Best Forestry Stocks To Buy For 2015

Nucor (NUE) released impressive results for the second quarter. Nucor came up with a fantastic operational performance, outpacing analysts��estimates. The company managed to post good numbers on the board due to the improving construction market in the U.S., which led steel prices to increase. Nucor management is taking various initiatives to improve its operational performance. Let us take a closer look at Nucor�� strategies.

Increasing sales paint a positive picture

Nucor�� net sales increased by a good 13% to $5.29 billion, beating the analysts��estimates of $5.21 billion. In addition, Nucor reported net earnings of $147 million, a good improvement when compared to $85.1 million in the same quarter a year earlier. On the earnings front, the company posted EPS of $0.46 per share topping the guidance range of $0.35 to $0.40 per share.

Nucor is delighted to see better results in the second quarter, which also topped the results it posted in the first quarter. The company further sees better opportunities as it is seeing some positive traction in the market. Nucor looks well positioned, however, it did face certain challenges in the past in many of the products produced by its steel mills. Nucor has strong strategies for growth profitability. It is seeing bright spots in the non-residential construction. As the construction is accelerating, Nucor is seeing good demands for the steel in future.

Best Performing Stocks To Watch For 2016: Lufkin Industries Inc.(LUFK)

Lufkin Industries, Inc. manufactures and supplies oilfield and power transmission products for use in energy infrastructure and industrial applications. The company operates through two segments, Oil Field and Power Transmission. The Oil Field segment manufactures and services artificial lift products, including reciprocating rod lift equipment, including air-balanced, beam-balance, crank-balanced, Mark II Unitorque, and hydraulic units. It also transports and repairs pumping units; and refurbishes used pumping units. In addition, this segment designs, manufactures, installs, and services computer control equipment and analytical services for artificial lift equipment, as well as operates an iron foundry to produce castings for new pumping units. Further, the Oil Field segment provides gas lift, plunger lift, and completion equipment. The Power Transmission segment designs, manufactures, and services speed increasing and reducing gearboxes. It also manufactures capital spa res for customers in conjunction with the production of new gearboxes, as well as produces parts for after-market service. In addition, this segment provides on and off-site repair and service for its own products, and also those manufactured by other companies. Further, the Power Transmission segment is involved in analysis, design, and manufacture of precision, custom-engineered tilting-pad bearings and related components for high-speed turbo equipment operating in critical duty applications, as well as services, repairs, and upgrades turbo-expander process units for air and gas separation. The company markets its products and services primarily in the United States, Europe, Canada, Latin America, the Middle East, and north Africa. Lufkin Industries, Inc. was founded in 1902 and is based in Lufkin, Texas.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Reuters]

  Richard Drew/APA board overlooking the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shows an intraday number above 1,600 for the S&P 500 on Friday. A big gain in the job market lifted the stock market to a record high. NEW YORK -- The Dow and S&P 500 advanced to all-time closing highs on Friday, with major indexes jumping 1 percent after an unexpectedly strong April jobs report eased concerns about an economic slowdown. The S&P closed above 1,600 and the Dow briefly traded above 15,000 for the first time as stocks extended this year's rally. Bellwether companies, including Chevron Corp. (CVX), Boeing Co. (BA) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), reached 52-week highs. The Russell 2000 stock index of mid- and small cap companies also hit a record, confirming the broadness of the rally. About 70 percent of stocks on both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq ended in positive territory. Non-farm payrolls rose by 165,000 last month and the unemployment rate fell to 7.5 percent, a four-year low, from 7.6 percent, the government said. In addition, hiring was much stronger than previously thought in February and March. Investors welcomed the gains after weeks of disappointing data, including tepid manufacturing reports, that suggested the economic recovery was losing steam. "We were all wringing our hands over the past month but this alleviates fears about a sharp spring slowdown," said Brad Sorensen, director of market and sector analysis at Charles Schwab in Denver. The Dow Jones industrial average (^DJI) was up 140.61 points, or 0.95 percent, at 14,972.19. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (^GSPC) was up 16.63 points, or 1.04 percent, at 1,614.22. The Nasdaq Composite Index (COMPX) was up 38.01 points, or 1.14 percent, at 3,378.63. Both the Dow and S&P ended at all-time closing highs. For the week, the Dow rose 1.8, the S&P gained 2 percent and the Nasdaq rose 3 percent in its biggest weekly climb since the first week of the year. Sectors ti

• [By Marc Courtenay]

  On April 8th, we learned that General Electric (GE) would be acquiring Lufkin Industries (LUFK). The deal is one of the three largest in the oilfield machinery and equipment industry during the past decade, and sets the stage for further acquisitions in this sector. Investors should start considering which companies might be next.

