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Stocks to Buy Now

Stocks to Buy Now Before the U.S. Infrastructure Spending Boom

By , Money Morning -

In last week's State of the Union Address, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered some hints as to where he'll focus his spending over the next four years - signaling some stocks to buy in 2013.

In his speech, President Obama made reference to the critical need for infrastructure spending in the United States. He proposed a "fix-it-first" program to address some of the more pressing needs among our nation's roads, highways, bridges and other areas in need of repair.

We have heard this type of political commentary before as the need for infrastructure repair was a highlight of the 2008 campaign. Deteriorating infrastructure is a growing problem in the United States.

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Stocks to Buy: Will China's Bull Run Continue?

By , Contributing Writer, Money Morning -

The past three years, from an investment viewpoint, have had many surprises for those trying to decide which stocks to buy.

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises is having one of the world's best performing economies - China - right alongside one of the poorest performing stock markets - Shanghai - over the past three years.

The darkest days were in late November 2012 when the Shanghai index dipped below the 2,000 level for the first time in nearly four years.

But the Shanghai index staged a remarkable turnaround, rallying 23% just since the start of December.

With the beginning of the Chinese New Year - the Year of the Snake - it's a good time to evaluate if this market rally will make Chinese stocks good ones to buy.

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Are Insiders Signaling These Companies are Stocks to Sell?

By , Money Morning -

Recently Money Morning Chief Strategist Keith Fitz-Gerald pointed out that insider selling has been soaring of late. He pointed out that according to Vickers Weekly Insider Report the ratio of insider selling to buying by officers and directors stood at better than 9 to 1.

This is a level that has been predictive of near-term tops in the stock market and individual investors need to be on alert for potentially falling stock prices ahead. While this indicator is not a precise timing measurement it is a red flag telling us that the people running publicly traded companies have concerns about valuation and prospects as we head deeper into 2013.

Insiders can tell us something about the potential performance of individual companies as well.

As far back as the mid-1960s Victor Niederhoffer and Jim Lorie combined on studies that showed insider cluster selling was predictive and indicative of lower prices over the next 12 months. Professor Nejat Seyhun of the University of Michigan has also done extensive research and concluded that when insiders sell in clusters it is likely that lower prices are ahead.

Given that insiders in the aggregate are warning of a market decline it is useful to take a look at which stocks are also showing warnings of lower prices ahead.

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Stocks to Buy: 5 Picks Buffett and Insiders Love Right Now

By , Contributing Writer, Money Morning -

Investors often look to Warren Buffett's purchases when trying to pick the best stocks to buy.

And with good reason: Buffett's conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A, BRK.B),
has an impressive track record and got off to a stellar start this year. Berkshire Hathaway gained 8.7% in January, beating the Standard & Poor's 500 Index's 6% rise and the Dow Jones Industrial Average's 7% increase.

It's also a good sign when Buffett's picks include companies with heavy insider buying, given insiders buy because they expect shares to rise.

That's why MarketWatch and Insider Monkey just took a look at Buffett's 38 holdings and compared his purchases to stocks that have had sustainable insider buying in the past 90 days.

And who knows better than insiders? These folks are privy to the most current information on their companies' prospects, and research shows stock prices rise more after insiders' net purchases than after net sales.

MarketWatch and Insider Monkey came up with the following five stocks to buy now, based on Buffett's holdings and insider buying.

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10 Dividend Stocks to Buy Now

By , Contributing Writer, Money Morning -

Near-zero interest rates have lots of savers clamoring for yield and plunging into dividend stocks.

Compared with paltry yields on a bevy of bonds, dividend stocks - especially those with the potential of capital appreciation - have become progressively more attractive to income-seeking investors.

Now's a good time to hunt for dividend stocks, as more companies increase payouts. Dividend payments grew sharply in Q4 2012, with 1,262 dividend increases reported, a 94.5% gain over the 649 increases in Q4 2011, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

And rich dividend payments are expected to continue among companies flush with cash since
they have curtailed expansion and investment amid growing global uncertainty.

