Top Stocks

By Seth Fiegerman, MainStreet

In some states, it seems like millionaires are a dime a dozen. In others, they’re an endangered species.

It turns out that some states are better breeding grounds for millionaires than others, according to data from Phoenix Marketing International.

No one knows this better than Mississippi, which has fewer millionaires as a percentage of the population than any state in America. Barely 3% of the state’s total population (or about 30,000 households) are millionaires. The median household income is less than $40,000 a year.

 

Morningstar has come up with a list of the top 10 stocks for new money -- a task that seems nearly impossible in this crazy market.

The idea was to find stocks where Morningstar managers have put new money to work. As it turns out, the firm's managers continue to overweight financials. One manager liked Citigroup (C) so much that he plowed 6% of his fund in the stock.

In fact, Citigroup leads the list of top new money purchases at Morningstar, although the firm admits that the stock's fair value uncertainty is "very high."

Here are the rest of Morningstar's top 10: 

Barron's favorite online broker may be one you've never heard of: thinkorswim.

The brokerage was bought out by TD Ameritrade last year, but it still operates as a separate broker-dealer, Barron's reports. Barron's likes all the firm's cool features, including streaming historical data that lets you practice trading strategies.

Brokerages across the board are beefing up features, realizing that investors will go elsewhere to find new tools they want. Now, Webinars and live events are becoming common, and social networking is practically required.

Here are the rest of Barron's top 5 picks: 

Invest in Imax (IMAX)? Before you spit out that coffee you're drinking, consider that the beleaguered stock is gaining some credibility.

The Canadian company is riding the coattails of "Avatar" to its first annual profit in four years, reports The Los Angeles Times. The highest-grossing movie in history has generated $150 million in box office revenue for Imax.

And Imax has broadened its focus to include more than just films about cavorting dolphins. The company is increasingly moving to Hollywood blockbusters, recognizing that there nothing like watching guns blaze and stuff explode on an Imax screen. 

Here's something a little obvious to everyone: Companies are sitting on their cash and cutting back dividends. And it was easy for them to justify doing that over the past two years.

But now that the credit markets are easing up and the economy is improving, maybe it's time to part with some cash?

The number of companies paying dividends has dwindled. Now, half the dividend money in the S&P 500 index comes from only 25 companies. That's down from 35 companies a decade ago, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

Business spending is picking up as the economy recovers. Airlines, hotels and restaurants are all seeing a pick-up in spending.

 

Where do business people like to spend most? (5 credit card stocks to get boost from spending)

 

One of the most popular places during the peak of the bull market was the upscale steakhouse. That popularity translated to explosive growth and lots of competition.

 

In the early stages of the last business cycle it did not seem to matter how many steakhouses opened in a particular city. They were all packed and steakhouse franchises like Morton's (MRT) and Ruth's Chris (RUTH) did tremendous business.

 

Their stocks did quite well too, but that ride ended with over expansion that run head first into a crippling recession.

 

So much for the death of Wall Street banks in the wake of the financial crisis. A recent report shows that London no longer is the world leader in finance, with New York gaining ground and sharing top honors with London despite a roller-coaster ride for the industry in late 2009.

 

Specifically, London lost 15 points while New York gained one point in the biannual survey conducted by Z/Yen Group on behalf of the City of London Corporation -- placing them in a tie for first place. Trailing behind were Hong Kong at #3, Singapore at #4 and Tokyo at #5.

• Get FREE buy and sell recommendations on the 50 biggest names in the financial sector

 

Social networking company Facebook announced this morning that it has set up shop in Hyderabad, a city of about 4 million southern India. The new office will have online sales and operations teams, according to a an executive’s post in Facebook’s official blog.

The company is trying to wave off concerns that it is sending tech jobs overseas, pointing to a similar expansion in the states with a new office in Austin, Texas. Facebook also claims that support centers in a variety of time zones provides better service to its worldwide customer base and allows for multi-lingual support.

 

By James Rogers, TheStreet

With the telecom industry's CTIA conference a week away, AT&T (T) has unveiled a raft of new services that it says will bring smartphone features to traditional cell phones.

