickle. In one sense that's a relief to the banks, which have no means of selling the millions of houses they would otherwise be coming to own. But at the same time, the housing market will not recover until the overhang of dead mortgages has been worked down.

That's another threat to bank profitability.

You might think that bankers will be the ones who suffer the most if profits continue to thin, but you'd be wrong.

The reality is that the ratio of staff costs to profits is notably higher in the less profitable institutions, which believe they have to "keep up with the market." So when profits are lower overall, staff remuneration ratios increase.

Thus shareholders will suffer more than bankers from the new period of austerity. They will bear any losses, and quite possibly more than 100% of the inevitable declines in profits.

In the "too-big-to-fail" era banks may get bailed out, but shareholders don't.

A Good Mindset to Have When Investing

2012-01-17T15:56:00.001-08:00

Perhaps the greatest obstacle we have when investing is our own mindset. Our psychology acts against us, preventing us from doing the right things at the right time, and actually driving us to do exactly the wrong things. A skilled investor will work to develop the correct mindset to avoid making these mistakes.

The two psychological factors that affect our investing decisions are fear and greed. Fear prevents us from taking enough risk and tends to make us want to stay out of the markets when we should be buying, for example when the market has fallen in price rapidly and securities are selling at a discount. Greed causes us to take too much risk and to be putting more money into the market when we should be moving money out. Greed’s cousin emotion, arrogance, causes us to think we are better at investing than we are, leading to large risks and truly humbling experiences.

To combat fear, we must step back and look at the market from a broad perspective. Looking at the long-term history of the market for virtually any ten-year period if an investor had purchased “the market,” or a sufficiently diversified index fund that roughly tracked the behavior of the market, one would have made money. This even includes buying at market peaks just before major events like the crash in 1987 (in which stocks recovered just one year later) and periods in the dismal era of the 1970?s. The only notable exception is would be buying in 1928 just before the stock market crash that preceded the Great Depression. Sometimes the best thing to do when there is a significant downturn is to simply stop looking at statements for a while. Remember that time is on one’s side when it comes to investing.

If one were to invest regularly – buying equal dollar amounts of shares every month or year rather than just putting money in one time and then waiting – one would make money at the end of every ten-year period, including during the Great Depression. The main r! eason is that stocks do not tend to stay down for long – the natural tendency is for the economy to grow. The second reason is that buying with equal dollar amounts one will buy more shares when prices are low and less when they are high. This process, called “dollar cost averaging,” is an effective investment strategy and help combat fear. If prices drop, one is just getting more shares at a cheap price and lowering one’s cost basis. When prices recover, the shares that were bought cheaply will more than make up for those for which a higher price was paid.

Perhaps more damaging that fear is greed and arrogance. Greed causes us to buy when prices are much too high to be justified. Greed is what causes us to buy during obvious bubbles, and unfortunately bubbles tend to reinforce this behavior by continuing to evolve well beyond the time when they become obvious. Prices will continue to increase, even though stocks are already way overpriced, making one think that the markets are not actually in a bubble after all. Even though one is making money on the way up, when the bubble bursts, because greed caused one to keep putting more money in, little will be left to show in the end.

The best way to fight greed is to make a personal commitment before starting to invest that one will not keep more in a single position than one is willing to lose. If a stock is going straight up, even though it is tempting to wait for a few extra dollars before selling some shares, one should always ask the question, “would I buy this many shares of this stock at this price today?” If the answer is “no,” sell some shares. If the entire market is that way, just keep some of your portfolio in cash even though it will be difficult to do at the time. Some of the best investors have said they’ve made their money “buying too late and selling too soon.”

Arrogance makes us take risks and makes us think that even though many others have lost money doing things lik! e day tr ading, somehow we are different and will succeed.Unfortunately, the only cure for arrogance is experience. When I make a mistake and relearn some rule that I should have believed from the start, I call it “paying tuition to the market.” All one can do is to make sure not the pay the tuition for the same mistake twice.

To learn more about stock investing, stock picking, and growing wealth, please visit the Small Investor blog: http://smallivy.wordpress.com. Find hundreds of articles on investment strategies, tips, and tactics for investing and growing wealth.

Regis Philbin Sells Greenwich Estate for $3 Million

2012-01-17T11:13:00.001-08:00

Source: IMDb

With retirement came a bit of real estate luck for TV personality Regis Philbin.

After trying to sell his Greenwich, CT estate on and off for the past five years, the former TV host has finally sold the home for $3 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The talk show host first listed the home in 2008 for $5.9 million, and hoped the 4-bedroom, 6.5 bath property would attract a buyer who appreciated the 5,919 square feet of living space on a cul-de-sac, but it did not sell.

In May 2011, Philbin re-listed the home shortly before he announced retirement from his morning talk show gig ��Live With Regis and Kelly,�� after almost 25 years on the air. The 79-year-old star has long been a familiar face on American television — so much that Philbin holds the Guinness World Record for the most time spent in front of a television camera.

Philbin��s�� Greenwich home was re-listed in May for $4.195 million and took price cut to $3.8 million in July before finally settling for a sale price of $3 million.

Although Philbin has now sold this estate, he and his wife Joy still have a place to call home in the well-heeled Connecticut town. The couple had purchased a second Greenwich home about three years ago, although they spend most of their time at their Manhattan residence.

Less than an hour’s drive from Manhattan, Greenwich has long attracted celebrities and financiers (such as David Letterman) who can well afford median Greenwich home values of over $1.156 million — and rising.

See more photos of Regis Philbin’s Greenwich estate on Zillow.

An Oil Strategy in Case Iran Closes Strait of Hormuz: View

2012-01-17T06:38:00.001-08:00

Let��s just say Iran makes good onits recent threats to shut down the Strait of Hormuz. And let��ssay that with one-fifth of the world��s oil supply bottled up,the price of a barrel of oil then almost doubles, as someanalysts predict, to more than $200.

What can the world do to bring prices down before a still-woozy global economy gets pushed back into recession?

Pipelines that circumvent the strait could carry to marketat least 7 million of the 17 million barrels of tanker-borne oilthat passes through the strait each day. The U.S. could, for thethird time since the Gulf War in 1991, release oil from its 700million-barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve; other members of theInternational Energy Agency (set up after the 1973-74 oilcrisis) could also tap the 90-day supply stocks that they arerequired to maintain.

The IEA has already prepared a plan to release as many as14 million barrels a day in the event of a Gulf closure,according to a Reuters report. Saudi Arabia, long the self-appointed swing man of the Organization of Petroleum ExportingCountries, has a spare production capacity -- on paper, at least-- of about 3 million barrels per day; everyone else isproducing almost flat out.

The U.S. now gets only about 9 percent of the oil itconsumes from the Persian Gulf. Countries such as China, India,Japan and South Korea, however, rely on Gulf exports,particularly from Iran, to power their economies. In theEuropean Union, debt-ridden Greece gets 14 percent of its oilimports from Iran, Italy 13 percent and Spain almost 10 percent.And because oil is a global commodity, as far as oil prices areconcerned, what happens in the Persian Gulf does not stay in thePersian Gulf.

For all Iran��s missile-rattling, however, there is littlereason to think it will carry through on its bluster. To blockthe Gulf would verge on economic suicide: Petroleum productsaccount for 20 percent of Iran��s gross domestic product, 80percent of exports and 70 percent of its government revenue. Anyattempt ! to close the Gulf could also provoke a war with the U.S.and vaporize what diplomatic support and leverage Iran gets fromcountries (and clients) such as China.

Iran may not intend ultimately to close the strait, but itsthreats to do so can still instigate tremendous economicuncertainty with very real consequences, especially in a hyper-connected world wired with complex speculative instruments. Thechallenge is similar to dealing with terrorist groups such asal-Qaeda, which command our attention and resources throughtheir potential no less than their actions. In either case, thegoal is to balance the risks that such threats present with thecosts of protecting against them.

