Top Stocks

By Mike Cintolo, Cabot Top Ten Trader

Our latest Top Ten list has an impressive crop of stocks with good stories and charts that have shown large recent buying power (usually on earnings).

Our favorite is Yelp (YELP), a relatively recent IPO that has a great, sustainable story, rapid sales growth and a stock that just exploded higher on earnings. The company is becoming the 21st-century, interactive version of the yellow pages.

Yelp is essentially the de-facto search engine that connects local businesses with consumers who are ready to buy. One study showed that just having a decent presence on Yelp can boost sales by about $8,000, with that number tripling if it's combined with marketing efforts. 

By Suzanne McGee

It shouldn't have come as a great shock to anyone that Dell's (DELL) fiscal first-quarter results, reported Thursday, were rather dire.  

By Richard Suttmeier

 

This week's earnings reports focus on 18 buy-rated stocks in the retail-wholesale sector. This profile is on the front nine, those scheduled to report Monday, Tuesday and pre-market on Wednesday.

On Tuesday I focus on the back nine, those reporting after the close on Wednesday through pre-market on Friday.

 

Let's call an earnings beat a birdie, a match a par, and a miss a bogey. Having an under-par round of earnings from buy rated retail stocks will be a key to sustaining the upward momentum in the overall stock market.

 

Among last week's earnings reports were five buy-rated stocks in the retail-wholesale sector. Three beat earnings estimates and two missed, so there were three birdies and two bogies.

 

By Alyssa Oursler 

By George Putnam, The Turnaround Letter

One of our favorite places to look for turnaround candidates is a list of the worst performers in a certain segment of the market. Because investor sentiment can change very rapidly, today’s dogs often become tomorrow’s darlings, and those who are willing to go against the crowd can reap significant profits.

Among the worst performers in the S&P 500 index since the market hit its lows last June are Apple (AAPL), F5 Networks (FFIV), J.C. Penney (JCP) and Monster Beverage (MNST).

To be sure, many of these stocks carry some risk. There are, after all, reasons why they have underperformed.  But the market often overreacts to these risks, and if these companies can fix their problems their stockholders will be very handsomely rewarded. 

You've been an idiot if you've sold almost any stock so far since the start of 2013. You've been a moron if you've been waiting for revenue to pick up before you've bought. You have been a fool if you've feared the Federal Reserve would act imminently.

You've been a total bozo if you've listened to President Obama about the crashing of the economy because of the sequester -- particularly if you've sold the defense names, which have been the best-acting stocks in the book.

 

In fact, the moves are eerie. It is as if there had been an edict that every stock -- other than gold stocks, a copper or an iron ore stock and maybe a few steels -- that everything has to go higher.

 

To me this speaks directly to the notion of underinvestment and the supply and demand of equities.

 

By Tim Parker 

In less than two decades of existence, Google  (GOOG) has revolutionized the world, transforming itself from a theoretical notion of two graduate students to a verb recognized around the world. But the Mountain View, Calif., company still has plenty of tricks up is sleeve. 

This is how astonishing the stock market is in 2013.

It's not just that the Dow Jones industrials ($INDU) and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index ($INX) finished the week at record highs. Or that the Nasdaq Composite Index's ($COMPX) finish on Friday was its best since October 2000.

It's just that the gains so far in 2013 have come without any prolonged pullbacks and remarkably few weekly losses.

The Dow has suffered just five weekly losses this year. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq just four. Since the turn of this century, the indexes typically have seen eight to 10 weekly losses by now. That includes even the horrific 2008. 

By: Louis Bedigian

 

Is Apple (AAPL) bracing for an iPad Mini sales decline?

Every few weeks, a new report suggests that the answer is "yes."

In March, iPad Mini shipments were expected to decline in preparation for the launch of the next-gen model. Apple cannot sell more units than it ships, so this could feasibly hurt the company's bottom line.

Additional details came to light in April when shipments were rumored to decline by as much as 30%  this quarter. Now DigiTimes has reported that one of Apple's suppliers, AU Optronics (AUO), could reduce its panels from four million units to no more than 2.8 million units.

 

Toyota Motor (TM) blew through my $120 target price on May 10 and kept going. The New York traded ADRs (American Depositary Receipts) traded at $127.26 just before the close on Friday.

As of Friday, I’m increasing my target price to $151 for the ADR. Toyota Motor is a member of my Jubak’s Picks portfolio. This stock pick is up 28.7% since I added it to the portfolio on February 5, 2013.

I added Toyota Motor to this portfolio as a way to play the decline in the Japanese yen being engineered by the Bank of Japan and the Abe government in Tokyo.

My reason for holding onto this position, and increasing the target price, is my belief that the yen at Friday's close of 103.24 to the dollar isn’t the near the end of the drop in the yen. The consensus on Wall Street is we’re headed through 105 to 110 by the end of the year. I think that’s conservative, and that we’re likely to see 120 or so by the end of 2013.

 

By Zacks Equity Research

 

On Thursday, shares of Prudential Financial, Inc. (PRU) hit a 52-week high of $68.45. The momentum was driven by a strong first quarter, which included a 20.6% positive surprise rating affirmation, and successful closure of the acquisition of life insurance business of The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. (HIG).

 
Prudential reported first-quarter 2013 earnings on May 1. Adjusted operating earnings came in at $2.28 per share, higher than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.89. Results also exceeded the year-ago earnings of $1.61 per share.
 

Prudential reported net loss of $1.55 per share in the first quarter of 2013, which was narrower than the prior-year loss of $2.03.

 

 

Adrian Day, president of Adrian Day Asset Management, shares his analysis of the bond market with MoneyShow.com's Nancy Zambell, and suggests his preferred strategy for those investors looking for income.

Adrian, the bond market has not done very well of late, and of course the stock market has been absolutely great. If you had to say either or, would you say either-or?

No, I'm not a big fan of bonds right now for any investor, even investors who want income. Typically, people think if you need income you need to go to bonds. I think interest rates can stay lower than most people imagine for a lot longer than people imagine.

 

By the staff at Kapitall.com

This list looks at stocks reporting earnings next week that have been the subject of attention from hedge funds and short sellers. Do you think an earnings surprise is in store?

To build this list, we started with a universe of stocks reporting earnings next week (May 20 to 24). We looked for an increase in buying from institutional investors, with significant net institutional purchases over the last quarter representing at least 5% of share float. This indicates that hedge fund managers and mutual fund managers expect the upside.

Next, we looked for some degree of optimism from short sellers, with a decrease in share float month over month of at least 1%. This may not seem like much, but in each case the short floats are significantly high, making them short squeeze candidates if earnings surprise to the upside.