In fact, more than 5,000 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg News forecast that companies in the MSCI World Index will boost payments by 3.8% to a combined $39.43 a share this year, up from a low of $29.58 in 2009.

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The Best Stocks to Buy, According to Top Strategist

By , Money Morning -

It doesn't hurt to have help narrowing down the best stocks to buy - especially when the advice comes from one of the country's best stock analysts.

Tobias Levkovich, Citigroup Inc.'s (NYSE: C) chief equity strategist, has sent a note to clients consisting of 18 recommended stocks and their end-of-year price targets. We've sifted through the list to bring you the 10 stocks that have the highest projected returns based on Citi's targets.

Those returns range from 10.14% to 27.27%.

Here are the companies and their price targets, accompanied by a summary of Citi's analysis for each stock:

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Stocks to Buy Now: How to Profit from Higher Food Prices

By , Contributing Writer, Money Morning -

If you thought your grocery tab was high in 2012, brace yourself because this year will be even worse- but that just means there are stocks to buy now that will let you cash in on higher food prices.

Last year's drought drove up prices of grains such as corn, wheat and soybeans. Soybean prices jumped 40% earlier in 2012 while wheat prices soared about 50%. Prices declined in the fall as crops were harvested, but remained elevated.

Because of the higher prices of animal feed such as corn and soymeal, many ranchers had to slaughter animals earlier than planned. This caused a brief bump up in meat supplies in 2012, but threatens to lead to tight meat supplies and higher prices in 2013.

The Livestock Information Center in Denver forecasts that this year's U.S. beef production will come in at 24.8 billion pounds - the lowest level since 2005.

In 2014, the Livestock Information Center forecasts only 23.6 billion pounds of beef will be on the market - the lowest level since 1993.

And Larry Pope, the CEO of the world's largest pork producer, Smithfield Foods Inc. (NYSE: SFD), told the Financial Times in 2012 he thought pork and chicken would soon join beef on the list of increasingly expensive meats.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts food prices overall will increase 3.5% to 4% in 2013.

However, like most government estimates, those could be on the low end due to these three main factors driving higher prices.

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Dividend Stocks to Buy Now: The Only New "Aristocrat" Worth a Bet

By , Contributing Writer, Money Morning -

Weary investors scouring the landscape to find decent dividend stocks to buy should take a hard look at the latest list of Dividend Aristocrats.

The S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrat Index measures the performance of companies in the S&P 500 Index with amarket value of at least $ 3 billion that have increased dividends for at least 25 consecutive years.

In 2013, only 54 companies, approximately 11% of companies in the S&P 500, made the cut.

Actually, it's no surprise this group of dividend stocks is tiny.

Think about it.

These companies have raised dividends for the last 25 years - a period of time that included the Great Recession, numerous oil price shocks, at least two major market meltdowns and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If they can steadily raise their dividends in the face of that kind of adversity, you can be pretty confident they're going to be around for awhile.

They're the kind of companies that consistently deliver the goods, having outperformed the rest of the S&P 500 on a regular basis. The Aristocrats returned 4.59% annually over the last five years, while the group as a whole produced a negative 0.25% return for the period.

These are businesses with strong balance sheets, healthy earnings and cash flow generation that can help you protect your portfolio - regardless of the market's direction.

But not every Aristocrat is worthy of your hard earned dollars.

Some drop by the wayside. Others are increasing their dividend by draining capital from their business.

Here's what to look for when choosing the best dividend stocks to buy.

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The Best Energy Stocks to Buy According to Industry Insiders

By , Money Morning -

It is no secret to investors that energy stocks lagged the market in 2012 - but now in 2013 some are becoming the best stocks to buy as they head for huge gains.

The Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (NYSE: XLE) has gained about 6.5% over the past year, below the 8% gain in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the 11.5% rise in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

But just looking at 2013, you'll see XLE has risen 8.7%, compared to the Dow's 6% gains and the S&P's 5.13%.

And money is pouring into this sector from a key group of investors: corporate insiders.