More pipelines would be a good start. Unfortunately, theUnited Arab Emirates just announced that the opening of a 1.8million barrel-per-day pipeline that circumvents the strait willbe put off until May. The use of drag-reduction agents -- anestimated $600 million investment -- could increase the capacityof Saudi Arabia��s existing two pipelines that reach the Red Seato as many as 11 million barrels per day. And if the Kingdomwants to bolster its reputation as a ��stable, reliable��supplier of oil, it could invest the several billion dollarsneeded to build another pipeline -- a prospect that may be lesspainful if oil prices remain high. The current turmoil isanother reason why Iraq needs to repair its pipeline to Turkey.At home, we support the building of the Keystone XL pipelinethat will bring oil from Canada��s tar sands to market.

The IEA��s plan to release oil from emergency stocks willonly work if China, India and other non-IEA countries agree notto hoard. That would require an unprecedented degree of policycoordination. One way to reduce future shocks, especially inAsia, may be more positioning of exports in regional storagedepots and greater use of floating stocks. Governments may alsowant to dust off the IEA��s 2005 blueprint for cutting the amountof fuel consumed by cars, trucks and buses. If the crisiscontinues, the! market� �s response could also be an importantfirst test of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission��s soon-to-be-imposed limits on trading by speculators.

Over the last few years, the U.S. has reduced itsdependence on oil imports in general and from the Middle East inparticular. Yet, almost four decades after the first oil shocks,the economy remains deeply vulnerable to the threat of a cutoffof oil from the Persian Gulf -- a state of affairs that callsinto question the commitment of, by some estimates, trillions ofdollars to keep the Gulf stable and the Strait of Hormuz open.Factor that ��externality�� into the price of a barrel of oil,and alternative fuels begin to look like a bargain by comparison

How to Time Five Big-Ticket Purchases

2012-01-17T02:10:00.001-08:00

Before you shell out big bucks for a big-ticket item -- be it a mattress, a flat-screen TV or a new car -- remember that being a savvy shopper isn't just about finding the best sale you can right now: It's also about timing your purchase.

That's because the biggest sales on a variety of consumer goods often correspond with product launches at industry trade shows, just as some tend to be tied to particular seasonal promotional events.

Here's a primer on the best time to land deals on a range of big-ticket products.

1. Mattresses

Retailers tend to hold the biggest mattress sales during the "patriotic holidays," such as Memorial Day, Fourth of July and President's Day, says Karin Mahoney, director of communications for the International Sleep Products Association.

"I don't know why ... but that's when retailers -- from Macy's to Sleepy's -- have the most heavily discounted sales," Mahoney says. Indeed, you can shave $100 or more off the mattress price during these red-white-and-blue sales, she says.

When buying a mattress, it's also important to note that it's one of the few products for which you can haggle down the price in a chain store -- so make sure to do just that, says Christine Frietchen, editor-in-chief of ConsumerSearch.com, a product review aggregator that compares ratings from experts and user reviews.

"And if a sales associate won't give you extra money off, ask them what they can throw in for free with your mattress, like a box spring," she says. "It's definitely one of those products where you should ask what else they can do for you."

2. Cars

In the market for a new car? Shop over the summer to snatch up optimum deals, says Jeff Schuster, ex! ecutive director of forecasting for J.D. Power.

"A high concentration of vehicles for the next model year's car is introduced late summer and early fall," he says. In turn, manufacturers are trying to clear out inventory of their current model year cars at dealerships "as quickly as possible, so that when buyers come in [to shop] in September, they're only looking at the new models."

The savings can be anywhere from $500 to $3,000 for cars that are less in demand, such as gas guzzlers like pickup trucks, Schuster says.

It also pays to time your car purchase around the automobile shows, which are held at different times in cities throughout the country, such as Detroit, Los Angeles, New York and San Antonio, Schuster says.

"Around the time of the auto shows, car manufacturers will offer special deals to entice buyers to purchase and to draw attention to the show, like, 'Here's a special show savings: Take an extra $500 off.'"

3. Consumer Electronics

The annual International Consumer Electronics Show, where manufacturers unveil the latest and greatest new products headed for stores, is held in January.

So a "sweet time" to buy big-ticket electronics such as flat-screen televisions, Blu-ray players and digital cameras is between January and March, as "retailers are trying to clear out old inventory to make way for new inventory" that debuted at CES, Frietchen says.

Around the time of the Super Bowl last year, for example, "We saw 40-inch LCD televisions for as low as $300, and 32-inch televisions for $200 -- 40% off normal selling prices," Frietchen says.

4. Washers and Dryers

Black Friday weekend, the Super Bowl of shopping, is not just for finding holiday presents.

"You can get as much as 50% off washers and dryers around Black Friday," says Carolyn Forte, director of the home appl! iances a nd cleaning products department of The Good Housekeeping Research Institute.

"Don't just stick to what you need for gifts during Black Friday -- think a little outside the box," she says.

5. Laptops

Shop for laptop computers in April and during back-to-school sales, which will save you 20% to 35%, Frietchen says.

That's when "fully-functional" laptops in the 15-inch range can be had for as low as $250, she says.

Big discounts can also be found whenever Microsoft (MSFT) releases a new Windows operating system. "Windows 8, for example, is expected to be shipping in new laptops by Christmas, so the holidays this year should be an especially good time to pick up Windows 7 laptops at steep discounts," Frietchen says.

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Rivals May Follow RBS Lead in Investment Bank Cuts

2012-01-16T21:25:00.001-08:00

In the wake of cuts announced Thursday by Royal Bank of Scotland Group that it will close or sell its equities, mergers advisory and equity capital markets businesses, slashing 3,500 jobs, other European banks may follow suit as declines in trading coupled with new regulations and the additional expenses they entail make the business less profitable.

Bloomberg reported that some banks are already doing so. UniCredit closed down part of its equities unit in November; Nomura Holdings and UBS are also retreating.

Less trading and higher operating costs to come under new regulation is taking its toll on banks with securities divisions that are already running behind their competition. Record low fees have added to the pressure, forcing some banks to acknowledge their less-than-leading status and driving them to divest or cut back.

Christopher Wheeler, an analyst at Mediobanca in London, was quoted saying, “Middle-ranking banks are being squeezed as volumes have collapsed. The banks that are neither betwixt nor between can’t afford the cost base they’re running.”

New York-based research firm Freeman & Co. data indicate that the investment banking fee pool in Europe, which is made up of payments to banks for a variety of services that include underwriting debt and equity sales, loans and M&A advice, had its worst quarter since 2004 in Q4 of 2011. Fees in Q2 stood at $7.2 billion, but by Q4 they had fallen to $4.2 billion.

Average IPO fees have seen substantial drops as well, from 2.5% in 2008 down to 1.87%. If that news isn’t bad enough, earnings are predicted to fall among the 25 banks in the Bloomberg European Bank Index by 40% from 2010, according to an analyst survey.

Raul Sinha, an analyst for JPMorgan Cazenove in London, was quoted saying, “Low returns are an industry issue, although pressures are greatest for businesses that lack scale and have weaker market positions. In addition, a structurally negative increase in fixed costs for the sector has removed a natural offset to revenue volatility.”

Jobless rate dips to 8.5% with 200,000 new jobs in December

2012-01-16T16:54:00.001-08:00

The world��s largest economy got some more much-needed good news Friday morning when the U.S. Labor Department reported that December��s unemployment rate fell to 8.5% from November��s 8.6%. That came as result of a better-than-expected?200,000 job increase in December.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, ��Job gains occurred in transportation and warehousing, retail trade, manufacturing, health care, and mining.�� The 8.5% rate is the lowest since February 2009, and in all of 2011 the economy created 1.6 million jobs.

