A real estate company in Stockholm, Sweden called Jernhusen, has put the heat from human bodies to good use, using it to heat a building. All the hundreds of thousands of daily passengers that go through Stockholm Central Station generate a huge amount of body heat. That heat is captured, used to heat water which is transported to another building in order to warm the secondary building. An energy savings of about 25% is claimed.

Although there is no way to invest in body heat energy yet, there are still plenty of other environmentally conscious energy producing companies. You can find free lists of green energy companies, such as ethanol stocks, cloud computing stocks, and water purification stocks, at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com. The lists can be downloaded, sorted, and updated.

By Stockerblog.com

If you had invested an equal dollar amount in each of those companies, your account would be up as of yesterday’s close, by an amazing 11.7% in only one month. If you invested that same total amount in the S&P 500 (to give an apples to apple comparison – no pun intended), your account would only be up by only 4.15%. So the Beatles Stock Index outperformed S&P 500 by an amazing 7.5 percentage points! You would have achieved almost twice the return from ‘buying the Beatles.’

For a list of all the stocks in the Beatles portfolio, which can be downloaded, sorted, and updated, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

Disclosure: Author owns AAPL.

Photos courtesy of Wikipedia. No celebrity endorsement expressed or implied.

By Stockerblog.com

Most analysts say that pharmaceutical stocks and consumer staples are the best places to put your money during rising rates. But there is one stock that will benefit big time from higher interest that doesn’t fall into either of these sectors. The stock is Apple Inc. (AAPL).

Why Apple? First of all, it has no long-term debt. Second, the company has a huge amount of cash. No wonder why I referred to Apple as a money market fund a few months ago. Although many articles report that it has about $51 billion in cash, that number includes $25.391 billion in what Apple’s accountants consider long-term marketable securities. But Apple does have $11.261 billion in cash and cash equivalent securities plus $14.359 billion in short term marketable securities, for a total of $25.56 billion.

Apple’s weighted average interest rate has been dropping for the last three years, as have rates in general, from 3.44% in 2008, to 1.43% in 2009, to 0.75% for the current year. Of the $25.56 billion in what is essentially cash, total income based on the 0.75% weighted rate is about $191.7 million.

If the rate increased to 3% and assuming the balance remains the same (but it should certainly increase), interest income on effective cash would rise to $766.8 million, and at 5%, the income would be $1.278 billion, or $1.18 in additional earnings per share, currently at $15.15 per share. This additional interest is a pre-tax number, but based on the companys effective tax rate, additional earnings would still be close to a dollar a share.

Plus there are no other expenses incurred in generating this income. No salaries, no capital expenditures of manufacturing equipment, no purchase of raw materials, no office space rental, no nothing; just some electrons on a computer screen. Talk about easy money.

If you want to check out the lists of stocks which have a lot of cash, which can be downloaded, sorted, and updated, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

Disclosure: Author owns AAPL.

By Stockerblog.com

One way to define cloud computing is having your programs and data stored remotely on a server far away, instead of on individual computers. As long as you have an Internet connection, you can have a fairly dumb computer ans still utilize cloud computing. The clouds are simply the servers of companies that provide this service, and those servers can be located anywhere in the world. If you have Yahoo (YHOO) mail, Google (GOOG) gmail, or hotmail, then you are using cloud computing in a small way. You don’t have the email servers in your office or home, you use the Yahoo or Google servers. Many colleges and universities are turning over their student email services to Google, which saves them money on servers and saves on staffing for support.

These same benefits apply to the private sector, especially when you extend it to data storage and computer software. You don’t need a technician to come out and install new software to each employees’ station. You don’t need a bunch of network administrators monitoring the company’s servers. You don’t need to periodically upgrade computers. You don’t need to own a bunch of servers. You cut down on the costs and issues relating to the disposal of old computers and servers. You don’t need to deal with data security, as that is the job of the cloud computing company. The benefits of clouds are extensive, and there are over 25 stocks in the cloud industry to choose from, according to the Cloud Computer Stock list at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com, including companies involved in server farms and outsourced storage systems.

Cloud computing as a growing industry now appears almost every day in the financial press. And the interest from investors has been significant. Take for example Salesforce.com (CRM), which is up over 600% since it started trading in 2004.