As far back as 1968 legendary speculator Victor Niederhoffer and his mentor Professor James Lorie discovered that cluster buying of stock by corporate insiders offered substantial excess returns over the market. When three or more officers and directors of a company break out their checkbooks to buy their own stock there is a good chance that the stock price is headed higher.

This anomaly had been confirmed many times by academics and investors over the year and still holds true today.

The other metric with tracking when it comes to corporate insiders is buying by those two executive officers who are in the best position to evaluate the company's conditions and prospects - the chief executive officer and chief financial officer. If they are buying more shares in the open market chances are high they think the shares are cheap and good things are about to happen.

Best Stocks to Buy Now: What Energy Insiders Like

We are starting to see a substantial amount of insider activity in a few oil production and energy services names, like the following:

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Dividend-Paying Stocks to Buy: High Yield from an Unexpected Sector

By , Money Morning -

Until recently you rarely if ever heard technology mentioned as a good sector to search for dividend-paying stocks to buy.

Technology companies for decades have eschewed paying dividends to shareholders - to grow, you had to spend money. They plowed their annual profits back into the company, spending on research and development or acquiring smaller tech companies that improved their product offerings.

Only the largest tech companies like International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) ever paid meaningful dividends to their shareholders. If a tech stock paid a dividend, investors would take it as a sign that the company had matured and was no longer a growth stock with meaningful opportunities for appreciation.

In fact, a dividend declaration by a technology company could often lead to a sizable stock decline.

But those days have changed.

How Tech Companies Evolved Into Dividend-Paying Stocks

Tech stopped shunning dividends in the 1990s when tech stocks went through a boom phase.

That's because institutional investors have mandates that prevent them from buying anything other than dividend-paying stocks, and they felt they were missing the action in the technology and Internet sector. They began to pressure tech stocks to pay a small dividend so they too could participate in the runaway rally.

Since then we have seen many of the tech giants initiate regular dividend payments to their shareholders. They were never intended to be significant but things have changed dramatically in the last decade.

Today many of these tech giants have seen their stock prices decline as their cash balances increased. They have raised the dividend to the point that tech stocks can now be a meaningful addition to income portfolios - especially for pre-retirement investors looking for income streams that will still be healthy 10 years from now.

Here are a couple examples of some of the best sources of yield in tech.

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Stocks To Buy Now: Profit from Blockbuster New Drugs in 2013

By , Contributing Writer, Money Morning -

One sector offering stocks to buy now is an industry that's been prepping for huge product deliveries in 2013.

I'm talking about Big Pharma.

After being pummeled by generic rivals for the past few years, a few big pharmaceutical companies are fighting back with a new wave of blockbuster drugs that will hit the market in 2013.

More than ever, Big Pharma companies need new revenue streams to battle the "patent cliff - replacing fading profits from drugs that spawned generic competition.

Last year alone, the industry suffered from the expiration of patents for such lucrative name-brand drugs as AstraZeneca PLC's (NYSE ADR: AZN) Seroquel, Pfizer Inc.'s (NYSE: PFE) Lipitor and Wyeth's Protonix, which total accounted for nearly $36 billion in U.S. sales in 2011 and 2012.

But help is on the way.

Pharmaceutical firms logged 39 new drug approvals last year - the most since 1996 - and there are signs the trend could continue through 2013, according to Reuters.

Drugmakers are betting that a new wave of medicines for cancer, diabetes and heart disease will shape up as tomorrow's blockbusters.

European drugmakers, for example, have the potential to deliver new drugs with peak annual sales of $64 billion in 2013-2015 while patent losses will be only $12 billion, according to Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE: DB) estimates.

No doubt about it - Big Pharma is taking aim at generics with both barrels.

That could mean fat profits for savvy investors who focus on high-quality companies with strong late-stage pipelines.

Here are three that are loaded for 2013.

Stocks to Buy: Big Biotech Delivers Big Profits

Innovations in biological science - or biotech - are evolving at the speed of light.