Both the December job-creation number and the headline unemployment rate came in ahead of Bloomberg��s median forecast of economists, which estimated that payrolls would advance by 155,000 and that the jobless rate would tick up to 8.7% in the month.

Today��s release from the Labor Department adds to several recent reports showing a slowly but steadily improving U.S. labor market. Yesterday, ADP said U.S. companies increased payrolls by 325,000 in December, beating the median economist forecast for net hires of 178,000, according to Bloomberg.

Also on Thursday, the latest weekly report on new unemployment claims fell again to 372,000, a decrease of 15,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 387,000. The less volatile four-week moving average was 373,250, a decrease of 3,250 from the previous week’s revised report of 376,000.

European markets were slightly higher before the U.S.? labor report was released. And futures on U.S. equity indexes also were higher before the report. They got another upward bump soon after the Labor Department��s announcement.

What��s good for the U.S. labor market might not be so good for the GOP presidential hopefuls who have been hammering at President Barack Obama��s stewardship of the country��s economy. Still, they have plenty of room to keep the criticism coming. After all, when Obama took office in January 2009, the jobless rate was 7.8! %.

But at least now the previous trend of rising and stubbornly high unemployment is finally starting to turn downward.

Gloomy Indian Economy? No worries. Future Can Be Ours

2012-01-16T12:10:00.001-08:00

I just read an article that talks about "Why India could be a superpower" despite current gloomy situation in Indian economy. This article is written by William H Avery, a former American diplomat and is the author of "China's Nightmare, America's Dream: India as the Next Global Power"; the article is published by Economic Times.

This article tries to explain why you shouldn't be crying fault due to current gloomy situation of Indian economy against growing China's might. And of course what we can think of when we think in context of Indian stock markets is that, the same old phrase, believe in India's long term growth story to make money from investments.

Without much ado, here is the article. Why 21st century can well be India's

1 Reason the Street Should Love Parker Hannifin's Earnings

2012-01-16T07:45:00.001-08:00

It takes money to make money. Most investors know that, but with business media so focused on the ��how much,�� very few investors bother to ask, ��How fast?��

When judging a company's prospects, how quickly it turns cash outflows into cash inflows can be just as important as how much profit it��s booking in the accounting fantasy world we call "earnings." This is one of the first metrics I check when I'm hunting for the market's best stocks. Today, we'll see how it applies to Parker Hannifin (NYSE: PH ) .

Let's break this down
In this series, we measure how swiftly a company turns cash into goods or services and back into cash. We'll use a quick, relatively foolproof tool known as the cash conversion cycle, or CCC for short.

Why does the CCC matter? The less time it takes a firm to convert outgoing cash into incoming cash, the more powerful and flexible its profit engine is. The less money tied up in inventory and accounts receivable, the more available to grow the company, pay investors, or both.

To calculate the cash conversion cycle, add days inventory outstanding to days sales outstanding, then subtract days payable outstanding. Like golf, the lower your score here, the better. The CCC figure for Parker Hannifin for the trailing 12 months is 61.8.

For younger, fast-growth companies, the CCC can give you valuable insight into the sustainability of that growth. A company that��s taking longer to make cash may need to tap financing to keep its momentum. For older, mature companies, the CCC can tell you how well the company is managed. Firms that begin to lose control of the CCC may be losing their clout with their suppliers (who might be demanding stricter payment terms) and customers (who might be demanding more generous terms). This can sometimes be an important signal of future distress -- one most investors are likely to miss.

In this series, I��m most interested in comparing a compa! ny��s CC C to its prior performance. Here��s where I believe all investors need to become trend-watchers. Sure, there may be legitimate reasons for an increase in the CCC, but all things being equal, I want to see this number stay steady or move downward over time.

Source: S&P Capital IQ. Dollar amounts in millions. FY = fiscal year. TTM = trailing 12 months.

Because of the seasonality in some businesses, the CCC for the TTM period may not be strictly comparable to the fiscal-year periods shown in the chart. Even the steadiest-looking businesses on an annual basis will experience some quarterly fluctuations in the CCC. To get an understanding of the usual ebb and flow at Parker Hannifin, consult the quarterly-period chart below.

Source: S&P Capital IQ. Dollar amounts in millions. FQ = fiscal quarter.

On a 12-month basis, the trend at Parker Hannifin looks very good. At 61.8 days, it is 12.4 days better than the five-year average of 74.3 days. The biggest contributor to that improvement was DSO, which improved 6.6 days compared to the five-year average.

Considering the numbers on a quarterly basis, the CCC trend at Parker Hannifin looks good. At 60.9 days, it is 4.8 days better than the average of the past eight quarters. With both 12-month and quarterly CCC running better than average, Parker Hannifin gets high marks in this cash-conversion checkup.

Though the CCC can take a little work to calculate, it��s definitely worth watching every quarter. You��ll be better informed about potential problems, and you'll improve your odds of finding the underappreciated home run stocks that provide the market's best returns.

Add Parker Hannifin to My Watchlist.

Cimarex Energy Co. EPS This Year Remained More Than 64% - NYSE:XEC

2012-01-16T02:54:00.001-08:00

Cimarex Energy Co. (NYSE:XEC) recently hit 52 week peak price $113.08, opened at $108.46 scored +4.95% closed $112.40. XEC traded on over 1.62 million shares in comparison to average volume of 0.809 million shares.

XEC has earnings of $536.33 million and made $1.53 billion sales for the last 12 months. Its quarter to quarter sales remained 51.96%. The company has 84.70 million of outstanding shares and 83.86 million shares were floated in the market.

XEC has an insider ownership at 2.06% and institutional ownership remained 86.70%. Its return on investment (ROI) for the last 12 month was 16.70% as compare to its return on equity (ROE) of 24.18% for the last 12 months.
The price moved ahead +9.84% from the mean of 20 days, +18.67% from 50 and went up 43.77% from 200 days average price. Company��s performance for the week was 5.83%, +13.19% for month and yearly performance remained 92.14%.

Its price volatility for a month remained 2.86% whereas volatility for a week noted as 3.04% having beta of 1.38. Company��s price to sales ratio for last 12 months was 6.20 while its price to book ratio for the most recent quarter was 3.81 and its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) remained 1.17 billion for the past twelve months.

Chevron Prepares $15 Billion Buyback

2012-01-15T22:39:00.001-08:00

Jamba, Inc. (Nasdaq:JMBA) will release third quarter earnings after the close of market and conduct a conference call to discuss financial results on November 9, 2011 at 5:00 p.m. ET.

Jamba, Inc., through its subsidiary, Jamba Juice Company, owns and franchises Jamba Juice stores. The company operates as a restaurant retailer of beverage and food products.

Enzo Biochem, Inc. (ENZ)

Biotechnology is technology based on biology, especially when used in agriculture, food science, and medicine. Biotechnology is often used to refer to genetic engineering technology of the 21st century; however the term encompasses a wider range and history of procedures for modifying biological organisms according to the needs of humanity, going back to the initial modifications of native plants into improved food crops through artificial selection and hybridization. Bioengineering is the science upon which all Biotechnological applications are based. With the development of new approaches and modern techniques, traditional biotechnology industries are also acquiring new horizons enabling them to improve the quality of their products and increase the productivity of their systems.

Contrary to its name, biotechnology is not a single technology. Rather it is a group of technologies that share two (common) characteristics, working with living cells and their molecules and having a wide range of uses that can improve our lives.

Enzo Biochem Inc. recently announced that it has added four highly experienced executives! at its Enzo Life Sciences subsidiary to focus on rapidly evolving new pharmaceutical and clinical applications.

