Back on Feb. 17, as the market was on sell-off mode, I recommended buying The Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO). The stock is up some 16% from our entry point. That’s because Coca-Cola recently reported a near-20% jump in profit, which soared to 67 cents a share, excluding restructuring charges.
On Monday March 9, barely three months ago, I strongly recommended buying Diamond Offshore (NYSE: DO) as part of Money Morning’s “Buy, Sell, or Hold” feature. Both the stock and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index had both hit 52-week lows the Friday before. But oil had already bottomed three weeks prior, and the lax fiscal and monetary policies of governments around the world seemed almost certain to promote reflation.
You might call them “free-form” merchants. They did a little bit of everything, as opportunities presented themselves. In the 18th century, you could find such merchants in seaports up and down the East Coast, from Boston to Charleston. Such a merchant might arrange voyages to Africa or the Far East – hire a captain, underwrite the insurance and divvy up the profits. He might deal in shares of land companies or bonds. He might lend money, trade grains, sell lottery tickets – whatever. These merchants were not committed to a single business. They would go where the best of it looked to be. They were opportunists in the best sense of the word.
At this point, it is good to look for the defensive plays that have been neglected in this upturn and for safe havens for investors taking profits from the recent run. After looking long and hard, I came to General Mills Inc. (NYSE: GIS).
With Exxon Mobil Corp.’s (XOM) new oil discovery off the coast of Brazil – the latest in a series of such offshore finds and potentially the largest Western Hemisphere discovery in three – the South American nation has taken another giant step in its quest to become a global energy superpower.
With dropping oil prices and the current global attitude on commodities, Horacio Marquez of Money Morning recommends this offshore drilling company as a top performer in its sector.
The IEA forecast for a daily increase in global oil production of 31 million barrels by 2030—a 37% jump—sounds like pure fantasy. Do the facts support it? Are big oil companies already searching for that future oil and finding it? Do they have plans to produce it?
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The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the world’s leading petroleum exporter. Officially, it has reserves of about 260 billion barrels of crude oil – approximately 24% of the world’s total proven petroleum reserves.