• [By reports.droy]

  While GE has seen some organic growth in this line of business, acquisitions have been its key driver. Between 2010 and 2013, GE has spent over $11 billion on acquisitions linked to this industrial segment. The most notable of these was the deal to acquire Lufkin (LUFK) in 2013, for which the company paid a premium of 40%. By acquiring Lufkin, GE was able to acquire a specialized equipment provider for oil and gas wells, specifically those involved with artificial lift technology.

Best Forestry Stocks To Buy For 2015: Norfolk Souther Corporation(NSC)

Norfolk Southern Corporation, through its subsidiaries, engages in the rail transportation of raw materials, intermediate products, and finished goods primarily in the United States. The company transports coal products, such as coal, coke, and iron ore; automotive products, including finished vehicles and auto parts; chemicals products consisting of sulfur and related chemicals, petroleum products, chlorine and bleaching compounds, plastics, rubber, industrial chemicals, chemical wastes, and municipal wastes; metals and construction products comprising steel, aluminum products, machinery, scrap metals, cement, aggregates, bricks, and minerals; and paper, clay, and forest products, including lumber and wood products, pulp board and paper products, wood fibers, wood pulp, scrap paper, and clay. It also transports agriculture, consumer, and government products, such as soybeans, wheat, corn, fertilizer, animal and poultry feed, food oils, flour, beverages, canned goods, swee teners, consumer products, ethanol, and items for the military. In addition, it engages in the intermodal operations that include moving of shipments in trailers, the United States and international containers, and roadrailer equipment. Further, the company transports overseas freight through various Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports, as well as provides a range of logistics services; and operates passenger and commuter trains. Additionally, it involves in the acquisition, leasing, and management of coal, oil, gas, and minerals; the development of commercial real estate; telecommunications; and the leasing or sale of rail property and equipment. As of December 31, 2010, the company operated approximately 20,000 route miles in 22 states and the District of Columbia. The company was founded in 1883 and is based in Norfolk, Virginia.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Johanna Bennett]

  Norfolk Southern (NSC), Toll Brothers (TOL) and J.C. Penney Co. (JCP) are just some of the stocks moving during today’s market action:�Here�� a rundown:

  Toll Brothers rose 3.3% to $33.29 after the home builder posted better-than-expected revenue for the quarter ended Oct. Sales surged 29% to $1.35 billion, lifted by strong demand in the home builder’s West Coast division to top the $1.31 billion expected by analysts. Leucadia National (LUK) has been among the worst performers of the S&P�� 85 financial stocks. Today, the shares gained 1.4% to $24.13 after Barron�� editor Andrew Bary referred to the company as �� Mini-Berkshire At a Bargain Price.��The stock has been hurt by low returns outside Jefferies, the investment bank it bought early y last year. Still, many of its other business arte valuable, including Berkadia, a 50/50 joint venture with Berkshire How about the real Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B)? Warren Buffett’s holding company rose 0.75% to $144.68 after it posted Friday a drop in profit tied to an investment loss. Still, results overall beat expectations as the company�� railroad arm and other units continued to ride a rebounding U.S. economy. J.C. Penney dropped 5.6% to $7.38 after Barron�� writer Jack Hough warned readers that the troubled retailer may have set unrealistic financial goals. At its Oct. 8 analyst day, Penney set a goal of $1.2 billion in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, by 2017, or close to four times this year�� estimate. To get there, requires lifting sales at longstanding stores by 5.4% a year, boosting gross margins, and holding spending flat. Norfolk Southern surged 2.6% to $115.89 after Barron�� writer Robyn Goldwyn Blumenthal weighed in bullishly on the stock amid merger talks within the railroad industry. Talks have circulated of a deal between Canadian Pacific (CP) and CSX (CSX) but fell apart last week. On Friday, hedge fund manager Bill Ackerman specu
• [By Teresa Rivas]

  Oglenski and Mori also cut their price target on Norfolk Southern (NSC) by $1 to $100, a reflection of their trimmed earnings forecasts, also related to their outlook for coal. They rate Norfolk Southern at Equal Weight.

• [By Alex Planes]

  Investors love stocks that consistently beat the Street without getting ahead of their fundamentals and risking a meltdown. The best stocks offer sustainable market-beating gains, with robust and improving financial metrics that support strong price growth. Does Norfolk Southern (NYSE: NSC  ) fit the bill? Let's take a look at what its recent results tell us about its potential for future gains.

