BloggingStocks: It's time for investors who can tolerate moderate risk to get on board railroad Kansas City Southern (NYSE: KSU), and why not? The nation's inadequate, congested interstate highway system and vehicle system dependent on oil suggests a bottle-neck ... Read more

After Buffett’s investments in a handful of major railroads – Union Pacific (UNP), Norfolk Southern (NSC), and most notably Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNI) – the industry garnered plenty of attention. The attractive industry dynamics and a myopic focus on the major players makes me interested in the small number of publicly traded regional railroads – among them Kansas City Southern (KSU) and Genesee & Wyoming (GWR).[More...]

The table above presents the seven largest companies by market cap in the ETF Innovators (ETFI) Global Railroad PerformIdex among 53 total companies with market caps over $150M which are active in the railroad industry, including rail transport, rail infrastructure, and railcar manufacturing. The Railroad Index fared better than the iShares Dow Transports (IYT) over the past year and the PowerShares Progressive Tranporation Portfolio (PTRP) since its inception in late September. <br[More...]

Below are nine stock picks for 2009, which are taken from the 1,000 company database of ETF Innovators (ETFI) Indexes, and which I own in my personal brokerage account. Given my cautious stance toward the economy and stock market, the picks have a defensive theme favoring the healthcare sector as a source of defensive growth companies. 1.) Consumer Staples – Tobacco: Altria Group (MO) has lost about 30% of its market value since spinning off the international tobacco operations into a separate public company as Philip Morris International (PM), resulting in a dividend yield of 8.5% with a stock price near 15 bucks as of today. Altria declared its quarterly dividend of 32 cents today, with an ex-dividend date of 12/22/08 which is payable on 1/9/09. 2.) Consumer Staples – Packaged Food: Kraft Foods (KFT) is trading with a historically high dividend yield over 4% since losing about 23% of its market value in the past year. Profit margins[More...]