The telecom giant is touting a new cloud-based service called Mobile Share, which offers online storage for photos and videos captured on customers' cell phones. Some 250 megabytes of storage will be offered free of charge, with additional 10-megabyte increments available for $5 a month.

AT&T has overhauled its group texting capabilities, letting customers "reply all" to up to 10 contacts and import information such as maps into text messages. AT&T also has launched a Web-based service that automatically backs up a phone's contact list onto a computer.
 

Barnes & Noble (BKS), not prepared to play second fiddle to Amazon (AMZN), rolled out its own Nook electronic reader last year to compete directly with the Kindle.

Now, the bookseller is going head-to-head with Apple (AAPL) by releasing an app that will sell titles for download to the iPad.

(Find out the other latest Apple rumors here).

 

Barnes & Noble clearly won’t go down without a fight. However, the sad reality is that the company is going down -- scuffle or not. Shares had been dropping like a rock for years before the financial crisis, and its latest earnings report a few weeks ago shows a stock on the decline.

 

By Jim Cramer, TheStreet

 

Either the market doesn't care that the health care bill will pass -- and it will -- or it doesn't think that the proposal will cost that much -- something I think is nuts. Which brings us to a very tenuous crossroad: We have to wonder if this is one of those occasions, like in 2008, where the market doesn't see the coming catastrophe. Or perhaps the market sees any resolution as positive.

 

I don't. I think when the health care bill passes -- and it will pass, I believe, because Nancy Pelosi has worked diligently behind the scenes to bend the anti-abortion foes, the key votes, to her will -- the president will get a second wind. That means the whole agenda -- cap-and-trade, Card Check for easier organizing (something that Wal-Mart's (WMT) inability to move even on its dividend boost tells you is coming) and amnesty for immigrants who are currently not citizens -- will quickly come to pass, perhaps even before the election. To pay for these items I see a dramatic increase in ordinary tax rates and perhaps capital gains and dividend tax rates in 2011 either reaching or exceeding those ordinary income rates as this current version of the Democratic Party believes that only rich people own stocks. (That's been a hallmark from Day 1 with this administration.)

 

Given those hurdles, which include a suicide pact with financial health for small businesses that obviously can't afford health care without risking the capital formation necessary, I think you have to put the double-dip recession back on the table.

 

 

 

Today, we saw some powerful industrial production data from all corners of the globe. There was a record monthly rise in industrial output across the 16-nation euro zone in January, with production up 1.7% from December. India's factory output surged 16.7 percent in January from a year earlier -- its fourth month of double-digit expansion. Mexico’s January output was up 3.6%, reversing a severe -10% drop in 2009.

 

It appears that manufacturing is once again on the rise now that the world economy is on firmer footing. That means commodity companies that stoke the fires of industry -- mainly stocks that deal in iron, copper, coal and oil -- should see growth in the months ahead.

 

While many stocks in these industries are good buys, a great little stock investors should consider is a Minnesota iron miner with big potential for shares and a whopping 11% dividend.

 

After the market's close Thursday, Goldcorp (GG) reported fourth-quarter earnings of 25 cents a share (excluding one-time items).

That was in line with the Wall Street consensus. Revenue climbed by 27.8% to $778 million -- substantially above analysts' $732-million estimate. For the quarter, Goldcorp reported production of 601,300 ounces of gold.

The news was good enough that investors can pardon chief executive officer Chuck Jeannes if he sounded like he was crowing. 

 

Here's an attack on Apple not likely to have Steve Jobs in a flop sweat: In a class-action lawsuit filed Thursday, a Manhattan Beach, Calif., man claims that his iPod shuffle is defective. The reason? While he was working out, his perspiration traveled down the earphone cord, shutting the Shuffle down.

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This injustice was addressed by Stephen Vale, whose filings call Apple out for advertising wild claims about the clip-on MP3 player's uses. These include -- but are not limited to -- its ability to function while working out, running "on the road" (with a picture of a woman on a bicycle) and "on the go" (with a picture of a woman pushing a shopping cart).

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While running with his new iPod in May, Vale says his perspiration traveled down the ear cord and into the Shuffle's built-in control, causing the device to -- his word here -- "fail."