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Posted
Oct 16 2009, 03:59 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
It is easy to forget how important sub-$40 oil prices were at the beginning of this year as the world dove into recession. If crude had been above $140 as it had been in July 2008, the combination of high oil prices and the credit crisis could have caused a depression almost certainly. Gas prices were already above $4 a gallon last summer, and the cost of crude was crippling industries from airlines to petrochemicals.
Whatever recovery is afoot now is a very modest one, especially in the U.S. and rest of the developed world. China may be able to take a blow from $100 oil prices, but due to its huge and rising consumption of crude the blow would be a hard one. The U.S., on the other hand, cannot continue to see tiny improvements in GDP if energy costs soar again.
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Posted
Sep 30 2009, 10:47 AM
by
Jim Jubak
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 In the current stock market, Enbridge (ENB) is neither fish nor fowl. And since the stock has hit my December 2009 target price of $38 a share, I'm going to sell it out of Jubak's Picks.
Here's what I mean by that cryptic “neither fish nor fowl” characterization.
I bought North American oil and gas distributor Enbridge for the Picks portfolio back in December 2007 because I thought its 3.6% yield would make the stock price very stable in a tough stock market and that investors looking for safety would bid up the price of these shares.
Bing: What does Enbridge do?
I got half of what I wished for. The stock was very stable, but I didn't get any gain in stock price. Enbridge trades today for roughly the same price I paid for it on December 18, 2007.
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Posted
Sep 23 2009, 04:37 PM
by
CAPS Editor
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from The Motley Fool's Rich Smith.
The idea of buying a stock right after it establishes a 52-week high sends dread through most investors, who worry about the whole "gravity" thing.
That's the thesis of my weekly column on Nasdaq ($COMPX) stocks trading around their one-year highs. I run the names through the wisdom-of-the-crowds meter we call MSN CAPS, and out comes a list of stocks that could be poised to plunge.
On Bing: Tapping the wisdom of the crowd
But while many of the stocks will indeed fall back to Earth, some seem immune to gravity, steadily riding a megatrend to ever-greater heights.
Today, we'll move beyond stocks hitting 52-week highs to identify companies surpassing five solid years of outperformance. Each of these stocks recently appeared on a MSN Money list of stocks trading at new five-year highs. What we want to know is which of these will thrash the market averages for another half-decade. Read More...
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Posted
Sep 10 2009, 04:04 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
A new report from the China Greentech Initiative, which is made up of several dozen alternative energy companies and government organizations, says that the potential for green technology sales in China is as much as $1 trillion.
PricewaterhouseCoopers helped compile the research.
The report says that the total green tech “addressable market” in the world’s most populous country is roughly comparable to 15% of China’s forecasted GDP in 2013.
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Posted
Aug 31 2009, 11:11 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 Think cash-for-clunkers was a good deal? Then look at cash-for-wind farms, which is even better.
Investing in wind farms is all the rage, thanks mostly to a new government program giving big cash grants to renewable energy projects, The Wall Street Journal reports. Morgan Stanley (MS) and Citigroup (C) are each investing $100 million in separate wind farms. We saw cash-for-clunkers explode in popularity, with so many people trading in cars for energy-efficient models that the government had to shut the program down. But unlike cash-for-clunkers, there is no spending limit with renewable energy grants, the Journal reports. Cash-for-wind farms will pay 30% of the cost to build a wind farm (or other renewable-energy facility), and more depreciation deductions (a plus come tax time).
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Posted
Aug 20 2009, 04:00 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The government has made a colossal effort since the 1960s to clean the air and America’s lakes and rivers. Most citizens probably think the the work was remarkably successful. Dead lakes now support fish and other water life. People in big cities no longer develop lung disease from breathing the local air.
Pollution has a life of its own, and has become an issue again as the EPA has released information about contaminated fish in the country’s waterways.
According to Reuters, “Scientists have detected mercury contamination in every one of hundreds of fish sampled from 291 freshwater streams.” Those fish get eaten by animals, and, in some cases, people. That makes the problem a health risk, which raises the issue of whether more should be done to correct the trouble. The government would have to spend more money, money which it probably cannot spare.
