Top Stocks

By Bryan Perry, editor of Cash Machine

OK! I get it. Just when the American consumer is about to throw in the proverbal towel on the economic recovery, Dell Inc. (DELL) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) erupt into a classic black-heart-of-capitalism, knock down, drag out, donnybrook of a bidding war over data warehousing upstart 3PAR (PAR), a Silicon Valley-based company that is an early entrant in the much-ballyhooed cloud computing, virtualization, optimization revolution. Damn the consumer, business is business!

The main driver behind the bidding war comes down to the reality check of dealing with the onslaught of downloading complex digital/video content and new smartphone technology that clogs onsite data storage banks, drastically slowing data retrieval because of cyber bottlenecks. Cloud computing alleviates network overload and facilitates high-speed retrieval of bandwidth-hogging data banks. 

But after the 3PAR dust settles, the real question is: Who's next in tech?

By Anthony Agnello, InvestorPlace.com

Google (GOOG) was already making cable television providers nervous with its set-top box software, Google TV. Now major media companies should be downright terrified.

According to a report at the Financial Times, the ever-popular Google-owned video hosting website YouTube will soon begin offering pay-per-view rentals of major Hollywood films.

The unnamed on-demand service will be rolled out to American Internet users before an international launch. While pricing may change prior to launch, streaming movies will cost $5 per viewing.

And that's only the beginning of the Internet giant's push into digital broadcasting.

By Don Dion, TheStreet

ETF investors will be watching to see what steps will be taken to deal with inflationary problems in Vietnam and the troublesome rise in Japan's yen. Here are five exchange-traded funds that may make a move this week.

1. Market Vectors Vietnam ETF (VNM)

I have often looked to Vietnam as a promising frontier market. However, recently, the nation has faced pressure as its government takes bold steps in an effort to rein in its growing trade deficit, while at the same time preventing against the threat of inflation.

In response to the actions taken by the nation's leaders, the Vietnam ETF was pounded throughout most of last week, at one point testing new all-time lows.

By Jake Lynch, TheStreet

The S&P 500 ($INX) has tumbled 5.6% in the past month as weak data have spurred a migration into bonds. But not all stocks have suffered in the sell-off. Here are five that have made big gains during the correction. Excluded from the list are telecom and utility stocks, which have countercyclical appeal because of their steady performance and large dividends.

5. The world’s largest online retailer, Amazon.com (AMZN), gained 5.5% over the past month. Second-quarter profit soared 45% to $206 million, or 45 cents a share, as revenue gained 41%. The operating margin narrowed from 4.7% to 4.5%. Amazon.com has $5.1 billion in cash and $132 million in debt.

AMZN trades at a forward earnings multiple of 35 and a book value multiple of 9.6, premiums to indices, but modest discounts to Internet retail peer averages. Roughly 54% of analysts covering Amazon.com rate its stock "buy." A median target of $142.69 implies a return of 15%.

Starbucks (SBUX) made a huge splash recently with its line of Via Ready Brew coffee, which tallied $100 million in sales after only 10 months on the market. The Via packets have been a big hit because of their portability, a relatively low price of $1 a drink and, of course, a Starbucks-quality flavor.

With the instant-coffee marketplace expanding to upwards of $300 million thanks to Via, Starbucks is now looking to take its Ready Brew technology to the next level with a new line of flavored drinks.

But is the move diluting Starbucks business?

By Jim Cramer, TheStreet

Who is bullish on their American prospects these days? Who is unrestrained about the opportunities here? I have found one company, one company that has more demand than it can handle -- besides Apple (AAPL) -- and that's Hain Celestial (HAIN).

A series of meat and egg recalls coupled with the overarching trend toward combating obesity has got this company on a multiyear growth path, even as people somehow think it can't shoot straight.

Hain makes all sorts of high-end, healthful, organic products, including teas, snacks, baby food and cleaning supplies. In each case, it distinguishes itself by ethos: It won't produce something unless it is best-of-breed good for you. That is why it has more than 1,800 stock-keeping units in Whole Foods (WFMI), which itself is doing phenomenally well.

It's no secret that individual investors have been taking big chunks of money out of stocks since the market turned downward in late April -- according to the Investment Company Institute, investors removed a net of more than $46 billion from U.S. equity mutual funds from the beginning of May through mid-August. (Mutual fund flows serve as a pretty good proxy for individual investors; at the end of 2009, more than 91% of U.S. equity mutual fund assets belonged to individual investors, according to ICI.)

Interestingly, however, individual investors as a group weren't even all that keen on stocks during the big rally that began in March 2009. In fact, investors collectively were net sellers of U.S. equity funds from the beginning of April 2009 through April 2010, pulling a net of about $6.8 billion from the funds, according to ICI's data. During the same period, the S&P 500 was gaining almost 50%.

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Those numbers indicate that institutional investors -- hedge funds, endowments, etc. -- led the rally that followed the deep bear market of 2007-09. And institutions have continued to buy stocks this summer while the market has struggled. According to the research group Lipper, institutional investors added more than $13 billion to world equity funds in June and July while many individual investors were running from stocks.

Based on the numbers released this week, existing-home sales may be even scarier than they look.  

Scarier than a 27% drop in July to an annual sales rate of just 3.83 million? Scarier than the lowest annual sales rate in the 15 years this number has been tracked? 

Well, yes. Because this figure suggests that all our worst fears about the housing market and the U.S. economy may be absolutely correct. And I think that interpretation of the housing numbers is a major reason that on Friday, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke just about promised the Fed would go back to its policy of buying Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities to support the economy. 

Tony Robbins may be rightfully known as one of the best motivational speakers of his generation. He's helped many people who sing his praises.

But a market prognosticator? I'm not so sure.

Recently, Robbins jumped on the 'market is doomed' bandwagon, producing a video warning anyone willing to listen that a crash of epic proportion may be coming in the near future.

You can view the message here.

He's really just jumping on the bandwagon, though he does come across in a rather compelling fashion.

With equities down more than 13% from their April highs and with bonds on a tear, investors are fleeing the stock market. Equities have underperformed bonds in 10 of the past 12 trading days, while the ICI showed equity funds have lost money for 16 straight weeks.

You can see this withdrawal of demand in the breadth data. According to the folks at Lowry Research, who have been tracking the supply and demand trends since 1938, their proprietary measure of "buying power" has dropped 34 points since the early August rally high. In comparison, their measure of supply has fallen only 5 points over the same period.

Clearly, instead of intense short-selling, the current market malaise is the result of a buyers' strike. But there are still plenty of reasons to believe that the bull market that started back in March 2009 isn't over just yet.