Top Stocks

By Kelley Wright, Investment Quality Trends

For the most part, our cash needs are met by a paycheck -- until you no longer have one. At that point you will need a pool of capital and a stream of income from that capital to meet your needs. That's why we invest -- to build capital and income to meet or augment current and/or future cash needs.

Our preferred strategy is through buying shares of very high-quality companies with long histories of dividend payments and dividend increases. Why? Because dividends represent the most basic and fundamental measure of return on investment.

Besides high quality and a long history of dividend payments and dividend increases, what is ultimately of most importance is that the shares be purchased when they offer good value.

 

If you really think Tumblr is worth $1.1 billion, then Facebook's (FB) stock is worth much more than it is selling for. That's because the goal of Yahoo (YHOO) is to monetize Tumblr on mobile and that's just what Facebook is doing with its products.

But that doesn't matter.

There was a fabulous discussion on Street Signs last week with Jon Steinberg, president of Buzzfeed, arguably the hottest site of its kind of the Web. Steinberg pointed out that Facebook rebutted almost every objection about its service -- from no longer hot, to not monetizing mobile, to not being an important platform -- and nobody cared. In fact, people continue to misstate the case of Facebook, point-blank twisting the facts as if it doesn't even matter.

 

By Tim Parker

The markets ended Monday's trading session barely in the red on the back of a weak dollar and gold that started the day sharply lower but then rebounded.

On Tuesday, traders will watch for signs of follow-thru of Monday's pullback.

Here's what happened overnight:

Morning news

• S&P 500 futures are down slightly to 1,661.75.

• The EUR/USD was unchanged at 1.2881.

• German 10-year government bond yields rose 1 basis point to 1.3%.

 

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Energy approved what is only the second permit to export liquefied natural gas from the United States.

The permit went to the Freeport LNG project in Texas, a joint project of Freeport LNG Investments, ZHA FLNG Purchaser, Dow Chemical subsidiary Texas LNG Holdings and Turbo LNG, a subsidiary of Japan’s Osaka Gas. The permit will allow Freeport to export up to 1.4 billion cubic feet to gas a day. Subject to environmental review and final regulatory approval, Freeport plans to begin exports in 2017.

The permit went to Freeport, but I think the immediate profits will go to Chicago Bridge and Iron, the engineering company most likely to win the bulk of work on Freeport.

 

What to make of the violent trading in silver (-SI) on Monday. Silver opened higher late Sunday in electronic trading and then collapsed, finally finding a bottom at $20.25 an ounce.

Had that level held, the result would have been the lowest price since August 2010. The sell-off was so extreme that the CME Group, which operates the New York Mercantile Exchange where silver is traded, halted trading in the metal four times overnight.

But silver -- and gold (-GC) -- surged in late trading, settling at $22.58 an ounce, up 23 cents. Gold, which had fallen to as low as $1,336.30, settled at $1,384.10, up $19.40.

Both were surging in electronic trading late Monday -- a signal perhaps that the metals have bottomed after severe slumps this year. 

 

 

There hasn't been any "May Day" calamity this month, as many skeptics had predicted. Instead, the market's barometers have been climbing to multiple new highs. So it's been a downer for the believers in the "Sell in May and Go Away" market strategy.

 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has been incorrigibly unhampered, posting its  221st record closing high this year at a majestic milestone 15,354.40 on May 17. The broader S&P 500 stock index also climbed to another record, at 1,667.42, and the NASDAQ composite index soared to its highest close since October 2000 at 3,498.97.

 

Time to worry? 

 

Information provided by Theflyonthewall.com  

By Louis Bedigian 

 

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