Top Stocks

By Jim Cramer, TheStreet

 

The natural-gas act is about to go through, and nobody really believes it.

 

Last night on "Mad Money" I spoke to John Larson, the congressman from Connecticut and the man behind the House's thrust into natural-gas-powered trucks. Larson has been heavily influenced by Boone Pickens on this one, with Boone shrewdly pushing for the use of all domestic fuels -- natural gas being the only one we have in abundance.

 

With strong support in the Senate from Harry Reid and this push by Larson, it will be pretty impossible to stop a large rebate or tax credit for fleets to buy trucks that use cleaner, cheaper natural gas. And when I say "impossible to stop," I mean neither the coal lobby nor its president in the White House can seem to buck this one.

 

It's great earnings for the second quarter (announced Tuesday) versus long-term worries for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (TEVA) right now. 

With an assist from some selling on good news, long-term worries are winning at the moment.

For the second quarter, earnings climbed to $1.08 a share. That was an increase of 30% from the 83 cents a share in the second quarter of 2009. The Wall Street consensus had projected earnings of $1.04.

 

Although stocks have been sliding the past two days -- in what appears to be a typical pullback within a medium-term uptrend -- there are still plenty of reasons higher prices are likely over the horizon.

 

Company sales surveys conducted by the ISI Group rose by the largest amount in four months last week. Job gains look set to continue into the second half of the year. Business confidence is up in Germany. Employment is rising at a 3% annual rate in Taiwan. And exports are surging in Japan and South Korea.

 

It now costs some Georgia residents $8.95 a month to receive monthly statements from Bank of America (BAC) in the mail. Because, you know, it's so expensive for the bank's computers to print out and mail the paper.

And customers outside Georgia may soon get hit with the fee, too. The bank plans to introduce the fee in other markets, reports American Banker.

It's no surprise as banks and airlines try to one-up each other to see who can nickel-and-dime their customers the most. 

I interrupt this summer rally with an important message to all investors: Market psychology has not changed despite heady gains in stocks.

 

A market that was grossly oversold has recovered nicely in July. The spark for the rally has been second-quarter earnings that have not disappointed investors and reinforced the idea that the market is cheap, at least in the short term.

 

Once the euphoria of positive earnings ends in late August, pessimism is likely to return. September is shaping up to be quite the vacuum in terms of news impacting stock valuations.

 

Say what you will about Citigroup (C), but its sale of the controversial Phibro unit now looks like pure genius.

Phibro, if you'll recall, was the home of Andrew Hall, the rockstar commodities trader that was due a $100 million bonus. Hall became the poster child for excessive Wall Street compensation at a time when Citigroup was getting a $45 billion government bailout.

Did one employee really deserve $100 million? That drama was big news at Citigroup, and no doubt factored hugely in the bank's decision to sell Phibro last year to Occidental Petroleum (OXY) for a price rumored to be around $450 million. 

If Apple (AAPL) can sell more than 1.7 million iPhone 4 units in just three days in the U.S., it’s hard to imagine how long the lines will be when it hits the streets of China.

The People’s Republic is the world’s largest mobile phone market, and negotiations were finalized yesterday on a contract with a Chinese telecom provider to land the iPhone 4 on mainland China very soon.

 

With terms of its contract with telecom carrier China Unicom Ltd. (CHU) set to be announced on Aug. 1, things do seem to be lining up for Apple to expand its approximate 7% share of sales in the Chinese market ending the second quarter.

 

But AAPL shareholders shouldn’t uncork the champagne just yet.

 

It's getting increasingly difficult to escape the influence of Facebook. Every product you buy, from your non-dairy creamer to Dr. Scholl's insoles, invites you to become a fan on the omnipresent social network.

 

If any company can relate to Facebook’s virtual monopoly over a section of cyberspace, it’s Google (GOOG). The search engine has become synonymous with surfing the Web, with the verb "googling" actually enjoying a place in the Oxford English Dictionary.

• Check out hot ETFs

But Facebook better watch out -- because if Google has its way, "facebooking" will never have the chance to become a verb. That's because the Internet juggernaut is creating a Facebook competitor of its own and is looking to take over the social-networking scene.

 

Amazon.com (AMZN) and its groundbreaking Kindle e-reader have been overshadowed as of late by electronics juggernaut Apple and the sexy new iPad. Tech sites touted an iPad frenzy in Asia as the gadget went global last week, and rumors abound that demand is so high that iPad suppliers can’t keep up.

But if you think Apple (AAPL) and its iPad have killed the Kindle, think again. It turns out that a recent price cut to Amazon’s entry-level e-reader has been met with tremendous success. Sales were so strong that Amazon completely sold out of its $189 model!

 

By Louis Navellier, Editor, Blue Chip Growth  

By Jim Cramer, TheStreet

 

They weren't Stone Walls, a la Jackson in the Civil War, but the banks hung in all day yesterday and acted well into the bell.

 

The strength was a marked improvement over what seemed to be an investible trend. Yesterday I took a stab at it, saying that a lack of bad press -- headline risk -- might be behind the stabilization. I think that's part of it. So is valuation; the rest of the market has moved a great deal while this group has done nothing.

 

But the thing that bothered me about it is that if you are rotating into Procter (PG) and out of PPG Industries (PPG), you are doing so because of market weakness. If you are buying Progress Energy (PGN), it’s because you think the economy in this country is poor and getting worse. If that's the case, you don't want to own banks.

 

If you're worried that the U.S. and global economies are going to slow in the second half of 2010, then McDonald's (MCD) on its second-quarter performance is the stock for you. (Of course, if you think the upswing of the past week isn't just a bounce, McDonald's isn't the stock for you. See this post for more on that.)

The company reported earnings last week for the quarter of $1.13, a penny better than the Wall Street consensus, and revenue of $5.95 billion, slightly above projections for $5.91 billion. Comparable store sales climbed 3.7% in the United States, 5.2% in Europe, and 4.6% in the Asia/Pacific, Middle East, and Africa business unit.

And that's without any big macro trends in its favor.

 

General Motors is gearing up for a huge initial public offering, and investors mulling whether to jump into the stock should consider its business in China.

The company is killing it in China. In Shanghai alone, there are 27 dealerships selling Buicks -- the brand the Chinese have fallen in love with, The New York Times reports.

That's quite a different story than in the U.S., where people are leery of an automaker still 61% owned by the U.S. Treasury. And Buicks aren't exactly considered a hot car here. 

Apple's (AAPL) all about the iPhone and iPad now. Its desktops -- the machines that carried the company through those dark days before the mobile explosion -- have almost become an afterthought.

So it's nice to see Apple rolling out a long-overdue update to its desktop line. The company beefed up its iMacs, adding new processors from Intel (INTC) and new graphics chips.

It will also begin selling a new Mac Pro tower with up to 12 processing cores, MarketWatch reported. And it debuted a new $69 trackpad for desktops that is similar to what's already in the portable MacBooks. 

By Louis Navellier, InvestorPlace.com

High-priced stocks are certainly not right for every investor, but for those who are willing to dive into pricey shares, it’s important to know if the risk will be worth the reward. With the right pick, a solid outlook can translate into a high-value investment.

Here are 3 stocks with shares trading well into triple digits that would not surprise anyone with a steady rise in current asking price in the days to come.