Today there were a couple of posts about how tech stocks are currently especially attractive because they hold plenty of cash and tend to have little debt. Paul Kedrosky initially caught my eye with his post "Tech Cash is King" which in turn pointed me to a story on Bloomberg by Eric Martin. I ran a screen tonight that looked at both cash and debt. Specifically, I screened for a Price-to-Cash ratio under three, a Debt-to-Equity ratio under three and a Market Cap greater than $2.5 million. Based on these criteria, I obtained a list of 136 stocks. Judging from our list, it is absolutely true that many tech stocks do seem to have lots of cash and little debt. What also became apparent as I went through the list is that there[More...]

We've exited a lot of pure "oil" plays - well frankly we never had huge positions in direct oil plays but we've had some exposure over the year to the oil services space due to the fact that with oil at $60, $80, $100, $120, or $140 they should thrive. National Oilwell Varco (NOV) is one of those names and they put out yet another quality quarter today, and it seems to be absorbing it's acquisition of Grant Prideco quite well [More...]

The Wall Street Journal reported that worries are deepening among regulators, executives and consumers about the U.S. banking industry following the federal government’s seizure of IndyMac Bank [More...]

We stick to our Hold recommendation for Westell Technologies ( WSTL), a provider of broadband access products and conferencing services, after the company declared its fourth-quarter financial results, in line with our estimates. Although WSTL's financial results for the fourth quarter was down, we consider the company as more attractive for a longer time-horizon. WSTL is systematically transforming... [More...]

Barron's 500 [More...]