Tuesday - April 24, 2007
 Want to view the archive of past issues? Click here. Manage Profit from the Pros subscription: 1. ZACKS RANK BUY STOCKS Zacks #1 Ranked stocks average a 31.8% annual return. Every day on Zacks.com we highlight four new Zacks Rank Buy stocks.
Each individual stock is chosen based on how well they match the criteria for the four main schools of investing:
Aggressive Growth, Momentum, Growth & Income and Value. Aggressive Growth - Arch Coal (ACI) Anixter International Inc. (AXE) announced the acquisition of Total Supply Solutions Limited, a UK-based fastener distributor, for approximately $8 million in cash, including the payoff of debt obligations. The acquisition is expected to complement Anixter’s product offering and expand its geographic reach by adding customers in Eastern Europe. For 2007, Total Supply Solutions is expected to produce revenues of approximately $22 million, with about half coming from the UK and the remainder coming from Poland and the Czech Republic. Anixter is up over 12% since being featured as a momentum pick on Mar 9. Cascade Corporation (CAE), presented as a Value pick on Sep 13, has returned over 44%. CAE recently reported fourth-quarter profits of 80 cents per share. The result equated to a 27.0% year-over-year improvement for CAE. Revenues jumped 9.7% to $118.9 million from $108.4 million in the year-ago period. Read the full analysis on AXE now!
2. PROFIT TRACKS Zacks.com is proud to share with you some of the best trading
strategies that truly allow you to Profit from the Pros. Today
we highlight... Profit Tracks: Recent Price Strength This screen looks for stocks trading in the upper range of their 52-week highs along with attractive Zacks Rank and Broker Ratings. This strategy proves that the "trend is your friend" with a +35.5% return versus +4.9% for the S&P 500 in 2005. Here are four stocks that make the grade for the Recent Price Strength Profit Track: Amerisafe, Inc. (AMSF), a Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) company, will announce results for the first quarter on May 7, 2007. In late February, AMSF reported fourth-quarter and year-end results. The company noted that strong top line growth combined with excellent underwriting results and steady returns on its growing invested asset base contributed to record earnings in 2006. The company’s shares are within reach of its 52-week high and experienced 2% growth over the past four weeks. Read the full analysis on AMSF now! Middleby Corp. (MIDD) has seen its share price increase by 9% during the past four weeks and is currently hovering right around its 52-week high. In early March, the Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) company reported record net sales and earnings for the fourth quarter. Earnings per share of $1.34 surpassed the consensus estimate by 13% and outperformed the year-ago total. Read the full analysis on MIDD now! Matrix Service Co. (MTRX) recently posted fiscal third-quarter earnings of 24 cents per share. The company stated that its quarterly performance significantly exceeded its expectations as MTRX was able to add to its strong talent pools in the construction services groups allowing the company to capture and execute more projects, particularly in the Downstream Petroleum Industry. At 28%, Matrix currently sports the highest four-week rate of growth listed under this Profit Track. The company is trading very close it its 52-week high. Read the full analysis on MTRX now! Partner Communications Company Ltd. (PTNR), another Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) name, has advanced in share price by 11% over the past four weeks and is trading close to its 52-week high. The company will release financial results for the first quarter on may 7, 2007. In late January, PTNR released its 2006 annual results, noting that the assets built by the company in recent years, making it a leading cellular company in Israel, continued to strengthen. Read the full analysis on PTNR now! To see the full list of stocks that currently pass this winning screen, click here. All the Profit Track strategies were created and backtested using the Research Wizard software from Zacks Investment Research. If you like this screening strategy, but want to narrow down the list of stocks and even improve the performance, then you should start a free trial to this powerful stock picking tool. Learn more about the Research Wizard free trial offer and our new special report “Top 10 Stock Screening Strategies”. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Great Stocks Often Have Great Peers Kevin Matras explains how to find winning stocks in the winningest sectors. More... 3. ZACKS EQUITY RESEARCH Continuing our discussion with Director of Zacks Equity Research Dirk van Dijk, CFA about the state of the market and how certain macroeconomic issues are affecting it, we got his take on a few industry-specific topics. What are a couple industries that are positioned to perform well into the second half of 2007? I think that with a slowing economy – I’ll reiterate: not a recession, but just a slowing economy – historically, you want to go toward the defensive names that can grow earnings kind of regardless of what’s happening in the economy. For example, the pharmaceutical industry has been reporting some really great better-than-expected earnings. Consumer staples also looks to be doing well. More. . .