Salesforce.com is a provider of customer-relationship management services that has promoted ‘the end of software’. Salesforce has customers of all sizes, including Corporate Express division of Staples (SPLS), Daiwa Securities (DSECY.PK), Expedia (EXPE), Dow Jones Newswires subsidiary of News Corp. (NWS-A), SunTrust Banks (STI), and Kaiser Permanente. Salesforce trades at a lofty 89 times forward earnings, debt in the amount of $495 million, with over $769 million in cash. The company just reported a quarterly sales increase of 29.8% year over year, with a 1.8% increase in earnings.

VMware (VMW) is another major cloud and virtualization player. Its product VMware vSphere is a cloud computing data center platform. It sports a forward PE ratio of 49.6. The company has $450 million in debt with $2.9 billion in cash. The company reported that latest earnings increased an incredible 121.4% in earnings on a 45.8% increase in revenues.

Citrix Systems, Inc. (CTXS) provides on demand applications and online services, including GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToTraining, GoToAssist, and GoToMyPC. This debt free company has $902 million in cash and carries a forward PE of 30. The latest quarterly earnings were up 64.3% on a revenue increase of 17.8%.

To access a free Excel spreadsheet database of numerous companies involved in cloud computing in some way, that can be downloaded, sorted, and updated, go to wsnn.com. You can also get info on the green aspects of cloud computing from my book The Green Light on Green Stocks: A Quick Guide to Green Investing and Making Money in Alternative Energy Stocks, in which I described cloud computing as a green industry and a way of providing money saving services to many corporations.

Disclosure: Author owns YHOO.

By Stockerblog.com

Many investors look for debt free stocks selling at or near cash per share. These are stocks which have virtually no debt and are trading close to the amount of cash the company has on a per share basis. Without any debt and a lot of cash, it would be hard for a company to go out of business, unless it is a biotech company with a high burn rate. In addition, the cash might make the company a possible takeover candidate.

WallStreetNewsNetwork.com just updated its list of Low Price to Cash per Share Ratio Stocks with No Debt, which shows the recent price, cash per share, forward PE, and price per cash ratio. Almost all the stocks have price to cash ratios less than 4.

On example is Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS), the video game manufacturer, has $4.99 in cash per share, with the stock selling at less than 15.80, giving it a 3.16 price to cash ratio. The company, with no debt, has a forward PE of 18.8.

FormFactor Inc. (FORM) is another stock with lots of cash. This debt-free manufacturer of semiconductor wafer probe card products, which sells for less than 9.50 per share, has a significant $7.35 per share in cash. Recent earnings were negative, however, revenues for the latest quarter were up 8.2%.

If you want a free downloadable Excel list of ten stocks that have a Low Price to Cash Ratio with No Debt, go to wsnn.com.

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above stocks at the time the article was written.

By Stockerblog.com

Ken Fisher Interview Part 7
Please note: The complete interview took place on Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Stockerblog: There was an article recently about how some investors got early retirement, they had nothing better to do, did a lot of research on their stocks, and were very successful. The article talked about one guy who built his portfolio from $30,000 to $3,000,000. Do you think that article was about an aberration or just looking at one end of the bell curve?

Fisher: That’s looking at the very few people who are definitely one tip of the bell curve.

And it’s not the average investor that could possibly consider it unless they had an extreme amount of luck to achieve anywhere near that.

The average investor by definition cannot do that. The average investor cannot possibly beat the market. The average investor, at most, can equal the market.

Stockerblog: Speaking of playing the market, the Bunk chapter on swine flu and some of the other things. It seems like someone who trades or does short term investing could actually play the opposite of some of these bunks. The swine flu could be an example or some other major catastrophe where the market has a temporary sell-off, and if you are mentally set to go into the market to do the opposite, a trader could actually do fairly well playing to opposite of the common bunks. Would you agree with that?

Fisher: I think that’s possible but for the average person that thinks its a trade, that he or she is a trader, is exceptionally unlikely. In fact, when we look at the history of traders, most of them don’t do very well.

Said another way, if you say who are the traders we can think of that have become legendary investors, are really, really rich and successful as traders, there aren’t very many of them; although we have a lot of traders in total, which tells you that it’s another one of those things where its a tip of the bell curve where people have a knack to do that but they’re very unusual and they are probably least like our primitive stone age ancestors. They probably have the leave behavioral finance issues embedded into their brains for some reason.

But there aren’t very many of those people and the odds of anyone being one of those people is small.

