Top Stocks

After a volatile May, many folks are looking to companies that pay a regular dividend as a way to limit their risk and provide a bit of steady income.

While it’s important that the payout be substantial in these type of income investments, it’s also important for investors to focus on stocks raising dividends, because this helps guarantee that a company won’t leave shareholders in the lurch and slash payouts when times get a little tough.

After all, if you buy in for the quarterly payday, the last thing you want is for your holdings to slash their dividend payouts or let them languish without any increases.

 

James Altucher at The Wall Street Journal is singing the praises of little-known ValueVision Media (VVTV). That's probably why shares are up 13% Thursday to $1.95.

The company runs ShopNBC, which is the third-largest home shopping network in the country after QVC and HSN. Its revenue last year was $530 million.

The stock has been all over the place, Altucher writes, going from $14 in late 2006 to 20 cents when the market crashed. It's not for the faint of heart. But here are the reasons why Altucher likes it: 

By Ted Reed, TheStreet

 

With its biggest shareholder strongly motivated to get out, General Motors is moving rapidly towards an IPO.

 

"This is an unusual IPO in the sense that most of the owners want out quickly," said veteran industry analyst Joe Phillippi of AutoTrends Consulting. "For the government, the investment is a political bone of contention, so the faster they can be gone, the better off they will feel."

 

General Motors has scheduled a financial conference for Tuesday, where CFO Chris Liddell and others will provide an update on GM's global business.

 

The financial reform bill being hammered out in Congress will open a new Office of Financial Literacy to help people manage money, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Yep, the federal government wants to teach people how to save. The same federal government projected to run a $1 trillion-a-year deficit for the next decade.

So please, Uncle Sam, teach me how to manage money and then turn me loose inside Macy's (M). I'll probably need a bailout a few hours later. 

By Jim Cramer, TheStreet

 

I heard it five times this week, twice Tuesday in a Wall Street bar, two times during the day chatting with investors and then last night at dinner with a pal, an old pro trader from down the block.

All said the same word, as if programmed, like pod people in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." The word? Malaise.

 

All the people who used this term were older friends from my trading days; wizened veterans of other terrible markets; and, of course, people who came of age during the Jimmy Carter years. 

• Is your stock a solid pick?
  

The unlamented president talked about the malaise in America and how the country was going in the wrong direction, coincidentally in large part because of failed energy policies that produced gas lines and a lack of energy independence.

 

Apple (AAPL) is such a market superstar that it's making the Nasdaq-100 Index look a little silly.

Apple now has a 20% weighting in the index, notes the Bespoke Investment Group. But that weighting is a little skewed, thanks to Microsoft (MSFT). Huh?

Not to get too technical here, but the Nasdaq-100 is a modified capitalization-weighted index. That allows the index to cap the weighting of the largest stocks so they don't take over. 

It's been a tough start to the week for the stock market. After an impressive run higher from its June 8 low, the S&P 500 topped out Monday after China decided to reform its currency policy. Since then, the index has moved down to lose 4.1% in early trading today.

 

So was that it? Just another dead-cat bounce within a downtrend measured from April's highs? Or is this just a temporary pullback within a new uptrend? So far, the evidence suggests the more optimistic scenario is playing out. And that makes the current dip a fantastic buying opportunity.

 

One measure of breadth -- or the net number of advancing stocks -- is forming what the late technical analyst Kennedy Gammage called a "buy spike" pattern. Translation: After an initial move higher that established that the bulls were in charge, stocks have pulled back to present latecomers with a low-risk entry point.

 

Written by Douglas Estadt

 

Dr. Eric Jackson of Ironfire Capital LLC joins us to discuss the potential impact of the unpegging of the Chinese yuan to the dollar and to give us an update on his China picks.  Dr. Jackson highlights the potential of certain stocks and gives us details of what is new on his radar in China:

• Orient Paper Inc. (AMEX:ONP) had positive quarter earnings that he anticipates will continue to improve.
• China-Biotics Inc. (Nasdaq:CHBT) recently reported results, and net sales increased 50%.

 

Maybe it's their weather. But for whatever reason, the Brits are really good at creating dystopias, those worst of all possible worlds.

1984. A Clockwork Orange. And now finance minister George Osborne's austerity budget.

The plan, announced Tuesday, projects roughly $170 billion a year in budget cuts and new taxes that are expected to reduce the United Kingdom's budget deficit from 10% of GDP this year to roughly 2% of GDP by 2015.

 

Was Warren Buffett watching when France lost to South Africa in the World Cup this week? His company had $30 million riding on the game.

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) sold insurance to a client that would have required it to pay big money if France won the tournament, Bloomberg reports. France was the 1998 tournament champion.

• 5 investing lessons for Buffett
  

"I think we're going to lose 30 million bucks or something like that" if France wins, Buffett told CNBC in March. He didn't say who the soccer-loving mystery client was.

 

By Daniel Dicker, TheStreet

 

I'm uncomfortable about it, but I bought BP (BP) shares Monday for less than $30 and sold some higher calls against it.

 

It's tough to admit to, because the company has perpetrated the worst environmental disaster we've ever seen in our oceans, one that will certainly reverberate for decades.

 

But I'm a trader. And the question you have to ask a trader is: Are we here to find ways to make money or not? Answer: We're here to find ways to make money.

 

Earlier in the year, Target (TGT) broke ties with Visa (V) over its store-branded credit cards (see related Top Stocks post here). Rather than let the credit card giant take a cut, the big-box retailer decided it would process the payments itself.

Now that Target has taken the reins of its credit card business, it's looking to pump up sales with a huge promotion -- 5% discounts on any purchase within the store that's charged to your Target credit card!

The move seems too good to be true for cash-strapped consumers. But is that actually good for the retailer, considering that bad debt and credit card delinquencies have been a problem recently for Target?

 

By Jim Cramer, TheStreet

 

Is it time to start thinking about BP's (BP) bankruptcy? There is an incredible belief that somehow the company's cash flow of almost $7 billion a quarter is enough to get it through this.

 

I am beginning to think that this thing will swallow the company, just swallow it. And the claims are unfathomable as long as the spill continues. If we get a storm, a big storm, it's pretty much "game over" for the company, and I doubt anyone can argue against that.

 

I have heard many analogies to the Exxon (XOM) Valdez, but I am beginning to believe that this one's more like asbestos and the endless number of companies that had to file for bankruptcy protection to deal with the never-ending claims from people who worked with asbestos.

 

This year marks a very important transition for Maxwell Technologies (MXWL), one that, unfortunately, won't make life easy for the company, given the state of the auto industry. You can see the results of that transition in the company's somewhat disappointing earnings for the first quarter of 2010.

Maxwell really runs two businesses.

One business is composed of the older microelectronics (radiation-hardened components and computers for use in space) and transmission (capacitors used in high-voltage electrical transmission lines) product lines. Back in 2006, these product lines accounted for two-thirds of the company's sales.

 

If you had listened to analysts, you would have run screaming from Huntington Bancshares (HBAN), which had twice as many sell ratings as buys in December.

But if you had bought the stock, you would have seen a 66% rise this year as Huntington became a star performer, Bloomberg reports.

It's the same story with Eastman Kodak (EK) and Sunoco (SUN), which both soared 20% even though nearly one out of three analysts covering them urged investors to sell, writes Lynn Thomasson.