Best Forestry Stocks To Buy For 2015: Mobileye NV (MBLY)

Mobileye N.V., incorporated in 2001, designs and develops software and related technologies for camera-based advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). The Company�� software algorithms and EyeQ system on a chip (SOC) perform detailed interpretations of the visual field in order to anticipate possible collisions with other vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists, animals, debris and other obstacles. Its products are also able to detect roadway markings such as lanes, road boundaries, barriers and similar items, as well as to identify and read traffic signs and traffic lights. The Company operates in two segments: the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) segment and the AM segment. The OEM segment supplies the software algorithms and EyeQ chip that are the core technology of the complete ADAS to the Tier 1 companies that are the system integrators for the automotive industry. In the AM segment, the Company sells a complete system, which includes its software algorithms and EyeQ chip, as well as the camera and other necessary components.

The complete system offers a variety of ADAS functions to end, including commercial fleet owners, fleet management system providers, new vehicle dealers and importers. Its software activity is divided into algorithms, which are the engines for extracting meaningful information from video; and application software. Its visual interpretation algorithms consist of road signs interpretation, object detection, range and time-to-contact (TTC) to targets, motion-based measurements, pattern recognition and lighting functions. Road signs interpretation consists of lane markings, curbs, road edge, barriers, and other information that allows high-level control systems to make sense of where the host car is located relative to the roadway. Object detection includes pattern recognition of vehicles, pedestrians and (large) animals for collision avoidance.

Motion-based measurements include the flow of pixels along a sequence of images due to camera motion provides! three-dimensional (3D) cues that are analyzed in many levels of the system. This analysis includes validation filters for object detection engines (vehicles, pedestrians, animals); separating moving objects from the background; detecting general (not model-based) objects; detecting debris (of at least 10 centimeters in height) from 50 meters away; reconstructing the road profile in order to detect bumps and potholes; generating a 3D map of the visual field using the principle of structure from motion, which is the process of estimating 3D structures from two dimensional (2D) image sequences, and which may be coupled with local motion signals, and fusing 3D and image pattern recognition to aid in scene interpretation, all of which will also support automated-driving functionality.

It has developed multiclass classifiers to enable traffic sign detection, traffic light detection and detection of other structures from the scene that are useful for supporting hands-free driving. Its adaptive high beam control (AHC) is enabled by a set of algorithms that read and interpret the spots of light in the night scene to determine when to turn on or off the high beam. Its aftermarket customers include commercial and governmental fleets, telematics providers and insurance companies. Its Tier 1 customers include Magna Electronics Inc., TRW Automotive Holdings Corp., Autoliv, Inc., Delphi Automotive Plc, Gentex Corporation, Kansei Corporation, Leopold Kostal GmbH and Mando Corporation as well as Bendix Corporation and Mobis Transportation Alternatives, Inc. working jointly with TRW.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  Tesla has confirmed that it has begun shipping Model S vehicles equipped with camera safety systems to comply with European safety ratings, and press reports indicate that Mobileye (MBLY) may be the [advanced driver assistance systems, or] ADAS supplier. Moreover, Elon has already stated he plans to bring semi-autonomous driving capability to market by 2016.

• [By Jake Mann]

  One such name that does intrigue me is that of Mobileye NV (NYSE: MBLY).

  ...Ever see the cars in the movie I Robot? Well this is Sci Fi starting to come to life in a way. Think about it, who would have thought GPS would be standard in cars back 10-15 years ago. Now we are starting to cross the threshold of letting the car do the driving for you more and more?

• [By Tiernan Ray]

  And lastly, Model S will add what’s known as “semi-autonomous driver-assistance system,” or SADAS, which, he contends, will use cameras from sensor maker MobileEye (MBLY).

• [By WWW.DAILYFINANCE.COM]

  Mark Lennihan/APJack Ma is the founder of Alibaba. There has been no shortage of debutantes on Wall Street lately. Dozens of companies went public last quarter -- many of them names you know, or that you will know soon. These some of the more intriguing initial public offerings to come out of this past quarter. El Pollo Loco (LOCO) Fast casual has been the place to be for investing in the restaurant industry, and that helped pave the way for this California-based chain specializing in citrus-marinated chicken to go public in July at $15 a share. Investors won't be impressed by its slow yet calculated expansion. It had grown from 398 locations to just 401 in the year leading up to its IPO. However, El Pollo Loco's store-level performance has been impressive. It posted a 5.4 percent increase in comparable-restaurant sales in its first quarter as a public company. That is certainly better than the average fast-food or casual-dining chain out there, once again validating the fast-casual model, where chains offer the convenience of fast food but the quality of traditional casual-dining restaurants. Mobileye (MBLY) The push to develop self-driving cars is really getting traction, a fact that became even more apparent last week when Tesla (TSLA) showed off an updated sedan that uses a dozen sensors to do everything from adjusting speed in accordance with speed limit signs when it's on cruise control to switching lanes automatically when the sensors see an opening in traffic after the driver triggers the turn signal. But clever sensors notwithstanding, self-driving cars won't happen without serious software, and that's where Mobileye comes in. The Israeli company provides software and chips for camera-based advanced driver assistance systems. This will likely become a competitive market in the future, but for now Mobileye is seen as a leading pioneer in self-driving vehicles. Its share price has roughly doubled since it went public at $25 just two months ago. Re