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Posted
Aug 07 2009, 12:31 PM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This article was written by Minyanville's Quint Tatro While much of what’s taken place this earnings season can be debated, solar stocks have been lighting up the night with quality top- and bottom-line reports while still flying under the radar quite a bit. From a technical perspective, many are developing excellent bases from which to start building a position. The overall health of the market, of course, plays into any position a trader puts on. I believe we're overdue for at least a minor pause in the current phenomenal run, so when weighing your potential longs, they need to be taken in light of this. In fact, I’d prefer to see a healthy consolidation at levels below where we now stand. My time horizon for the solar group is months, not days, as I'll give them ample time and long leashes to play out. (See Also: Quint Tatro's, "Four Stocks that Could Save Your Portfolio")
While the group has bounced quite a bit off their March lows, they haven’t seen the next leg that so many other sectors have. This draws me to them, as traders may be looking for prudent entries into areas that haven’t yet gotten too extended. Remember: It’s always about risk versus reward. I’ll be commenting on weekly charts with a 50 MA since we're looking out at the horizon and not just at the next few days.
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Posted
Jul 27 2009, 06:54 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
One of the concerns economists have is that rising oil prices could derail a recovery from the recession, particularly if crude moves back above $70 and stays there.
Gasoline prices have kept dropping, for the time being, even though oil has moved up some. Refiners have not passed the rising price of oil on to gas stations, although that could change quickly.
According to the widely followed Lundberg survey, gas prices have dropped a little over seven cents in the last two weeks. The average price of regular nationwide is $2.49.
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Posted
Jul 23 2009, 06:37 AM
by
Tobin Smith
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Solar power, wind power, LED lighting -- those are usually the first sectors that come to mind when we think of so-called “green stocks.” But these days, the green sector is much more than solar panels, windmills and light bulbs. In fact, some of the best green stocks out there aren’t typically thought of as alternative energy plays, but they should be.
Wednesday we saw some solid earnings from one of those unknown green stocks, VMware (VMW). The virtualization software maker reported a second-quarter profit of $33 million, or 8 cents a share. Revenue came in flat at $456 million. Excluding one-time items, VMware would have earned $80 million, or 20 cents a share, and that was better than the consensus estimate of 19 cents per share. The Street liked the news, as VMW shares surged in after-hours trading.
What does virtualization software have to do with being green? That’s simple: energy savings. In fact, the tremendous energy savings companies get with virtualization software -- which essentially turns a single computer network server into the equivalent of multiple machines -- allows companies to save money on the hardware and electricity needed to keep their data centers operating. With virtualization software, an organization’s IT infrastructure can reduce its energy consumption by allowing its computer applications to run on fewer physical servers.
In green energy parlance, this is a “negawatt solution,” meaning that the best way to save a kilowatt is to never have to use it in the first place. But before you can save a kilowatt, you first have to identify it, and that’s where our next company comes in
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Posted
Jul 17 2009, 11:24 AM
by
John Reese
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
One of the key tenets of my investment philosophy is that individual investors can beat the market by learning from the wisdom of history's greatest market minds. In that spirit, today will be the first of a weekly posting in which I'll briefly recap what the market gurus I follow are currently saying about the investment world and the economy, be it short-term prognoses or discussion of long-term strategy. Many of the gurus I'll monitor are those whose approaches form the basis for my own investment models; all of them are successful strategists who have excellent track records. Their advice is worthy of much attention.
In terms of this past week, guru opinions have run the gamut -- a sign of how the incredibly complex market can cause even very intelligent minds to disagree. First, on the bullish side, there was Bill Nygren, whose Oakmark Select Fund has outperformed the S&P 500 by an average of 6.36 percentage points per year over the past decade. In his mid-year commentary, Nygren cites three main reasons he's high on stocks right now: valuations, the amount of cash on the sidelines, and sentiment levels.
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