For more information about Enzo Biochem Inc. visit its website: http://www.enzo.com

Cleantech Transit, Inc. (CLNO)

Cleantech Transit, Inc. (CLNO) is pleased to announce it has met its funding requirement to secure the Company’s ability to earn in 25% of the 500KW Merced Project.

The Company is in the final stages of closing its initial interest in the Merced Project and is currently working on completing the necessary documentation and expects closing the transaction soon. As previously announced Cleantech has the option to earn up to 40% of the Merced ! Project and the Company plans to continue to work towards increasing its interest in the Merced Project as they move ahead.

Bioenergy is created using biomass, which is all organic material including agricultural wastes, animal wastes, wood wastes, municipal wastes, and other plant and organic materials. Bioenergy can help slow or stop global warming, reduce or even eliminate dependence on fossil fuels that cause pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and become the new energy source for a cleaner energy.

Bioenergy comes from photosynthesis, which occurs in plants and other living organisms. These sources release this energy during their life or shortly after decomposition has started. Bioenergy can also result when animals eat plants and gain mass indirectly from photosynthesis.

For more information about Cleantech Transit, Inc. visit its website www.cleantechtransitinc.com

Joe’s Jeans Inc. (Nasdaq:JOEZ) announced that it has opened its second store in the Middle East at the 360?�� Mall in Safat, Kuwait. The 360?�� Mall is a world-class shopping destination and the globally acclaimed winner of Retail & Leisure International’s Award for International Shopping Centre of the Year. The Joe’s?? retail store is the second of seven stores to be opened as part of an exclusive agreement with MultiTrend International in the Middle East.

Joe’s Jeans Inc. engages in the design, development, and marketing of apparel products worldwide. Its product line comprises women’s and men’sdenim jeans, pants, shirts, sweaters, jackets, and other apparel products under the Joe’s brand.

BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc (Nasdaq:BCRX) announced positive top-line results from its Phase 2b randomized, double-blind, dose-response study of BCX4208 in gout patients who had failed to reach the clinically important serum uric acid (sUA) goal of <6 mg/dL on allopurinol alone.

BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biotechnology co! mpany, d esigns, optimizes, and develops small-molecule pharmaceuticals that block key enzymes involved in infectious diseases, cancer, and inflammatory diseases.

How Cheap Is News Corp.'s Stock by the Numbers?

2012-01-15T13:05:00.001-08:00

Numbers can lie -- but they're the best first step in determining whether a stock is a buy. In this series, we use some carefully chosen metrics to size up a stock's true value based on the following clues:

The current price multiples.
The consistency of past earnings and cash flow.
How much growth we can expect.

Let's see what those numbers can tell us about how expensive or cheap News Corp. (Nasdaq: NWSA ) might be.

The current price multiples
First, we'll look at most investors' favorite metric: the P/E ratio. It divides the company's share price by its earnings per share (EPS) -- the lower, the better.

Then, we'll take things up a notch with a more advanced metric: enterprise value to unlevered free cash flow. This divides the company's enterprise value (basically, its market cap plus its debt, minus its cash) by its unlevered free cash flow (its free cash flow, adding back the interest payments on its debt). Like the P/E, the lower this number is, the better.

Analysts argue about which is more important -- earnings or cash flow. Who cares? A good buy ideally has low multiples on both.

News Corp. has a P/E ratio of 16.9 and an EV/FCF ratio of 13.1 over the trailing 12 months. If we stretch and compare current valuations to the five-year averages for earnings and free cash flow, News Corp. has a P/E ratio of 21.5 and a five-year EV/FCF ratio of 16.4.

A positive one-year ratio under 10 for both metrics is ideal (at least in my opinion). For a five-year metric, under 20 is ideal.

News Corp. has a mixed performance in hitting the ideal targets, but let's see how it compares against some competitors and industry mates.?

Company	1-Year P/E!	1-Year EV/FCF	5-Year P/E	5-Year EV/FCF
News Corp.	16.9	13.1	21.5	16.4
Disney	14.9	22.9	16.9	19.9
Time Warner	12.7	16.5	NM	9.3
Google	22.0	19.1	33.4	26.4

Source: S&P Capital IQ; NM = not meaningful due to losses.

Numerically, we've seen how News Corp.'s valuation rates on both an absolute and relative basis. Next, let's examine...

The consistency of past earnings and cash flow
An ideal company will be consistently strong in its earnings and cash flow generation.

In the past five years, News Corp.'s net income margin has ranged from -11% to 15.5%. In that same time frame, unlevered free cash flow margin has ranged from 7.5% to 11.4%.

How do those figures compare with those of the company's peers? See for yourself:

Source: S&P Capital IQ; margin ranges are combined.

Additionally, over the last five years, News Corp. has tallied up four years of positive earnings and five years of positive free cash flow.

Next, let's figure out...

How much growth we can expect
Analysts tend to comically overstate their five-year growth estimates. If you accept them at face value, you will overpay for stocks. But while you should definitely take the analysts' prognostications with a grain o! f salt, they can still provide a useful starting point when compared to similar numbers from a company's closest rivals.

Let's start by seeing what this company's done over the past five years. In that time period, News Corp. has put up past EPS growth rates of 2.9%. Meanwhile, Wall Street's analysts expect future growth rates of 17.4%.

Here's how News Corp. compares to its peers for trailing five-year growth:

Source: S&P Capital IQ; EPS growth shown.

And here's how it measures up with regard to the growth analysts expect over the next five years:

Source: S&P Capital IQ; estimates for EPS growth.

The bottom line
The pile of numbers we've plowed through has shown us the price multiples shares of News Corp.?are trading at, the volatility of its operational performance, and what kind of growth profile it has -- both on an absolute and a relative basis.

The more consistent a company's performance has been and the more growth we can expect, the more we should be willing to pay. We've gone well beyond looking at a moderate 16.9 P/E ratio and its EV/FCF ratios are a bit cheaper.

On the negative side, its growth over five years ago was minimal and News Corp. is still dealing with the fallout over its phone hacking scandal. Meanwhile, our CAPS community rates it just two stars out of five.

But these initial numbers are just a start. If you find News Corp.'s numbers or story compelling, don't stop. Continue your due diligence process until you're confident one way or the other. As a start, add it to My Watchlist to find all of our Foolish analysis.

I wrote about a stock that's flying under the radar in our brand new free re! port: "T he Stocks Only the Smartest Investors Are Buying." I invite you to take a free copy to find out the name of the company I believe Warren Buffett would be interested in if he could still invest in small companies.

Apple Fills Jobs’ Seat, Appoints Iger

2012-01-15T08:31:00.001-08:00

Steve Jobs may no longer be with us, but he surely would be pleased with the latest leadership transitions on the Apple board.

The directors at Apple (AAPL) named tenured board member Arthur Levinson as chairman, the position left vacant when Jobs died in October.? A scientist, Levinson was CEO at pharmaceutical giant Genentech for more than a decade. Levinson and Jobs were closely aligned.

In addition, Apple named Robert A. Iger, CEO of Disney (DIS) to the board; Iger recently told Bloomberg Television that Jobs’ “influence was enormous and his influence will endure.” Apple? said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that Iger will serve on the audit and finance committee.

Jobs served on the Disney board after Iger repaired relations between the companies. When Disney acquired animated movie studio Pixar, Jobs became Disney��s largest shareholder.

KKR Tops Private-Equity Deal Makers in 2011 With Samson Purchase

2012-01-15T03:58:00.001-08:00

KKR & Co., the private-equitycompany run by Henry Kravis and George Roberts, was the mostactive buyout firm last year, followed by Bain Capital LLC, ApaxPartners LP, Blackstone Group LP (BX) and Carlyle Group.

KKR invested $18.8 billion and was involved in 44 private-equity deals, London-based researcher Preqin Ltd. said in aresearch report today. By comparison, Boston-based Bain deployed$15.3 billion across 33 transactions in 2011, including theOctober takeover of Tokyo restaurant operator Skylark Co. for$3.4 billion.