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Are you looking more at the larger-cap or smaller-cap names? Both. I’m a little agnostic on the question of market caps. Clearly the small-caps have been doing consistently better over the past five or six years, so the valuations are a little more stretched there, but they also tend to have better growth prospects. They also tend to be a little bit riskier. So therefore, I don’t have a strong big-cap vs. small-cap bias, but one could make a pretty good case for the bigger-caps. So general pharma and consumer goods should make good plays? Yes, but the staple goods much more than the big-picture consumer discretionary items. A slowing economy with less of a wealth effect from rising house prices, less mortgage equity withdrawal – aka “the housing ATM” – is going to put some pressure on the big-ticket, easily deferrable-type items. If things slow down and aren’t growing quite as fast, people aren’t going to cut down on the number of boxes of cereal they’re going to buy; they’re not going to stop buying shampoo. So those kinds of things are places you’d want to go. Also, you’d want to take advantage of the weakness in the dollar and look for companies that get a substantial portion of their profits from overseas. Because they get that currency translation effect, which will help boost their earnings just from that alone. That would be China and India, but are you thinking of other regions, as well? Worldwide economic growth right now is about as strong as I’ve ever seen it. It’s just the U.S. that’s the laggard. And I think that strength in the rest of the world is one of the reasons why the U.S. economy is not slowing significantly more than it is. So China and India, certainly, but Europe also seems to be getting its act together. They are sort of biased right now toward raising their rates in order that inflation doesn’t get out of hand. It’s not booming, but it is doing a lot better than it has in the recent past. Same with Japan, which seems to be slowly awakening from its decade-long slumber. Again, it’s not growing anything like China or India – or Indonesia or Malaysia, for that matter – but it goes to further show that’s not just one or two emerging markets showing substantial growth. The other major economies of the world are going to show better growth than the U.S. will. The Euro region will have better growth than the U.S., Japan probably will too, as will South Korea, likely. So I would encourage people to have a good chunk of their money overseas, and/or focus on companies that do a lot of their business overseas. It really doesn’t matter where the headquarters is located, it matters where you’re doing the business. So to the extent you’re doing business in these growth areas that have appreciating currencies, you’re going to benefit. To read the complete Analyst Interview, click here. Dirk van Dijk, CFA is the Director of Zacks Equity Research. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Real-time market insights from Zacks Equity Research Analysts. Stocks featured recently include Surmodics (SRDX), Quest Diagnostics (DGX), Satyam (SAY) and H&R Block (HRB). Get their latest posts: click here. Sinopec (SNP) - Strength in Refining. For full Zacks research report, click here. SurModics (SRDX) - OIndustry Contraction. For full Zacks research report, click here. The Week of Apr 23 – Apr 27 Expectations Set Low for First-Quarter Earnings Find out which stocks have been recently upgraded by Zacks Equity Research: click here. Read the reports on all of the stocks on the Zacks Equity Research Buy List: click here.
4. OPTIONS CENTER Zacks has partnered with the leading options experts, Schaeffer's Investment Research, to provide you the best options commentary, research, and trading tools on the market today. Zacks/Schaeffer’s Options Trading service. Last week, we looked at the High Call Open Interest Filter on Zacks. This week we’ll switch gears and check out the Put/Call Open Interest Ratio Above 1.0 filter. A put/call open interest ratio is simply the ratio of total put open interest to total call open interest. We compute Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) based on open interest in the front three months only. These near-term options tend to attract a more speculative crowd, the sentiment of which is more useful for shorter-term trading. Before looking at a particular stock, let's address our Schaeffer's methodology. We are contrarian-based investors, indicating that we want to see skepticism toward an outperforming stock. On the other hand, we typically like to see optimism toward an underperformer. In our eyes, too much optimism is a sign that nearly everyone who wants to invest in a particular stock already has. Just because a stock sees substantial optimism doesn't mean that we will blindly short that particular security; we need to see some negative price action or a major catalyst for a downside move in order to pull the trigger in most cases. Other indicators we use to measure overall sentiment include short interest, magazine cover stories, media comments, and analyst ratings. Looking over the list of stocks with SOIRs above 1.0, I noticed AT&T (T). The security's SOIR comes in at 2.31, as put open interest more than doubles call open interest among options with fewer than three months until