Best Safest Stocks For 2014

The New York Times called it a "moment of reckoning." Widely followed commodities trader Dennis Gartman in a note to his clients wrote that he's "never...ever...EVER" seen anything quite like it.

The references, of course, are to March 15's collapse in the price of gold, the largest single-day percentage drop in 30 years, capping a two-day decline of 13%.

The selling was triggered in part by worries that Cyprus and possibly other European nations might have to dump their gold holdings to raise funds or satisfy bailout requirements. Also, after acting as a commodities tailwind for much of the past two years, the Fed's quantitative easing program looks to be winding down, which would relax inflationary pressure.

Suddenly, the "safest" investment no longer seemed so safe. In fact, there's a good chance that gold's 12-year streak of uninterrupted gains will come to an end this year.

Best Communications Equipment Companies For 2015: MCG Capital Corporation(MCGC)

MCG Capital Corporation is a private equity firm specializing in investments in middle market companies. The firm does not prefer investments in highly cyclical and volatile industry sectors and businesses with significant volatility exposure. It seeks to invest in small to mid sized companies. The firm prefers to invest in acquisitions, growth financings, organic growth, recapitalization, and leveraged buyouts. It invests in companies based in the United States. The firm seeks to invest upto $75 million in debt and equity in companies having revenues between $20 million and $200 million and EBITDA between $3 million and $25 million. It seeks to invest in the form of senior debt, including amortizing, bullet maturity, term loans, and revolving credit facilities; institutional sub debt, including junior capital; second lien debt, that includes term loans on sole source and participant basis; secured and unsecured subordinate loans structured as current interest, deferred in terest, and equity linked components; mezzanine debt and equity that includes minority equity investments. The firm may invest in minority or control equity positions. It was formerly known as MCG Credit Corporation. MCG Capital Corporation was founded in 1990 and is based in Arlington, Virginia.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Equities Lab]

  The stocks that currently pass the stock screen in order of market cap are Frontier Communications Corp , Crown Media Holdings (CRWN), Vonage Holding (VG), MCG Capital Corp (MCGC), 1-800-FLOWERS.COM (FLWS), MTR Gaming Corporation (MNTG), Alaska Communications (ALSK), and Enzon Pharmaceuticals (ENZN).

Best Safest Stocks For 2014: Apollo Investment Corporation(AINV)

Apollo Investment Corporation is business development company and operates as a closed-end management investment company. The company invests in middle market companies. It provides direct equity capital, mezzanine and senior secured loans, and subordinated debt and loans. It also seeks to invest in PIPES transactions. The company may also invest in public companies that are thinly traded and may acquire investments in the secondary market. It prefers to invest in warrants, makes equity co-investments, and may also invest in cash equivalents, U.S. government securities, high-quality debt investments that mature in one year or less, high-yield bonds, distressed debt, non-U.S. investments, or securities of public companies that are not thinly traded. The company typically invests in building materials, business services, cable television, chemicals, consumer products, direct marketing, distribution, energy and utilities, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, media, publishing, retail and transportation. It primarily invests between $20 million and $250 million in its portfolio companies. The company seeks to make investments with stated maturities of five to ten years.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Tim Melvin]

  Here are a couple private equity-powered dividend stocks on my radar right now:

  Apollo Investment (AINV)

  Apollo Global Management (APO) is one of the world�� largest asset management and private equity firms with more than $100 billion under management. Its largest publicly offered vehicle is Apollo Investment (AINV), a business development company that invests in and ends to middle-market companies and pays out 90% of its net income to shareholders.

• [By MONEYMORNING]

  He's much better off in "total return" holdings, like Apollo Investment Corp. (Nasdaq: AINV) which we covered right here, and Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP (NYSE: KMP), another long-term winner.

• [By James Brumley]

  The seller will let up as soon as the news is a fading memory, which should be soon.

  Apollo Investment Corp. (AINV)

  AINV Dividend Yield: 9.7%

• [By Rich Bieglmeier]

  Expensive or not, dividend investors might be interested in this week's highlighted insider buying candidate: Apollo Investment Corporation (AINV).

Best Safest Stocks For 2014: SEACOR Holdings Inc (CKH)

SEACOR Holdings Inc, incorporated on November 7, 1989, is a global provider of equipment and services primarily supporting the offshore oil and gas and marine transportation industries. The Company offers customers a diversified suite of services, including offshore marine, aviation, inland river, marine transportation, crisis and emergency management preparedness and response solutions, commodity trading and logistics and offshore and harbor towing. On March 19, 2012, J.F. Lehman & Company acquired National Response Corporation and its affiliated businesses NRC Environmental Services, SEACOR Response, and SEACOR Environmental Products (collectively NRC) from the Company. In January 2013, the Company sold its energy trading division, SEACOR Energy Inc. to Par Petroleum Corporation. On January 31, 2013, it completed the spin off its Era Group Inc unit (Era).

Offshore Marine Services

The Company�� Marine operates a diversified fleet of vessels, servicing the offshore oil and gas exploration, development, and production industry worldwide.The Company�� marine provides its customers with the assembly of offshore vessel services in the global offshore oil and gas industry, including transport of personnel, platform supply, offshore accommodation, intervention, maintenance and repair support, standby safety services, anchor handling and mooring services, wind farm support, lift boat services, offshore construction support, well enhancement support, and lightering services.