KKR executed the biggest private-equity deal of 2011 whenit agreed to buy closely held Samson Investment Co., the Tulsa,Oklahoma-based oil and gas producer, for $7.2 billion. Theacquisition was the New York-based firm��s largest since itbought the U.S. Foodservice unit of Royal Ahold NV for $7.1billion in 2007.

The volume of private-equity deals last year increased 29percent from 2010 to $448 billion as access to credit continuedto improve following the financial crisis, according to datacompiled by Bloomberg. This year, the industry is defendingitself from attacks by rivals of Republican presidentialcandidate Mitt Romney, who say the former Bain Capital chiefexecutive officer enriched himself at the cost of corporationsand their employees while running the firm from 1984 to 1999.

Apax, based in London, invested $13.5 billion in 26 dealslast year, and New York-based Blackstone deployed $11.7 billionacross 39 deals, Preqin said. Carlyle, the Washington-based firmpreparing to go public this year, invested $10.6 billion in 47deals.

How to Invest for Less

2012-01-14T23:26:00.001-08:00

In a down market, especially when many investment portfolio values have been slashed by 30 or 40 percent over the course of a year, it’s become painfully apparent that a large part of those losses comes in the form of the fees you pay to invest your money. Over a period of several decades, from first investment to retirement, investment costs can eat up tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars, destroying the real rate of return of a mutual fund.

For example, an initial investment of $50,000 over a period of 25 years at 8% would grow to $342,423. However, if the gains are 6% annually due to management costs and related fees, that number drops to $214,593 – a difference of $127,830. Even a difference of one percent can be huge over time – in 35 years, receiving 8% annual on $50,000 yields 739,267; compare this to the 533,829 from a 7% return on the same money.

For the average investor, most investment fees fall into one of three categories: mutual fund expenses, investment advisor fees and brokerage commissions, the per-transaction trading fees for buying and selling individual stocks. Mutual funds have some of the highest expenses, with exchange-traded funds (ETFs) usually somewhat lower.

But even ETF fees are not immune to change. According to Richard A. Ferri, CFA at Portfolio Solutions, LLC, “During the 1990s, new issue ETF fees averaged about 0.25%. Over the past few years new issue ETF fees were closer to 0.60% and this year the fee is closer to 0.80%. In addition, some of the more complex ETFs issued a few years ago capped their fees below the stated prospectus level. Those caps are starting to expire and fees are rising.”

Still, since they cost significantly less than mutual funds with high commissions (loads), low-cost index funds and ETFs are the better way for investors to get the same exposure to the financial markets without losing as much of their money in fees, said Ferri.

To maximize your savings and return on inve! stment, Clint Gharib, Vice President of Investments at Turner Wealth Management, LLC, also recommends that you work with an independent, fee-based advisor. “Independent registered advisors provide access to a much wider range of investment products and services with no proprietary products to promote. An investment advisor must act in a fiduciary capacity on behalf of their clients, therefore providing a higher standard of disclosure than in a traditional securities brokerage environment. Because the financial representative gets a flat annual fee based on the amount of assets rather than a commission, transactions themselves do not benefit an advisor,” said Gharib.

Ferri agrees, saying, “Fire that high cost advisor. Advisors’ fees are the last bastion of gluttony in the investment business. They are simply too high. The advisors that charge 1% or more to manage a portfolio insist that they ‘add value’ through their investment selection. There is no academic evidence suggesting that paying high advisor fees provides any benefit over using a low cost advisor. In fact, high fees hurt your bottom line on a dollar for dollar basis.”

Jeff Nabers, CEO of Nabers Group and founder of the IRA Association of America, takes his investment theory a step further than simply trying to lower investment fees for Wall Street portfolios.

“The real cost of investing is poor investment performance due to lack of understanding and awareness that IRAs and 401ks do not have to be invested in Wall Street products,” said Nabers. While investors think they are diversifying by buying a variety of stocks and funds, history shows that when the stock market goes down, all sectors of the market go down. The better option, he explains, is to get off Wall Street and thus actually diversify your investments.

Nabers, who is currently writing a book titled Unlimited Investing with a Self-Directed IRA LLC or Solo 401k: Break Free From Wall Street to Build Real W! ealth wi th Alternative Investments, considers Wall Street somewhat of a casino when it comes to investments. In contrast, there are many other, better ways to invest money for retirement; for example, real estate, precious metals and small businesses.

Real estate prospectors of the past few years who bought based on the hope that their properties would increase in value and they could sell for a profit give real estate investing a bad name. The difference between them and successful real estate investors is in the verb, said Nabers. Profitable real estate investments are the product not of hoping, but of planning. Let’s say you want a minimum 10% annual return on investment (ROI) for your real estate purchase. You would look at properties, from apartment buildings to duplexes to single-family units, and make real calculations of what the properties will earn or cash-flow each year, based on area rents, factoring in taxes, mortgage payments, property management fees and the like.

After analyzing a number of properties, you would know which could provide the ROI you desire and plan your investment accordingly. That’s the difference – planning, not hoping. Stocks used to be the same way, where people bought them based on the dividends they produced and not simply for capital gains.

Investments that qualify for retirement plans are nearly limitless, said Nabers, naming just life insurance, collectibles and self dealing as things that are not allowed. The sooner investors look outside the small box of Wall Street and actually diversify with sound, researched investments, the more they will avoid the high cost of investing found in fees and poor portfolio performance.

Looking for a fresh approach to investing? As an investor, be wise about your money. Avoid high-cost mutual funds and expensive investment advisors, choosing low-fee ETFs and fee-based services instead. On top of that, consider moving some or most of your money off of Wall Street and into carefully researched alt! ernative investments.

Nasdaq January Short Interest

2012-01-14T14:02:00.001-08:00

Below are the January short interest figures for selected stocks. The numbers are posted for January 12, 2007 as compared to December 15, 2006.

Data from NASDAQ and The Wall Street Journal.

Largest Short Positions
Rank	JAN 12	DEC 15	CHANGE
1 Nasdaq-100 Trust	155,461,554	190,431,284	-34,969,730
2 Sirius Satellite	118,871,835	141,092,901	-22,221,066
3 Level 3 Communicat	108,814,590	102,576,552	6,238,038
4 Microsoft Corp	108,460,628	102,635,133	5,825,495
5 Charter Comm A	84,118,527	76,211,610	7,906,917
6 Yahoo! Inc	84,085,547	78,124,708	5,960,839
7 Intel Corp	66,776,874	68,670,817	-1,893,943
8 Cisco Systems	64,319,369	63,173,253	1,146,116
9 Oracle Corp	58,206,008	52,177,280	6,028,728
10 Applied Materials	55,443,465	75,084,723	-19,641,258
11 Comcast Corp A	54,011,931	56,710,163	-2,698,232
12 Amazon.com	44,914,028	42,777,876	2,136,152
13 Symantec Corp	44,246,565	47,140,494	-2,893,929
14 JetBlue Airways	37,684,739	39,067,146	-1,382,407
15 eBay Inc	34,523,163	37,202,716	-2,679,553
16 Sun Microsystems	34,300,594	36,757,888	-2,457,294
17 XM Satellite Radio	33,975,151	33,106,575	868,576
18 Amgen Inc	30,116,861	27,624,391	2,492,470
19 Take-Two Sftwr	29,987,435	30,280,613	-293,178
20 Nuance Communicat	26,622,990	24,153,945	2,469,045
21 Apple Inc	25,680,493	24,458,604	1,221,889
22 ON Semiconductor	25,182,062	23,035,742	2,146,320
23 Nektar Therapeut	24,799,308	22,567,348	2,231,960
24 Starbucks Corp	23,988,546	26,311,357	-2,322,811
25 Broadcom Corp A	23,531,348	24,291,374	-760,026