If the person that can trade these things, which I do believe there are people who can do it but its not me that’s for sure, if there are people good enough to trade these, they are good enough to trade all kinds of other things.

So another one of the bunks that you will remember reading about is my comments about gold, and gold is basically a thing where if you’re a very good trader, gold might be a good thing for you but gold has had an OK return but a huge volatility over time, and 85% of history on a monthly basis has lost money, and made all its total return out of 15% of the months. If you’re a good enough trader, you should be able to trade gold successfully and you should be able to trade all kins of other things too. And you don’t need an trading advice from me, that’s for darn sure.

The fundamental nature of those rare George Soros like traders or Paul Tudor Jones type people, the people at have made money off of trading that have gotten good returns and have had some consistency, because you can trade gold, you can trade oil, you can probably trade swine flu, but most people aren’t very good traders.

End of Part 7

The Debunkery book is available at Amazon.

Ken Fisher obviously doesn’t give individual stock recommendations in his interviews, but some stocks he likes that were mentioned in his recent Forbes columns, including high dividend stocks, are available in the form of a free Excel list at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

Part 1 of this interview is available HERE.

Part 2 of this interview is available HERE.

Part 3 of this interview is available HERE.

Part 4 of this interview is available HERE.

Part 5 of this interview is available HERE.

Part 6 of this interview is available HERE.

By Fred Fuld at Stockerblog.com

Disclosure: Interviewer doesn’t own any of the stocks mentioned in this interview series at the time the articles were written.

Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this interview prohibited without permission. All opinions are those of Ken Fisher, and do not represent the opinions of Stockerblog.com or the interviewer. Neither Stockerblog nor the interviewer nor the interviewee are rendering tax, legal, or investment advice in this interview. If you want tax, legal, or investment advice, contact the appropriate professional.

So what is cloud computing? It is having your programs and data stored remotely, ‘in the clouds,’ instead of on individual computers. As long as you have Internet connection, you can have a fairly dumb computer ans still utilize cloud computing. So where are these so-called clouds? They are basically, in very simple terms, the servers of companies that provide this service, and those servers can be located anywhere.

Do you have Yahoo (YHOO) mail, Google (GOOG) gmail, or hotmail? Then you are using cloud computing in a small way. You don’t have the email servers in your office or home, you use the Yahoo or Google servers. As a matter of fact, many public universities are turning over their student email services to Google, giving students a type of gmail account. It saves them money on servers and saves on staffing for support.

These same benefits apply to the private sector, especially when you extend it to data storage and computer software. You don’t need a technician to come out an install new software to each employees’ station. You don’t need a bunch of network administrators monitoring the company’s servers. You don’t need to periodically upgrade computers. You don’t need to own a bunch of servers. You cut down on the costs and issues relating to the disposal of old computers and servers. You don’t need to deal with data security, as that is the job of the cloud computing company. The benefits of clouds are extensive, and there are over 25 stocks in the cloud industry to choose from, according to the Cloud Computer Stock list at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com, including companies involved in server farms and outsourced storage systems.

Salesforce.com is a provider of customer-relationship management services that has promoted ‘the end of software’. Salesforce has customers of all sizes, including Corporate Express division of Staples (SPLS), Daiwa Securities (DSECY.PK), Expedia (EXPE), Dow Jones Newswires subsidiary of News Corp. (NWS-A), SunTrust Banks (STI), and Kaiser Permanente. Salesforce trades at a lofty 76 times forward earnings, debt in the amount of $476 million, with over $742 million in cash. The company just reported a quarterly sales increase of 30% year over year, with a one cent drop in earnings per share.

VMware (VMW) is another major cloud and virtualization player. Its product VMware vSphere is a cloud computing data center platform. It sports a forward PE ratio of 45. The company has $450 million in debt with $2.9 billion in cash. The company reported that latest earnings increased an incredible 121.4% in earnings on a 45.8% increase in revenues.

Citrix Systems, Inc. (CTXS) provides on demand applications and online services, including GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToTraining, GoToAssist, and GoToMyPC. This debt free company has $902 million in cash and carries a forward PE of 29. The latest quarterly earnings were up 64.3% on a revenue increase of 17.8%.

To access a free Excel spreadsheet database of numerous companies involved in cloud computing in some way, that can be downloaded, sorted, and updated, go to wsnn.com.

