Barron’s Digest March 4, 2007

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 4, 7:02PM EST

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According to Barron’s, the bull market is still doing well. Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) has been buying Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Conoco Philips (COP), and US Bancorp (USB). Of the twelve largest companies ranked by market cap, several trade at 12 times earnings or less: ExxonMobil (XOM), Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC), Pfizer (PFE), and American International Group (AIG).

Joseph McNay of Essex Investment Management has a few stocks that he favors now. Schlumberger (SLB), Core Labs (CLB), MEMC (WFR), SunPower (SPWR), FEI (FEIC), Harris & Harris (TINY), Gilead Sciences (GILD), Genentech (DNA), Vertex Pharma (VRTX), Focus Media (FMCN), Synchonoss Tech (SNCR), Riverbed Tech (RVBD), Google (GOOG) and Baidu (BIDU).

Barron’s ranked the top online brokers by factors from trading technology to research. The top web-based brokers were TD Ameritrade, optionsXpress, Fidelity, Muriel Siebert, and TradeKing. At the bottom of the list were Just2Trade and Zecco.

Advance Auto (AAP) is working on improving its financial performance after a tough 2006. High gas prices and interest rates hurt the company’s performance. But, analysts believe the stock could move from $37 to the mid-$40s over the upcoming year.

Clear Channel Communications (CCU) may be facing an uphill battle to get its buy-out approved for $26 billion. Several large investors believe that the offer is too low and may fight the deal.

Avalon Bays (AVB) is one of the best one REITs in the country. But the value of the shares is high compared to competition, and any weakness in the industry could drive them down.

Large mid-aged tech companies can help put stability into investor portfolios. Goldman Sachs like Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Cisco (CSCO), and Apple (AAPL).

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.