Largest Positive Changes
Rank	JAN 12	DEC 15	CHANGE
1 E*Trade Fin’l Corp	11,166,282	0	11,166,282
2 Charter Comm A	84,118,527	76,211,610	7,906,917
3 Level 3 Communicat	108,814,590	102,576,552	6,238,038
4 Oracle Corp	58,206,008	52,177,280	6,028,728
5 Yahoo! Inc	84,085,547	78,124,708	5,960,839
6 Microsoft Corp	108,460,628	102,635,133	5,825,495
7 Huntington Bncshrs	10,494,568	5,687,398	4,807,170
8 AtheroGenics Inc	18,671,190	14,358,621	4,312,569
9 Syntax-Brillian	12,610,223	8,856,868	3,753,355
10 Dendreon Corp	16,799,777	13,055,168	3,744,609
11 Mentor Graphics	10,969,045	7,351,106	3,617,939
12 Cadence Design Sys	14,585,552	11,007,589	3,577,963
13 Winn Dixie Stores	3,634,741	161,562	3,473,179
14 Garmin Ltd	13,130,621	9,700,022	3,430,599
15 Novellus Systems	15,115,192	12,180,548	2,934,644
16 OmniVision Technol	22,526,922	19,828,410	2,698,512
17 Teva Pharma Indus	16,325,062	13,738,652	2,586,410
18 TiVo Inc	14,598,248	12,103,317	2,494,931

Largest Negative Changes
Rank	JAN 12	DEC 15	CHANGE
1 Nasdaq-100 Trust	155,461,554	190,431,284	-34,969,730
2 Sirius Satellite	118,871,835	141,092,901	-22,221,066
3 Applied Materials	55,443,465	75,084,723	-19,641,258
4 MannKind Corp	7,046,258	16,900,429	-9,854,171
5 Telik Inc	11,725,457	17,818,996	-6,093,539
6 Qualcomm Inc	19,552,806	24,851,808	-5,299,002
7 UTStarcom Inc	19,500,017	23,133,682	-3,633,665
8 Urban Outfitters	20,876,218	23,798,861	-2,922,643
9 Symantec Corp	44,246,565	47,140,494	-2,893,929
10 Comcast Corp A	54,011,931	56,710,163	-2,698,232
11 eBay Inc	34,523,163	37,202,716	-2,679,553
12 Network Appliance	13,531,315	16,128,651	-2,597,336
13 Sun Microsystems	34,300,594	36,757,888	-2,457,294
14 JDS Uniphase	13,953,432	16,393,735	-2,440,303
15 LbtyMdHldgIntvA	6,879,097	9,284,555	-2,405,458
16 Starbucks Corp	23,988, 546	26,311,357	-2,322,811
17 Denny’s Corp	3,766,543	5,763,532	-1,996,989
18 Intel Corp	66,776,874	68,670,817	-1,893,943

Data from Nasdaq and The Wall Street Journal

Bill Nygren¡¯s Best Investment Idea For 2012

2012-01-14T09:27:00.001-08:00

Bill Nygren's best investing idea for 2012 is to increase equity exposure and decrease bond exposure:

Five trades to pocket some quick cash this earnings season

2012-01-14T05:00:00.001-08:00

One of the more challenging, yet potentially rewarding, types of option trades is trading around either a long position or no position in a stock that’s about to report earnings.

Many investors tend to stay away from earnings season, as it can be a bit more volatile than they care to try to stomach. But not only is this a great time to make directional plays (by buying calls or puts), you also have the opportunity to put cash in your pocket now and come out a winner either way — whether the underlying stock moves (much) or not.

I like those kinds of odds!

As we head into another earnings season, here are five options trades that could offer fast profits on three big-name stocks.

Trade #1 – Sell Citigroup Puts

Citigroup (NYSE:C) has potential in the long run, or so thinks hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who holds a huge stake in Citi. The stock is trading well below what he (and I) believe is where it should be trading.

Citi closed right at $30 on Tuesday, so if you don’t hold it and you’d like to because it’s a value play, I say sell the C Feb 30 Put for $1.75. That’s almost a 6% premium to take the risk, which is much higher than what I usually target.

Trade #2 – Sell Citigroup Covered Calls

For those who are long Citi and are concerned about its upcoming earnings report and want to hedge their bets, the C Feb 30 Calls are also going for $1.75, so you’ll get 6% downside protection while collecting that premium.

Just don’t sell calls without owning the underlying stock — the risk usually isn’t worth the reward, no matter what the underlying stock is. For this Citi trade, you can buy the shares and sell the calls, or simply sell those C Feb 30 Puts instead.

Trade #3 – Sell Google Puts

I like option trades on Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) because I believe the company is still! in its infancy of world domination. It’s simply the most innovative, amazing technology play in existence outside of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL).

If you don’t own Google but love it right here at the $623 stock price, then sell the GOOG Feb 600 Puts for $15.40. That’s a fantastic income stream of $1,540 per contract. And if Google sells off after earnings, you’re effectively in at $585. And if not, you’ve just collected a nice paycheck.

Trade #4 – Sell Google Calls

For those who own Google and think it has had its run and want to generate some coin off of it without giving up too much upside, sell the GOOG Feb 645 Call for $16.50.? You come out ahead if the stock leaps up as high as $661, but you’re also covered down to $607 if it sells off.

Trade # 5 – Sell Apple Puts

If you don’t own Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) but want to, sell the AAPL Feb 410 Puts for $10.60.? You can get in at an effective price of $400 — a full 5% below the current price if the stocks sells off. And if it doesn’t, you’ve just netted a grand to buy a new iPad and still have some money left over!

As of this writing, Lawrence Meyers did not have a position in any securities mentioned.

Hyflux, Mengniu, Nitto Boseki, Samsung, Tata Power: Asia Stocks Preview

2012-01-14T00:20:00.001-08:00

The following companies may haveunusual price changes in Asian trading tomorrow. Stock symbolsare in parentheses, and share prices (MXAP) are as of the latest close.The information in each item was released after markets shutunless stated otherwise.

China Mengniu Dairy Co. (2914 HK): The country��s largestdairy maker destroyed a batch of milk that contained elevatedlevels of a potentially cancer-causing toxin. The levels ofaflatoxin M1 in the batch was more than double the permittedlevel, an unidentified official at the General Administration ofQuality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said in aninterview with the official Xinhua News Agency posted on theregulator��s website. The shares last traded at HK$26.30 on Dec.23 in Hong Kong.

Hyflux Ltd. (HYF) : The Singaporean water treatmentcompany said a Chinese subsidiary will sell two assets to ajoint venture between Hyflux and Japan��s Mitsui & Co. for about$41.2 million, the company said in a statement. The shares rose6.3 percent to S$1.105.

Hyundai Glovis Co. (086280 KS): The company signed anautomobile shipping contract worth 751.9 billion won ($650million) with affiliate Hyundai Motor Co. (005380) (005380 KS).Separately, Glovis signed a 578.1 billion won contract with KiaMotors Corp. (000270) (000270 KS), according to regulatory filings.Glovis, a logistics company, fell 2.4 percent to 205,000 won.

J. Front Retailing Co. (3086) (3086 JT): The operator ofdepartment stores and supermarkets more than doubled its full-year net income forecast to 17.6 billion yen ($224 million) from7.6 billion yen, citing lower corporate taxes. The stock lost1.9 percent to 355 yen.

Nitto Boseki Co. (3110) (3110 JT): The maker of building materialsreduced its full-year net income projection 42 percent to 1.4billion yen. The company plans to reverse some of its deferredtax assets after the passing of a new law related to corporatetax rates. The stock slid 1.1 percent to 281 yen.