Disclosure: Author owns YHOO.

By Stockerblog.com

The Boulder Total Return Fund (BTF) has over 27% of its portfolio in Berkshire A shares plus another 12% in Berkshire B shares, so in excess of 39% of the investment assets in Buffett’s company. Other stocks the closed end fund owns includes:
Yum (YUM)
Wal-Mart (WMT)
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)

Another alternative is by owning shares in the Sequoia Fund (SEQUX), a mutual fund with a large position in Berkshire Hathaway. Over 15% of their portfolio is invested in the stock. Some of the other stocks in their portfolio include:
IDEXX Labs (IDXX)
TJX (TJX)
Martin Marietta (MLM)
Fastenal (FAST)
Mohawk Industries (MHK)
The minimum investment in Sequoia is $5,000.

A third way to invest is by investing in the Fairholme Fund (FAIRX) which has a little over 6% of their portfolio invested in Berkshire. Although the concentration is not as significant as Sequoia, it is the number three holding in the portfolio, as measured by percentage of assets. Fairholme’s other major holdings include:
Sears (SHLD)
Goldman Sachs (GS)
Citigroup (C)
WellPoint (WLP)
Minimum investment is $10,000.

Markel Corp. (MKL) is an insurance company that many consider to be a mini-Berkshire, especially since it has a substantial amount of Berkshire Hathaway stock.

There are other funds that have around two percent of their portfolio in Berkshire, such as Legg Mason ClearBridge Appreciation A (SHAPX) but the percentage isn’t enough to be a close play on Berkshire.

One other option is to create a portfolio that emulates Berkshire’s holdings of publicly traded stocks, however, this wouldn’t cover Berkshire’s holdings of non-public stocks. In addition, it would involve purchasing many different stocks, so you would be better off just buying the Class B shares. But if you think that you can out-perform Buffett using his ideas, then here is a list of a few of their Berkshire’s major stockholdings:

American Express Co. (AXP)
The Coca-Cola Company (KO)
ConocoPhillips (COP)
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)
Procter & Gamble Co. (PG)

For a free downloadable list of all of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway stockholdings, which can be changed, added to, and sorted by yield and forward PE, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

Disclosure: Author does not own any of the above.

By Stockerblog.com

However, there is another safer way to invest in the company and get a much higher yield, with inflation protection. Morgan Stanley happens to have a preferred stock called Morgan Stanley Floating Rate Depositary Shares Non-Cumulative Preferred A (MS-PA). This security currently sells for 20.15, a big discount to its par value amount of $25. The first call date is 7/15/2011.

The annual dividend payout is one dollar per year based on 4% of the par value, payable quarterly, giving the stock a current yield of about 5%. The dollar a year dividend is the minimum payout, as the yield is adjustable upwards if rates increase. The rate is based on the three month LIBOR rate plus 0.7%, subject to the minimum.

If you like these adjustable rate preferred stocks, you should take a look at How to Get a 6% Yield from Chesapeake Energy (CHK), How to Get a 4.9% Yield from Goldman Sachs (GS), and Lucent (ALU) Pays a Yield of 13%.

A list of about 20 adjustable rate preferreds, with yields ranging from 1.83% to 8.59%, is available at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com. The list includes the minimum yield, the floating rate calculation, the par value, annual income and yield.

Disclosure: Author does not own any of the above.

By Stockerblog.com

Although a tragedy, major natural gas explosions like this are not very common. Natural gas has a few benefits over oil, especially in the green area, as natural gas generates a lower carbon footprint. It also has a long history as a fuel; as a matter of fact, one of the original Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks from the 1800′s is a natural gas distributor that is still trading today, Laclede Group Inc. (LG).

The natural gas utility companies pay fairly high yields. For example, Energy Transfer Partners L.P. (ETP) is a publicly traded limited partnership that processes, transports, and sells natural gas. The stock does have a fairly high price to earnings ratio of 37, but pays a generous yield of 7.4%. The company has been paying quarterly since 1997.

Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (CPK) is a provider of natural gas distribution services in Delaware, Maryland, and Florida, has a PE ratio of 13 and pays a yield of 3.8%.

WallStreetNewsNetwork.com has just released its updated list of high yield natural gas utility stocks, which can be accessed for free. There are twenty different stocks with yields above 3%.

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above at the time the article was written.

By Stockerblog.com