Picks up 11.6% in Q2
The Jubak’s Picks, my 12-18 month portfolio, returned 11.6% in the second quarter of 2009. Not shabby for a portfolio almost 50% in cash when the period began. When stocks are plunging, holding cash limits your losses. When stocks are rallying—and the 40% gain on the...Buy Qualcomm QCOM
Buy Qualcomm (QCOM).  In the current stock market and economy you want to own stocks in the sectors of the market that are outperforming rather than lagging and you want to own companies that can grow even when the economy isn’t. I think cell phone chip-maker Qualcomm...Why Rallies Fail
Has the rally that began in March run out of gas? Sure looks that way. After climbing by 40% from the March 9 bottom through June 12, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index has gone precisely nowhere. Well, maybe even a little short of nowhere. From June 12th...Would you like cream with that red herring? More great crime fiction from Sweden
Has Sweden produced another series of great murder mysteries? I’ve just finished the first novel from Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and I’d have to say it’s a real possibility. The book, published after Larsson’s death in 2004 at the age of 50, is a...Books on China
Want to understand China? (And what investor doesn’t these days?) Start with these two books. First, China Shakes the World by James Kynge, the former China bureau chief for the Financial Times. Second, China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy...Buy PepsiCo Inc (PEP)
PepsiCo knows where the growth is. Overseas. Especially in Asia. On June 24, PepsiCo (PEP) announced that it would buy 20% of Japan’s largest snack maker, Calbee Foods. That will give PepsiCo plenty of help figuring out how to sell Doritos into the idiosyncratic...Buy WR Berkley Capital 6.75% Trust Pref
The price is up 12.2% since I bought these shares of Berkeley Preferred (WRB-A) and, because of that, the yield is down from 8.85% on February 11. But at 7.6% this is still a great way to make some money if, as I expect, the market goes sideways this summer. Of...
Buy Johnson Controls (JCI)
In 2005 the company’s automotive business accounted for 69% of sales. By the end of 2007—before the big auto slump—that had dropped to 51%. In that short period the company had transformed itself from just another auto industry supplier to a technology growth company...
Buy Itau Unibanco (ITUB)
The most profitable bank in Brazil is also one of the fastest moving. Itau Unibanco recently bought Bank of America’s operations in Chile and Uruguay and is expanding into Argentina. (Full disclosure: I own shares of Itau Unibanco in my personal...Buy Infosys (INFY)
One of the four horsemen of Indian information technology outsourcing, Infosys combines fast growth with proven management. Infosys has had to win over global clients that now include 113 members of the Fortune 500. These companies can do business with anyone in the...
Buy HDFC (HDB)
Only the third largest bank in India, but the best run under managing director Aditya Pura, the former CEO of Citibank Malaysia. Because HDFC’s base of retail deposits–from a network of 746 branches in 329 cities serving 10 million customers–provides...
Buy Google (GOOG)
Google is the Internet’s dominant search company with about 60% of the global market for search compared to a 15% share for second place Yahoo (YHOO). But (The 2009 launch of Microsoft’s new search engineer Bing has only slight moved the gages.) Google’s...Buy General Electric (GE)
The one-stop-shop for industrial infrastructure. Need a locomotive, steam turbines, a power plant, a nuclear reactor or just something mundane like a hundred jet engines? General Electric can sell it to you. And infrastructure is the fastest growing part of GE’s...
Buy General Cable (BGC)
General Cable will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of investment in the electrical grid in the United States and globally. In the U.S., electric companies are projected to spend $14 billion a year over the next ten years to make up for years of underinvestment....
Buy Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold (FCX)
Maybe the company should change its name to Copper & Gold & Molybdenum. Total proven and probable reserves of molybdenum, a metal used in high strength steel alloys, Â total 1.9 billion pounds and the metal made up 12% of 2006 sales. With proven and probable...
Buy Flowserve (FLS)
Flowserve makes pumps, valves and seals and sells to customers in the industrial, nuclear, oil and gas, and water supply markets. Capital spending in the water/wastewater sector is projected to grow by 10% a year in 2008-2010. Nothing to sneeze at. But growth in the...
Buy Vale (VALE)
Formerly known as Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, this Brazilian company is the second largest producer of iron ore in the world. The company’s iron ore mines are the lowest-cost producers in the world.Buy Tenaris (TS)
You can make a very nice little $10 billion (in sales) business out of selling something as seemingly mundane as drilling pipe if you realize that as companies drill in ever more challenging geologies, they’ll pay extra for pipes that can withstand extremely...
Buy Schlumberger (SLB)
If Schlumberger did its work in clean rooms in Silicon Valley, everyone would understand that this is a world class technology company and would price the shares accordingly. Fortunately for us, most investors don’t get it so in 2008 you could buy Schlumberger...Buy Rayonier (RYN)
Rayonier owns, controls or leases about 2.7 million acres of timberland. Some of those 2.7 million acres–what’s known as higher-and better-use land — are more valuable for development than as timberland. I’d estimate that about 400,000 acres...
Buy Potash of Saskatchewan (POT)
They may not be making any more real estate or railroads, but they sure are using a lot more fertilizer. Not surprising in a world that needs more food and more plant-based fuel at the same time. Potash is the world largest producer of, what else, potash, a key...Buy PepsiCo (PEP)
This company delivers like clockwork. Take operating margins: 18% in 2004, 18.2% in 2005, 18.5% in 2006, and 18.2% in 2007–even as the cost of such raw materials as corn and corn syrup soared. Part of the reason is that PepsiCo is the U.S.-based company that has...
Buy Monsanto (MON)
The world needs more food from a relatively fixed amount of farm land–and seed technology is the likeliest fix for the problem. Monsanto created the global seed market–for better (if you’ve been a shareholder) or worse (if you’re a subsistence...
Buy Luxottica (LUX)
Luxottica manufactures and sells eyeglasses and sunglasses under its own brands (such as Ray-Ban and the recently acquired Oakley) or licensed brands (such as Versace, Chanel, and Prada) through a network of 4,611 branded stores including LensCrafters in the United...
Buy Lan Airlines (LFL)
Based in Chile, LAN Airlines flies passengers in that country, Argentina, Peru and Ecuador. Freight operations, which include a trucking hub in Miami, account for more than 30% of revenue. Investors used to money-losing U.S. airlines take note: This isn’t your...
Buy ExxonMobil (XOM)
This is the one Western oil major that has found a way out of the box that was created by the hammerlock that national oil companies have on so much of the world’s new oil. ExxonMobil has decided put its huge cash flow to work by investing in the big capital...Buy Enbridge (ENB)
Enbridge has an impressive number of pipeline projects set to start pumping up revenue in the next two to three years. The Alberta Clipper Expansion is projected to deliver heavy crude from Alberta’s oil sands to Wisconsin by mid-2010. The Southern Access...
Buy Deere (DE)
Earnings as high as an elephant’s eye. Yes, I’m being corny but corn is the big story for Deere. Deere gets about 55% of its sales from farm equipment and the company controls about 50% of the North American market for agricultural equipment. So you can...
Buy Corning (GLW)
I like Corning  for what its incredibly strong and orderly pipeline says about the company’s ability to produce a steady stream of new technology products. In Corning’s diverse business mix  there’s the mature but still growing technology of fiber...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
Every post from Jubak Picks straight to your mailbox. And they're free!