Thursday, November 6, 2014

Stocks Of The Month: WFC, COP, BLK

First, some housecleaning: I was looking at my Apache (APA) holdings one day, and I noticed its been pretty much dead money since 2005 (-4.5% overall, -0.5% annualized), and that its fundamentals are semi-horrendous, and that its dividend for an oil/gas stock is pathetic; and asked myself, "Why exactly do I own this stock again?"...and then that question was found to be resolved shortly thereafter.

On to the new guys...actually, 3 current dividend holdings that I thought deserved greater allocations...

(There's a Fargo meets COP'Rock mashup joke somewhere around here, but I will decline to pursue it any further.)


Wells Fargo (WFC)

Positives:
Warren Buffett owns it.
2.6% dividend yield.
Astonishing $348B cash vs. $248B debt.
Outstanding operating (44%) and profit (28%) margins.

Negatives:
Tepid revenue (2%) and earnings (3%) growth.


ConocoPhillips (COP)

Positives:
Warren Buffett owns it.
4.2% dividend yield.
Very cheap 9.7 P/E ratio.

Negatives:
Lots of debt ($21B) vs. cash ($6B).
Negative revenue growth (-10%).


BlackRock (BLK)

Positives:
Has some $4.6T (as in trillion) in managed investments. A big fish, one might say.
Outstanding operating (41%) and profit (30%) margins.
Solid revenue (15%) and earnings (26%) growth.
2.3% dividend yield.

Negatives:
Somewhat frighteningly large. See "big fish" comment above.


Here's my current portfolio (growth, dividend, and speculative). As always, I believe in all of these stocks - until I sell them.

Apple (AAPL) 12.57%
Tesla Motors (TSLA) 10.12%
Baidu (BIDU) 7.53%
Google (GOOG/GOOGL) 6.26%
3D Systems (DDD) 3.59%
Stratasys (SSYS) 3.51%
Under Armour (UA) 3.37%
Ace Limited (ACE) 3.03%
Amazon (AMZN) 2.83%
Southern Copper (SCCO) 2.71%
Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) 2.59%
Twitter (TWTR) 2.28%
Blackstone (BX) 2.21%
Nike (NKE) 2.10%
Qihoo 360 (QIHU) 2.03%
Wells Fargo (WFC) 1.82%
Microsoft (MSFT) 1.80%
BlackRock (BLK) 1.77%
American Software (AMSWA) 1.76%
ConocoPhillips (COP) 1.72%
Alibaba (BABA) 1.56%
Intel (INTC) 1.55%
DuPont (DD) 1.38%
EMC (EMC) 1.34%
McDonald's (MCD) 1.14%
Wynn Resorts (WYNN) 1.14%
American Express (AXP) 1.05%
Canadian National Railway (CNI) 0.97%
Prospect Capital (PSEC) 0.96%
F5 Networks (FFIV) 0.95%
Starbucks (SBUX) 0.94%
Las Vegas Sands (LVS) 0.89%
Computer Programs and Systems (CPSI) 0.88%
Cisco (CSCO) 0.87%
Hershey (HSY) 0.86%
Ansys (ANSS) 0.85%
China Mobile (CHL) 0.83%
Coca-Cola (KO) 0.81%
Salesforce.com (CRM) 0.80%
Costco Wholesale (COST) 0.78%
Groupon (GRPN) 0.78%
International Business Machines (IBM) 0.62%
Lululemon Athletica (LULU) 0.60%
iRobot (IRBT) 0.60%
The Distressed (GSOL, LZB, MSI, TMUS) 0.54%
SolarCity (SCTY) 0.49%