Nomura Holdings Inc. (8604) (8604 JT): The bro! kerage w as approvedthe Shanghai government as Japan��s first qualified financialinstitution under the qualified foreign limited partner program,according to a statement from the People��s Bank of China on itswebsite. Nomura, Japan��s biggest brokerage by market value,added 0.4 percent to 239 yen.

Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) (005930 KS): The company aims for a15 percent increase in mobile-phone sales next year, the KoreaEconomic Daily reported, citing unidentified industry officials.Asia��s biggest maker of chips, flat screens and mobile phones,rose 0.7 percent to 1.07 million won.

Tadano Ltd. (6395 JT): The crane maker cut its full-yearnet income forecast by 25 percent to 1.5 billion yen due toreversal of deferred tax assets. The stock rose 1.3 percent to482 yen.

Tata Power Co. (TPWR) : India��s biggest electricitygenerator outside state control said it will buy the remaining51 percent stake in Tata BP Solar, a venture with BP Solar. Thecompany��s shares jumped 2.3 percent to 90.5 rupees.

A Brief History of Bed Bath & Beyond's Returns

2012-01-13T19:36:00.001-08:00

Despite constant attempts by analysts and the media to complicate the basics of investing, there are only three ways a stock can create value for shareholders:

Dividends.
Earnings growth.
Changes in valuation multiples.

In this series, we drill down on one company's returns to see how each of those three has played a role over the past decade. Step on up,?Bed Bath & Beyond (Nasdaq: BBBY ) .

Bed Bath & Beyond shares returned 75% over the last decade. How'd they get there?

The company doesn't pay a dividend, so you can scratch that off the list.

Earnings growth was remarkably strong. Bed Bath & Beyond's normalized earnings per share grew at an average rate of 18.5% a year from 2002 until today. That's about triple the broader market average, and a strong performance for any company to achieve, particularly given the weak state of the economy. There's no question about it: Bed Bath & Beyond's earnings have been a huge success over the last decade.

But if earnings were so strong, why were shareholder returns fairly weak? This chart explains everything you need to know:

Source: S&P Capital IQ.

Bed Bath & Beyond was substantially overvalued a decade ago. Ten years of falling valuation multiples ever since has prevented part of the company's earnings growth from turning into shareholder returns. That's an important distinction to make: Bed Bath & Beyond's modest returns over the last decade were fueled by overvaluation in the past, not a deterioration of its earnings.?????????????????

The good news is that, at about 16 times earnings, shares actually look like a decent value today. While the past decade has seen valuations contract, the coming decade could see stable, even expanding valuations, helping more of the! company 's earnings growth turn into shareholder returns.

Why is this stuff worth paying attention to? It's important to know not only how much a stock has returned, but?where?those returns came from. Sometimes earnings grow, but the market isn't willing to pay as much for those earnings. Sometimes earnings fall, but the market bids shares higher anyway. Sometimes both earnings and earnings multiples stay flat, but a company generates returns through dividends. Sometimes everything works together, and returns surge. Sometimes nothing works and they crash. All tell a different story about the state of a company. Not knowing why something happened can be just as dangerous as not knowing that something happened at all.

Add Bed Bath & Beyond to?My Watchlist.

Investors shouldn't wait to see if Liberty Media hikes its stake

2012-01-13T15:09:00.001-08:00

Sirius XM Radio (NASDAQ:SIRI) shares jumped nearly 4% Monday after the New York Post reported that billionaire John Malone’s Liberty Media (NASDAQ:LCAPA) was set to ��double down�� on his earlier bet on the satellite radio provider that saved it from bankruptcy. That would surely give Sirius some added lift. But even if the rumor is baseless, investors should bet on the company.

For one thing, its stock is reasonably valued. Sirius trades at a price-earnings ratio of 51.43, still high but cheaper than where it has been in the past five years, according to Reuters. Its multiple on a price-sales basis is 2.25, in line with the S&P 500��s 2.11. Year-to-date, Sirius is up more than 13%, beating the NASDAQ Composite index, which is off almost 5%. Wall Street has a mean price target on the New York-based company of $2.30, well above the $1.85 level where it closed Monday.

Plenty seems to be going right for Sirius. As of Sept. 30, it had a record subscriber base of more than 21 million, up 7% from a year earlier. ?Its churn rate of 1.9% has remained stable. Free cash flow for the first nine months of 2011 was $224 million, higher than the $210 million generated during all of 2010. Malone, who lent Sirius $530 million in 2009 in exchange for a 40% stake through preferred voting shares, has earned a 15% return on his loans, according to the Post. Unfortunately, because of its high debt load –? more than $2.6 billion as of the last quarter — Sirius doesn��t earn much money.

Wall Street analysts expect the satellite radio provider to earn a whopping 1 cent per share in the current quarter and the next quarter. It earned 2 cents in its latest reported earnings.

No doubt, Sirius has its share of critics, and many investors expect it to fail. There’s the overhang of the Howard Stern lawsuit and myriad rumors that swirl around the stock, which has a huge short interest.

! But ther e are many reasons to expect Sirius to do much better than it is today, though its stock price is never going to be confused with Apple��s (NASDAQ:AAPL). In September, Sirius raised the price on its most popular radio package. Unlike at Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), Sirius customers did not rebel because the increase was a modest $1.50.

For some people, satellite radio is the perfect entertainment medium. Some 3.4 million Americans endure ��extreme�� commutes of 90 minutes or more each way, a number that��s increasing as people are willing to travel greater distances for scarce opportunities for advancement. Let��s not forget the 1.8 million or so tractor-trailer drivers who rely on satellite radio to help them pass the time on the open road.

Auto sales, a big source of satellite radio revenue, are on the rebound. J.D. Power & Associates recently noted that November new-vehicle sales are forecast to be 791,900 units, a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 11.3 million units. That��s the highest monthly selling rate in three-and-a-half years.

Satellite radio will retain its profitable niche in the media landscape for years to come.

Jonathan Berr does not own shares of the aforementioned stocks. Follow him on Twitter @jdberr.

Barnes & Noble Beats Amazon Down to Zero

2012-01-13T10:22:00.001-08:00

"The days of the subsidized Kindle -- perhaps even down to zero -- may be on the way," I wrote two years ago. "If The New York Times were to offer two years of prepaid service with a free Kindle included, wouldn't it take e-readers to a whole new level?"

Well, I was early and got the wrong e-reader, but we've finally hit the age of publisher-subsidized e-readers.

Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS ) is offering its $99 Nook Simple Touch for free to bibliophiles willing to pay $19.99 a month for a year's subscription to New York Times' (NYSE: NYT ) namesake digital paper.

I know what you're thinking. Paying $240 for a year of a digital newspaper sounds like an expensive way to get a $99 e-reader for free.

It can even get more costly.

"After the initial year, your New York Times subscription will automatically continue at the then current price, which you can cancel at anytime, without penalty."

Yes, if you forget to cancel after those first 12 months, the digital reads and monthly bills will keep coming. How many deal seekers will forget their Nook anniversaries a year from now? However, what about the folks that will actually want to keep paying? New York Times is going to hook a lot of digital readers who have told their paperboys to get off their lawn.

Subsidization station
There are no official details on who is picking up the tab here. New York Times would normally be expected to pick up most -- if not all -- of the tab for the Nook, but the bookseller is also rightfully motivated to give the newspaper giant some kind of break here. Just last week Barnes & Noble blamed sluggish sales of its entry-level e-reader as a reason for hosing down its guidance.

In other words, it's a convenient deal. New York Times wants to pump its online circulation, and Barnes & Noble has e-readers collecting ! dust. Th e offer is also available as a $100 discount for those seeking to buy the $199 Nook Color.

