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Kapitall submits:The following is a list of dividend-paying stocks that are in rally mode, i.e. trading above their 20-day, 50-day and 200-day moving averages. All of these stocks have market caps above $2.0B and current ratios above 1.5 (to ensure they have necessary liquidity to pay their dividends).In addition, all these companies have attractive valuations. Each stock in this list has a trailing twelve month (TTM) Price/Earnings and Price/Sales ratio below industry averages.Complete Story »

Stephen Castellano submits: Continuing a "tradition" of anticipating (or simply taking credit for) a number of sell side upgrades of stocks in our model portfolio, we point to DeVry, Inc. (DV) today (Tuesday), which was upgraded today by Credit Suisse. The upgrade helped the stock lead our "high-quality" portfolio today with a 10.25% return.According to Barron's, the DV upgrade was based on a "favorable decision by the Department of Education... which may fuel more investor optimism." More specifically, according to BusinessWeek, "...the U.S. government may loosen proposed rules that would restrict companies’ eligibility for federal student aid." While we try to figure out how to take credit for the government's decision, we would just note that when good things happen to good companies that we hold in a model portfolio, it is just icing on the cake.Complete Story »

Stephen Castellano submits: Focus List Update: as of April 2, 2010 We are entering week 5 of our weekly focus update series. And while it has anticipated a number of sell side ratings changes, the weekly returns have been less than satisfying. While stocks on our long focus list have outperformed the S&P 500, stocks on our short list have appreciated even more. A recent recurring theme has been a rally in "low-quality" stocks, so we remain hesitant to even mention this list of possible short ideas. In fact, we are increasingly being convinced that our short list of "low-quality" ideas is a good place to focus on generating "contrarian" long ideas.Complete Story »

Roger Nusbaum submits: A reader left a question asking what I thought about the iShares Emerging Markets Infrastructure ETF (EMIF), a client holding, now that Brazil won the 2016 summer Olympics and early reports say that about half the necessary facilities still need to be built.CNBC certainly devoted a lot of air time to whether or not the Olympics makes Brazil an even more compelling investment destination than it had previously been.Complete Story »