A pessimist would say that my portfolio is half-empty.
And even though I tend to be an optimist, I remember where my discount brokerage account stood a year or two ago ... so I see my portfolio as half-empty (or one-third empty post-rally ... either way, you get the idea!).
What does make me feel better is that any new money I put into the market will be buying stocks at these discounted prices. Not everything is priced as a bargain, but even after this rally, the market volatility is presenting us with individual opportunities that could once again have our portfolios overflowing.
In short, this is that dare-to-be-great moment we investors dream of.
How so?
Greatness is born out of despair:
I could go on, but you get the idea. Tough times are the breeding ground of opportunity because there’s a premium on poise. And tough times are what we’ve been facing.
I don't know when we'll get out of this financial crisis. I can’t tell whether the positive earnings results posted by IBM (NYSE: IBM), Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) and the rest are hiccups. I have no idea if we're in the middle of a bear-market rally, a double-dip, a Triple Lindy, or a bona fide recovery. But I do know this: The investing legends of this generation will be made now. And they'll have some things in common:
A place to start
As a starting point, let's focus on the first two bullet points. What are the Wall Street pundits shunning right now? As you are probably aware, it's rare for the Streeters to make sell recommendations. "Hold" is Wall Street's polite way of saying "sell," so I went trolling for companies that have consensus hold ratings but strong fundamentals -- reasonable profit margins, positive expected growth, and, to pick names that should be able to comfortably cover their debt, good interest coverage.
Here are five such names.
Company
Net Income Margin
1-Year EPS Growth Estimate
Interest Coverage
ConAgra Foods (NYSE: CAG)
8%
9%
6 times
Cerner (Nasdaq: CERN)
11%
12%
26 times
Torchmark Continued... |