Buyers angling for the richer features of the $249 Nook Tablet are also in luck if they're into paparazzi and celebrity news. A deal with Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX ) People magazine slashes $50 off that price -- essentially matching Amazon.com's (Nasdaq: AMZN ) Kindle Fire -- for buyers willing to pay $9.99 a month for a full year of that magazine's digital edition.

"The only way to make a dent in Amazon -- or Sony for that matter -- is to create tablets so cheap that newspaper companies can subsidize the costs by sending them out to their willing subscribers." I wrote four years ago, when Amazon and Sony (NYSE: SNE ) were the only two household names in the e-reader market. The Nook and iPad were still far away from becoming public realities.

I guess I nailed that one.

Your move, Bezos
The only shock here is why Amazon didn't beat Barnes & Noble to the punch. It has seen the prices of its entry-level Kindles go from $399 to $79, so it had to know that publisher subsidization was an eventual reality with every passing price cut.

The New York Times has been its top-selling newspaper since the Kindle's debut ahead of the 2007 holiday shopping season.

Knowing this makes it more than likely that Barnes & Noble is taking a bigger hit here than one would expect. After all, why would New York Times subsidize a $99 Nook Simple Touch before swallowing down the more popular and cheaper $79 Kindle as an incentive to drum up digital subscriptions?

In shocking investors by targeting a deficit this fiscal year of $1.40 a share -- more than double the red ink that investors were expecting -- Barnes & Noble pointed to "additional investments in growing the NOOK business"! as a dr ag on its bottom line. Advertising and international expansion were explicitly mentioned, but taking a hit in cahoots with a major daily would also fall under this category.

Amazon will need to respond. Booklovers don't care about the math behind the scenes to make this freebie work. They're not breaking down who is paying what in the subsidization process. All they see now are free Nooks if they're fans of the widely read daily and cheaper tablets if they're a People person.

Amazon finally has someone hungrier and clearly more desperate to get its e-reader into the hands of users willing to spend on digital media. Amazon can always wait until Barnes & Noble implodes financially, but it can't risk the Nook eating into its market share.

It's time to turn the digital page. The next chapter should be a good one.

The popularity of e-readers, smartphones, and tablets opens the door for some surprising Wall Street beneficiaries. Read up on three hidden winners in a free report. If you wait for the report to show up on your Nook, you may be too late to the party, so check it out now.

Winn-Dixie Gets Big Buyout Offer, Stock Rises 70%

2012-01-13T05:54:00.001-08:00

Private grocery store chain BI-LO LLC has agreed to buy Winn-Dixie (WINN) for $560 million, the company announced on Monday. BI-LO said it will pay $9.50 per share for Winn-Dixie, a 75% premium to its Friday closing price (no exactly living up to its “Buy-Low” name, har-har).

The market appears to be expressing slight skepticism about the deal, as shares are currently up about 71% to $9.30.

BI-LO, which is majority owned by private equity firm Lone Star Funds, operates 207 supermarkets in Southern States like Georgia, and the combined company would have about 650 stores. In a statement, BI-LO Chairman Randall Onstead emphasized that there is “no overlap in our markets” where the two companies might have to compete. Currently, BI-LO doesn’t expect to close any locations.

Before today, WINN stock had fallen 24% on the year.

One curious issue: on Friday, nearly 4.5 million shares of Winn-Dixie were traded; on an average day, the stock trades hands just under 1 million times. It was the second highest volume this year. The stock was down on the day Friday, but clearly some people were buying. Could any buyers have had an inkling of what was about to happen?

Banks Turn Borrowers, Seek Cash from Customers

2012-01-13T01:11:00.001-08:00

European banks have found a new way to bring in cash. They borrow it–but instead of turning to each other to bring in funds, they are borrowing it from companies that were once happy to deposit their excess cash in exchange for interest. Worries over the eurozone crisis have hit both the banks and their former depositors, and now both have worked out a new arrangement that seems to satisfy them both–at least for now.

Reuters reported Monday that banks, wary of borrowing from one another or a central bank over debt fears, have begun negotiating secured lending arrangements with companies flush with extra cash–which, instead of receiving a regular unsecured interest payment in exchange for their money, now insist on collateral and other measures in so-called repo deals or short-term secured lending.

While companies themselves are reluctant to talk about such measures, one source said that in one specific category of lending, companies account for 25% of these deals. Very large companies with an abundance of cash are typically the ones that will execute such arrangements. Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Peugeot are reported to be among them, as some of the most recent entrants into the repo field.

Frank Reiss, who oversees some of the repo business at Euroclear, the Brussels, Belgium-based settlement house owned by a group of banks and the largest administrator of repo trades in Europe, was quoted saying, "Companies in the past were ... happy to deposit cash on an unsecured basis to a bank for an interest payment."

He added, "Now following the crisis, we have seen that companies are engaging in repos secured with collateral against the cash they are lending."

Repos work by one participant purchasing collateral from the other; it is obliged to sell it back later at a predefined date and for a slightly lower price, or so-called haircut. In that manner the seller has provided cash to the buyer.

European companies held $872 billion cash in total at the middle of 2011, according to numbers from Moody's. Companies other than banks engaging in repos generally use a third-party firm to administer collateral; these are known as triparty repos, and the triparty market has grown 22.3% in the first half of 2011, according to figures from the International Capital Market Association. That compares to a lesser growth rate overall in repos.

Reiss estimated, based on what he sees daily, that as much as 25% of the triparty market is on behalf of companies. Traditionally such transactions made up only 2% to 5% of the overall repo market.

Regulators have expressed concern over the transparency of repo transactions, and have been critical of closed-door deals known as shadow banking. The U.S. Federal Reserve has set up a working group to suggest reforms for the repo market.

The market closes out a losing week

2012-01-12T20:36:00.001-08:00

Regardless of the volatility induced by Friday��s options expiration (as if the market needed any further motivations), it can��t be a good sign that an increase in trading volume pushed stocks lower.

It��s also probably not good �C for bulls, anyway �C that stocks had a mind of their own Friday, independent of the recent dynamic of stronger dollar/weaker commodities/stocks fall that has been the central theme since a selloff in equities began this month.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 93 points to 12,512, the Nasdaq?fell 20 points to?2803?and the S&P 500 slipped 10 points to 1333.

Commodities were generally higher, finishing in the green after starting lower on another rally by the dollar, which eventually reversed course. Crude oil settled back above $100 a barrel, while gold and silver gained 1.2% and 0.4%, respectively

As has been the case this month, however, the combination of the recent downtrend in stocks and the typical lighter newsflow has come to make Fridays a day of reflection for traders, and for the second Friday in a row, that has meant a down day for stocks.

The legitimate concerns are well-covered, of course, continual risk profiles out of Europe and the Middle East (although for different reasons), continued high levels of unemployment and a stagnant real-estate markets, as well as what still-high food and energy prices mean for every other company trying to get a piece of consumers�� dollars.

Not that there weren��t specific bummer s on Friday: Gap (NYSE:GPS) shares plunged?more than 17%?after the company��s quarterly profit report late Thursday, which included a warning that full-year profit wouldn��t come close to current Wall Street estimates, as costs would exceed what the company had originally expected. Aeropostale (NYSE:ARO) also added a dour outlook to the retail sector, and its shares plummeted 14%.

Leaving aside the much larger que! stion of whether these are some of the initial digs into the idea that historically high profit margins have no chance of being sustained, it was at least enough for investors who have now seen no appreciation in stock prices in more than three months to worry about where the next push higher will come from.

As a kicker, we��ll throw in Friday��s selloff in large-cap financial stocks as another ominous move. The Financial Select Sector SPDR (NYSE:XLF) exchange-traded fund lost 1.4% to fall to its lowest level in five months.

It��s reasonable to expect lighter volume next week leading into a holiday weekend could be positive for the major indices. But their longer-term prospects, for now, seem less sanguine.