The Oxen Group submits:
The agriculture sector has been a tough one to work within lately. Yet fertilizer producers may be on their way back up. Last month in Agrium’s (AGU) earnings, the company cited their forecast moving forward, commenting that there has been a surge in the demand for potash at the start of 2010 and that strong demand should continue into the spring. Further, Brazil, one of the largest importers of potash, is supposed to rebound. Demand is increasing because food demands are expected to increase as the market recovers. The Agrium calls reiterate a position Mosaic (MOS) took back in January with their last earnings announcement: that fertilizer is back.
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Dividends4Life submits:
Linked here is a detailed quantitative analysis of Kimberly Clark Corp. (KMB). Below are some highlights from the above linked analysis:
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Michael Michaud submits:
The Market Outlook This Week
Good Friday is the big USA unemployment numbers report with the equity market closed. Some are expecting job growth last month. Some of the forecasts are anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000 increase. The market sure seems to have it priced in already. A positive number here could keep the market moving up, and a negative number could be a let down and create selling pressure on stocks next week. Greece and Dubai are still in focus with their debt problems. I wouldn’t be surprised if the US Dollar took a breather correction this week with its big up moves from last week.
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The Manual of Ideas submits:
The following five companies are owned by some of the most highly regarded investment managers out there. We believe each company’s shares are worthy of closer consideration and may deliver investment outperformance:
Fair Isaac (FICO) is 20%-owned by Mason Hawkins’ Southeastern Asset Management, which has added to its stake in recent months. Fair Isaac has leveraged the success of the industry-leading FICO credit score brand to create products in related areas and non-financial verticals. These diversification efforts as well as a variable cost structure have dampened the impact of lower demand for high-margin credit scores. FICO continues to be a fundamentally attractive business with low capital intensity, good normalized margins, and a strong competitive position. Longer term, it remains to be seen how successful the FICO score will be in terms of beating back challenges from rival products. We suspect that the brief window of opportunity that opened up for competing products as a result of the credit crisis may be shut before competitors are able to challenge the supremacy of the FICO brand. In any case, with FICO shares trading at a 10+% FCF yield in a still below-normal operating environment, we believe the shares are too cheap to ignore.
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Ben Marks submits:
Bennett Marks is president and chief investment officer of Marks Group Wealth Management, a registered investment advisor in Minnetonka, Minnesota. Seeking Alpha recently had a chance to ask Ben about his highest conviction stock pick.
To get started, please tell us a bit about your firm.
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The Manual of Ideas submits:
By Matt Darrah
My recommendation to buy Tetragon Financial Group (TGONF.PK) does not follow my typical tenet of buying good companies with management teams who are wise capital allocators at a cheap price. But due to the attractiveness of the Company’s valuation, I believe it represents an attractive investment opportunity.
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Dobromir Stoyanov submits:
Finding the best dividend stocks is a difficult process. It requires constant screening of the dividend achievers and dividend aristocrat indexes, in order to identify companies which are worth your time to further research. Research entails reading analysts reports, annual company reports, staying up to date on news in the industry and competitors in general and constantly evaluating whether the stock is worth your investment or not. If you find the right dividend stocks however, the rewards could be tremendous. Sometimes however certain stocks would not be widely followed by dividend investors, because of their small size. Another reason could be because they are very close to getting on the dividend achievers list, but are not there yet.
The companies in the news include Realty Income (O), Williams-Sonoma, Inc. (WSM), ConocoPhillips (COP), Raytheon Company (RTN), Brinker International, Inc. (EAT), Starbucks (SBUX) and Hingham Institution for Savings (HIFS).
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Stephen Rosenman submits:
Does AAPL go higher after the iPad arrives in the stores? Or does AAPL sell off after the hype dies down? After all, how much higher can AAPL go? Let’s see what other products have done for AAPL and its share price.
The iPod launched in 2001. At the time, EPS was -6 cents. By 2005, EPS reached $1.56 in large part due to the iPod. Apple’s share price went from $10 to $72.
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Stephen Castellano submits:
Weekly Long/Short Focus List as of March 26, 2010
Our highlighted stocks continue to anticipate major ratings and estimate changes by a number of sell side shops, as illustrated in our March 17 report, "Goldman Sachs and Nostradamus versus Simple Quantitative Models and Common Sense."
Four Weeks Early on Scotts Miracle-Gro
For example, on March 23, 2010, Scotts Miracle-Gro (SMG), which has been a top performer in our monthly model portfolio and our monthly focus portfolio, was SMG)+Higher+On+BofAMerrill+Lynch+Upgrade/5463172.html” rel=”nofollow”>recently upgraded by Bank of America/Merrill Lynch with a target price moving to $53 from $45.
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George Fisher submits:
Sino-Forest (TRE.TO – C$19.30, SNOFF.PK – $18.77) is China’s largest timber company and is uniquely positioned to benefit from continued improvement in China’s economic standard of living. SNOFF grows, harvests, and processes timber domestically and is a major importer of logs. SNOFF offers investors exposure to a Chinese resource that is in short supply and to an industry that is favored by the government. Sino-Forest shares trade on the Toronto exchange using TRE.TO and on the US Pink Sheets using SNOFF.PK.
First it is cement, then it is steel, and then it is wood. This is the progression of raw materials demand as a country moves through economic development – cement for roads and infrastructure, steel for commercial buildings and factory production, and wood for housing and consumer products. It is estimated China has reached the point in economic development when domestic wood demand will grow by a consistent 10% annually. For example, the government has set a short-term target of 4 million new affordable housing units over the next three years to accommodate the anticipated long-term migration of 300 million people from rural to urban areas. Beijing looks favorably on the timber industry to supply the materials for this effort and in Oct 2009 formed the Forest Industry Revitalization Plan 2010-2012. The Plan calls for reduced government taxes on timber land and offer financial incentives for best practices forest management. In addition, the government is looking to privatize its state-run tree farms.
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Wall Street Cheat Sheet submits:
Sunday night, World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. (WWE) hosted an action-packed WrestleMania XXVI. After looking in the rearview mirror of the company’s stock chart patterns, I noticed that the past 3 years, WWE’s stock price has risen in Q1.
Since closing out 2009, WWE shares have risen from $15.33 per share to today’s price level of $17.60. So far, that’s a 14.8% stock price rise in this year’s Q1, with an additional 8.2% annual dividend yield the company prides itself on issuing to its loyal shareholders.
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Bill Simpson submits:
Bill Simpson wrote an analysis of First Interstate BancSystem (FIBK) to TradingIPOs subscribers on March 20. In its debut Wednesday, March 24, the company sold 10 million shares for $14.50 each, raising $145 million. It had expected to sell 8.7 million shares for $14 to $16 apiece.
The text of Mr. Simpson’s original writeup follows:
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Investing, Long Term Investment, stock market | admin March 29, 2010 | 
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