Investment Ideas

Weekly roundup of stocks moving in and out of the Magic Formula Investing screen.

In effort to bring the entire student body daily promoted stocks, picks on the move and other small caps with news, here are The Dean’s Honor Roll Stocks

When The Dean was a little boy, his grandmother, who was heavily invested in stocks, advised him to, “only buy blue chip companies that have little or no downside risk,” and, “always work with a broker that has an impeccable reputation.”

A strategy that is often overlooked or just ignored is timing your trades with the trend of the overall market (i.e. S&P 500). After all, if a stock is scheduled to move higher, then it should regardless of third-party influences, right?

Short term trade recommendation on Apache Corp (APA), based on an anticipated pull back in the stock market.

Having narrowly missed the tech bubble bursting, I purchased my first dividend stock on December 11, 2003. I had heard dividend investments were supposed to be safer, but knew very little else about the strategy. I was fortunate enough to accidentally buy enough good dividend stocks to learn the “secret” of dividend investing.

The Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto says it has signed a deal with China to develop a massive iron ore project in West Africa.China's state metals group Chinalco will pay more than $1.3bn (£0.85bn) for a 47% stake in the Simandou project in Guinea, Rio Tinto said.

There is a lot being said right now about “going green.” Environmental awareness is growing, and many people are interested in having greener homes.

The dollar, PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bullish (NYSE:UUP) has jumped dramatically higher today as the Euro, CurrencyShares Euro Trust (NYSE:FXE) fell off a cliff. Fear appears to be emerging over future problems in Europe. We all know about the problems with Greece but this is just the start

Helios & Matheson North America Inc.

After market close, The Dean prompted all of his students to do their homework on $OCTI and their plan to reduce energy consumption by 50% or more.

It's more of a mathematical curiosity than anything else, but check out the odds of 14 successive up-days below, the record for which looks to get set by the SPY today. If that's not a pot of leprechaun gold for the bulls on this St. Pat's day, I don't know what is!

Unlike most people who analyze investments, I think there are periods of time where domestic long-only investors may be consigned to low or even negative returns. As investors, we are generally optimists; we don’t like can’t win situations like the Kobayashi Maru.

This is the third installment in a multi-part series that looks at various options used by income investors to boost their yield while waiting for dividend growth to lift their portfolio’s overall yield-on-cost. Last week we looked at REITs. This week we are looking at Preferred Stock.

Xfone, Inc. (AMEX: XFN) through its subsidiaries, provides voice, video, and data communications services in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel. No exciting news out for this communications company but $XFN traded nearly ten times its 3 month average volume, gaining 30.30% today.