Best Forestry Stocks To Buy For 2015: Compuware Corporation(CPWR)

Compuware Corporation provides software and Web performance solutions, professional services, and application services in the United States, Europe, and Africa. The company?s software products consist of Mainframe, Vantage, Changepoint, and Uniface product lines. Its Mainframe product line includes File-AID, Xpediter, Hiperstation, Abend-AID, and Strobe used for application analysis, testing, defect detection and remediation, fault management, file and data management, data compliance, and application performance management in the IBM z/OS environment. The company?s Vantage products provide an end-to-end approach for managing application performance by combining end user experience monitoring, business service management, and application performance monitoring; Changepoint products are management and professional services automation solutions that address the needs of executives in technology companies, enterprise IT, and professional service organizations; and Uniface i s an application development environment for building, renewing, and integrating the enterprise applications. It also offers Web application performance management services, which are marketed under the Gomez brand name, are used by enterprises to test and monitor their Web and mobile applications while in development and after deployment. In addition, the company provides professional services, such as implementation, consulting, and training services, as well as various IT services for mainframe, distributed, and mobile environments; and application services, which are marketed under the Covisint brand name that offers SaaS platform providing industry-specific solutions for organizations in the automotive, healthcare, and energy markets, as well as provides support services. The company serves IT departments of various commercial and government organizations. Compuware Corporation was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Detroit, Michigan.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Seth Jayson]

  Calling all cash flows
  When you are trying to buy the market's best stocks, it's worth checking up on your companies' free cash flow once a quarter or so, to see whether it bears any relationship to the net income in the headlines. That's what we do with this series. Today, we're checking in on Compuware (Nasdaq: CPWR  ) , whose recent revenue and earnings are plotted below.

• [By Seth Jayson]

  Compuware (Nasdaq: CPWR  ) reported earnings on May 21. Here are the numbers you need to know.

  The 10-second takeaway
  For the quarter ended March 31 (Q4), Compuware met expectations on revenues and met expectations on earnings per share.

Best Forestry Stocks To Buy For 2015: New York Mortgage Trust Inc.(NYMT)

New York Mortgage Trust, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as a real estate investment trust (REIT) in the United States. The company engages in acquiring, investing, financing, and managing mortgage-related assets. It primarily invests in agency residential adjustable-rate, hybrid adjustable-rate, and fixed-rate mortgage-backed securities (RMBS); non-Agency RMBS; prime adjustable-rate residential mortgage loans held in securitization trusts; commercial mortgage-backed securities; commercial mortgage loans; and other commercial real estate-related debt investments. The company has elected to be taxed as a REIT and will not be subject to federal income tax if it distributes at least 90% of its REIT taxable income to its stockholders. New York Mortgage Trust, Inc. was founded in 1989 and is headquartered in New York, New York.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Susan J. Aluise]

  LEN stock is only up about 3% in 2014, but it’s clearly a growth play. With a price-to-earnings-growth (PEG) ratio of just 0.6 and a forward P/E of a little more than�12, LEN stock looks undervalued now. LEN pays a nominal dividend with a 0.4% current yield, but the company knows its market and is positioning its new properties well, so LEN promises to be a solid buy-and-hold stock.

  REIT:�New York Mortgage�(NYMT)

  There are two basic types of REITs –�those that hold real property and those that hold mortgages on property (mortgage or mREITs). Among mREITs, New York Mortgage�(NYMT)�is a so-called ��ybrid mREIT�� meaning that it holds a combination of federally guaranteed (agency) and non-agency debt, like commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS).

• [By Eric Volkman]

  Investors are being rewarded for putting their trust in New York Mortgage Trust (NASDAQ: NYMT  ) . The REIT has declared a common stock dividend for its current quarter of $0.27 per share, to be paid on July 25 to shareholders of record as of June 28. That amount matches each of the company's preceding four distributions, the most recent of which was doled out at the end of April. Before that, it paid $0.25 per share.

• [By Lawrence Meyers]

  Next Page

  Preferred Stocks: New York Mortgage Trust (NYMT)

  Dividend Yield: 8.2%

  New York Mortgage Trust (NYMT) is a mortgage real estate investment trust, or mREIT, that acquires, invests in, finances and manages mortgage related securities. These mREITs are very much tied to interest rates, so while rates are low, the stocks will do well. NYMT common stock, in fact, yields more than 14%. Yet that�� why I would choose the New York Mortgage Trust 7.75% Preferred Series B (NYMTP).