All,
Happy Labor Day weekend! I hope you all are enjoying the holiday. I ran a VISIONS Scout screen this evening to see what might look good for the short trading week ahead. The strong upward move last week produced a bumper crop of stocks meeting Ron’s criteria. 79 stocks have a Gold$ of 80 or better. 16 of these had a perfect Gold$ of 100. A partial listing of the stocks found in Ron’s Scout Stocks to Buy report is embedded below. Because of the large number of stocks on the list I had to limit it to the 38 having a Gold$ score of 90 or greater.
There are a number of stocks in the top 10 that caught my eye. In particular I find XOM and WAG to be of interest. Both are what I consider top-shelf, blue chip companies. Both pay a moderate and growing dividend. I already have a position in XOM. I own shares, have sold CCs against those shares and also have open NP trades to acquire additional shares. I am trading XOM using a strategy developed by my good friend Teddi over at www.fullyinformed.com.
I am interested in opening a position in WAG. As I mentioned in my post from a couple weeks ago it is in recovery mode having fallen to a recent 52-wk low of $26.26. I think it has great long-term growth prospects with the continued aging of the baby boomers. It currently trades at less than 2x book value. It has a dividend yield of 2.47% and a payout ratio of around 26% which means there is plenty of room for future dividend growth.
Other stocks in the top 10 that interest me are AEO, MRVL, and SNDA. AEO is the retailer American Eagle. Their target market is kids and young adults from 15-25. They have an excellent balance sheet but I’m a little fearful of their near-term earnings potential. Their target market has the highest unemployment rate of all in the US.
MRVL is a high tech manufacturer of communications gear. They too have an excellent balance sheet and trade at < 10x forward earnings. SNDA is another Chinese online game stock. You’ll recall I mentioned a couple of their competitors in my post two weeks ago.
SNDA has over half of its market-cap sitting in cash on it’s balance sheet. Thus, if you remove the cash from the calculation instead of trading at just over 13x forward earnings it is trading for about 6.5x forward earnings! Dirt cheap!
6 other stocks outside the top 10 also have Gold$ scores of 100. They are: ADBE, SF, GPN, JNJ, GILD, and YHOO. Of these I like JNJ and YHOO. JNJ because it is the bluest of the blue-chips and is at an attractive price point. YHOO because after all of the excitement about it being bought last year it has fallen off of everyone’s radar screen and is now plugging along in relative obscurity.
Hope everyone has a great week. All of the big boys will be back on Wall Street after wrapping up their summer vacations in the Hamptons. It will be interesting to see if they put their muscle behind power ing the market higher of if they decide to pull the plug based on the lousy economic data.
Regards,
Troy
The Money Tree 