expiration. What's more, this reading is higher than 93% of those taken during the past year. In other words, speculators have been more bearishly aligned against the shares only 7% of the time during the past 12 months. However, that's about as pessimistic as it gets. Short sellers have abandoned the stock, resulting in a paltry short-interest ratio of 1.9. Meanwhile, Wall Street is enamored of the firm, as Zacks reports that 14 of the 18 analysts following the firm rate it a "buy" or better. From a technical perspective, this optimism shouldn't come as a surprise. The security has skyrocketed along the support of its 10-week and 20-week moving averages since May 2006. What's more, the stock has additional support in the form of its 10-month trendline, which it has not closed a month below since November 2005. Overall, this combination of lingering pessimism from options speculators and technical strength has bullish implications from a contrarian perspective. An unwinding of these bearish bets could help to add some lift to the shares. Make sure to continue utilizing all of the valuable filters on these pages for more money-making ideas. Moreover, don't be afraid to make a few paper trades in order to see what strategy works best for you. Please remember that, when it comes to options, the majority of your trades are going to be losers. Don't get discouraged, because that's the beauty of the leverage that options provide. It takes only a few winners out of every 10 trades to make you a very happy investor. Thanks for reading, best of luck in your trading! To learn more about the Put/Call Ratio filter, click here. Discover all the tools and commentary available from the Zacks.com Options Center. Leverage the timeliness of Zacks #1 Rank stocks with options trades that maximize profits and minimize risks. Learn more about our new Options Trading service. 5. Best of the Zacks $100,000 Challenge Zacks is conducting a nationwide talent search to find the very best stock pickers. The winner gets a $100,000 dream job with Zacks! . Sign up for free to join the competition, or just read what stocks the leading players are trading on the Zacks Challenge Player Blogs. Best of the Zacks Challenge Player Blogs Here's what the leading players are saying lately: MoBeer MO’S MARKET THOUGHT AND ANALYSIS Read More or Comment on this post. Java J (Rank #49 with $132,565) >> JAVA’S MARKET MUSINGS #36 << Read More or Comment on this post. Shoelessjoe (Rank #30 with $138,708) WHAT I FOUND Read More or Comment on this post. Read all the Player Blog posts. OTHER TOOLS FROM ZACKS At the heart of Zacks Investment Research is the Zacks Rank investment philosophy that continues to vastly outperform the market. Our Zacks #1 Ranked (Strong Buys) have produced the following results for investors:
And just as importantly, the Zacks #5 Rank stocks (Strong Sell) List has alerted investors as to which stocks to dump from Their portfolios to avoid unnecessary losses. To truly take advantage of the Zacks Rank, you need to first understand how it works. That's why we created the free special report: Zacks Rank Guide: Harnessing the Power of Earnings Estimate Revisions. Download a free copy now to prosper in the years to come. Or view the full list of Zacks #1 Rank FREE PORTFOLIO TRACKER Do you believe that these events affect stock prices?
If you answered yes, then how are you staying on top of these changes for your stocks? If you are one of the 45,000 investors who wake up every morning to the Daily Portfolio Updates emails from Zacks.com, then you are all set. If not, then sign up now to get this vital information sent to you daily and improve your portfolio's performance. Did we mention it's free? Get started now! We hope you enjoyed this issue of "Profit from the Pros", And we look forward to visiting with you again next week. REFER-A-FRIEND If you enjoy this e-mail newsletter, then please pass it along to a friend. Simply forward them the link below to sign up for their own free subscription. If you're reading a forwarded copy, sign up for your own, so you get this wealth of information every week. Just click here. THANKS! Regards and Happy Investing, Charles Rotblut, CFA p.s. What is the mission for Zacks Profit from the Pros? Click here to find out how we will help you become a more successful investor. *The S&P 500 Index is a well-known, unmanaged index of the prices of 500 large-company common stocks, mainly blue-chip stocks, selected by Standard & Poor's. The S&P 500 Index assumes reinvestment of dividends but does not reflect advisory fees. An investor cannot invest directly in an index. Disclaimer: Past performance does not guarantee future results. Investors should always research companies and securities before making any investments. Nothing herein should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any security. To contact us by mail: Zacks Investment Research To unsubscribe from receiving "Profit from the Pros" e-mail newsletter, click here. | |||||||||
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Zacks #1 Stocks on the Move 05/22/2013
| Company Name | Symbol | %Change |
|---|---|---|
| ALLIANCE FIB | AFOP | 9.31% |
| SONIC FOUNDR | SOFO | 7.77% |
| VELTI PLC | VELT | 7.58% |
| TRI-TECH HOL | TRIT | 6.62% |
| AMR CORP | AAMRQ | 4.52% |
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