In fact, leading edge biotech products and breakthroughs are saving thousands of lives every day.

And business is booming for one biotech bellwether ...

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Meet the Biotech CEO With a $30 Billion Breakthrough

By , Defense + Tech Specialist, Money Morning • @Robinson_STI -

There's a deadly problem with one of the nation's major medical markets - vaccines.
The technology we use today to prevent diseases like the flu, chicken pox, and polio is hopelessly outdated.
It still relies on the delivery of a portion of the actual virus to the patient to develop immunity. Some of these agents are still grown in chicken eggs, just like they were back in the 1930s. And the vaccines themselves or their additives can still make people sick.
But what if you could develop a whole new class of vaccines that were actually safe using a synthetic DNA? Better yet, what if you could vaccinate yourself against HIV, cervical cancer, leukemia, and hepatitis?
The payoff would be tremendous...

The Great Rotation Makes Stocks a Generational Buy

By , Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning • @ShahGilani_TW -

If you're not gearing up to get fully invested in 2013, you have no one to blame but yourself.

What's likely to happen - and soon - is being called the "Great Rotation" - an investment shift out of bonds and into equities. When this happens, smart investors are going to reap generational rewards. And it may have already started...

Last week $22.2 billion flowed into mutual funds and ETFs. That's the second-largest weekly flow on record. Of that total, $8.9 billion flowed into equity mutual funds, which is the most since March of 2000 and the fourth-largest weekly inflow ever.
This is what you've been waiting for. This is your time.

Here's how to get invested now and why.

Stocks to Buy: The Biggest Winner in the Apple-Samsung Divorce

By , Associate Editor, Money Morning • @DavidGZeiler -

There will be winners for investors as a result of the slow-motion split between Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Samsung Electronics (SSNLF), but the stocks to buy are neither of the warring parties.

Instead, as the tech giants unwind a relationship in which Samsung supplied Apple with billions of dollars' worth of components for its popular iPhones and iPads, the real winners are the suppliers rushing to fill the void.

The once-cozy relationship began to sour a couple of years ago when Samsung began to introduce smartphones and tablets that Apple felt too strongly resembled its own.

Shortly afterward, Apple began filing patent lawsuits. Samsung countersued. The fight grew into a global war, with 50 separate patent suits in 10 countries spread over four continents.

The relationship grew frostier in 2011 as Samsung became the dominant vendor of smartphones based on Google Inc.'s (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android operating system and started taking market share from the iPhone.

In 2012, Apple started shifting more and more component purchases to other suppliers, a process that has accelerated in recent months.

Samsung's invoices to Apple have included memory chips, batteries and display screens in addition to the manufacture of Apple-designed processor chips found in the iPhone and iPad. 

Samsung, in fact, provided 26% of the component costs of the iPhone 4, so there's plenty of new money suddenly available at the Apple trough.

Let's take a look at some stocks to buy as a result of the Apple-Samsung divorce.

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Solar Stocks to Buy: Three Companies Poised for Rebound

By , Associate Editor, Money Morning • @DavidGZeiler -

The majority of investors, when considering stocks to buy, have given up on solar companies.

That's mostly due to a two-year beatdown of the sector and plenty of bad publicity from the demise of federally subsidized Solyndra.

But while the sector continues to suffer - more solar companies will likely go under in 2013 - a choice few are positioned to benefit from a rebound that will start this year.

One sure sign of better days ahead is that the sector has recently attracted interest from one of the world's most respected investors, Warren Buffett.

Just within the past month MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., a subsidiary of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.A, BRK.B), announced a deal to pay SunPower Corp. (Nasdaq: SPWR) between $2 billion and $2.5 billion for two California solar projects.

That followed MidAmerican's purchase of a 49% stake in an Arizona solar plant jointly owned by NRG Energy Inc. (NYSE: NRG) and First Solar Inc. (Nasdaq: FSLR), as well as the $2 billion purchase of a planned solar farm in San Luis Obispo, CA, also from First Solar.

Here's why Buffett has taken an interest.



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