Aviation Services

The Company�� aviation services subsidiary, Era Group (Era), is the helicopter operators globally. ra supports the oil and gas industry in the United States Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, and internationally. Era provides air medical services, firefighting support, flightseeing tours in Alaska, and Search and Rescue and Emergency Medical Services. Era's affiliate, Era Training Center, offers flight training services. Era also markets and distributes specialty helicopter! equipment and accessories.

Inland River Services

The Company�� Inland River Services group owns and operates modern river transportation equipment; owns covered and open hopper barges, 10,000 and 30,000 barrel tank barges, deck barges, inland river towboats and smaller harbor boats; and provides ancillary services along the United States Inland River Waterways and the Parana-Paraguay and the Magdalena River Systems in South America. SCF Marine operates a fleet of hopper barges along the United States Inland River Waterways and South America, transporting agricultural, industrial, and project cargoes. The liquid division, Supercritical Fluid (SCF) Liquids, is a integrated towboat and tank barge company, specializing in the transportation of chemical, clean, and dirty products. Gateway Terminals is among the newest ethanol and petroleum storage terminals on the Mississippi River, with a capacity of 400,000 barrels and the ability to receive and transfer products by barge, unit train, and truck.

Marine Transportation Services

The Company�� ocean shipping and harbor towing subsidiary, SEACOR Ocean Transport, is an owner and operator of equipment engaged in oil transportation, bunkering, harbor towing, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal support, short sea shipping and logistics, and third-party ship management services. Through all aspects of its operations, SEACOR Ocean Transport focuses to provide its customers with marine transportation solutions.

Commodity Trading and Logistics

The Company�� Commodity Trading and Logistics group specializes in the purchase, storage, transportation, and sale of agricultural and energy commodities, which include renewable fuels, blendstocks, sugar, rice, and salt. The Agricultural group is primarily focused on the global sourcing and logistics of sugar, rice, salt, and other dry bulk products. The Energy group is primarily focused on the domestic trading and transportation of physical e! thanol an! d clean blendstocks.

Harbor and Offshore Towing Services

The Company�� ocean shipping and harbor towing subsidiary, SEACOR Ocean Transport, is an operator of equipment engaged in oil transportation, bunkering, harbor towing, LNG terminal support, short sea shipping and logistics, and third-party ship management services. The harbor towing services group, Seabulk Towing, is a tugboat operator with operations along the Gulf Coast and Southeastern seaboard port system from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to Port Arthur, Texas. Seabulk Island Transport owns and operates four ocean tugs and five ocean liquid tank barges.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Seth Jayson]

  Margins matter. The more Seacor Holdings (NYSE: CKH  ) keeps of each buck it earns in revenue, the more money it has to invest in growth, fund new strategic plans, or (gasp!) distribute to shareholders. Healthy margins often separate pretenders from the best stocks in the market. That's why we check up on margins at least once a quarter in this series. I'm looking for the absolute numbers, so I can compare them to current and potential competitors, and any trend that may tell me how strong Seacor Holdings's competitive position could be.

Best Safest Stocks For 2014: Cytori Therapeutics Inc(CYTX)

Cytori Therapeutics, Inc. engages in the development, manufacture, and sale of medical products and devices to enable the practice of regenerative medicine. Regenerative medicines focus on repairing or restoring lost or damaged tissue and cell function. Its principal products include the Celution family of products, which processes patients' adipose-derived stem and regenerative cells (ADRCs) at the point of care. The Celution family of products consists of a central device, a related single-use consumable used for each patient procedure, proprietary enzyme reagents, and related instrumentation. Its core product, the Celution System, provides physicians with clinical grade stem and regenerative cells for use in the cosmetic and reconstructive surgery market. The company also provides PureGraft, a consumable product that provides grafts for use in aesthetic body contouring procedures. In addition, it sells the StemSource family of products worldwide, including in the United States, for research, as well as for the cryopreservation and storage of ADRCs. It offers the StemSource System as a standalone product, or as a part of a comprehensive suite of systems, equipment, and protocols collectively referred to as a StemSource Cell Bank. Further, the company develops Celution System, which has completed two clinical trials for applications in cardiovascular disease, wound healing, gastrointestinal disorders, stress urinary incontinence, liver and renal disease, spinal disc degeneration, and pelvic health conditions. It has strategic development and manufacturing joint venture agreement, and other related agreements with Olympus Corporation. The company was formerly known as MacroPore Biosurgery, Inc. Cytori Therapeutics, Inc. was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By James E. Brumley]

  If you're reading this, then odds are you already know that Cytori Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:CYTX) is up a whopping 8% today. In some ways that's encouraging, as it proves there's a lot of trade-worthy momentum to be tapped. In other ways, however, it's bad, because CYTX is overbought and ripe for a pullback. No matter how you're seeing Cytori Therapeutics in the short run, though, when you take a step back and look at the longer-term picture, there's a lot to like.

Best Safest Stocks For 2014: China Unicom (CHU)

China Unicom (Hong Kong) Limited (Unicom), incorporated on February 8, 2000, is an integrated telecommunications operator in China providing mobile voice and value-added, fixed-line voice and fixed-line broadband, data communications and other telecommunications services to its customers. The Company operates in two business segments consisting of mobile services and fixed-line services. The Company is engaged in global system for mobile communications (GSM) and wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) cellular business in 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China, the provision of fixedline voice, broadband and other Internet-related services, information and communications technology services, business and data communications services, and other related telecommunication value-added businesses. As of 30 June 2011, Unicom Group held 57.81% of the shares in the Company through China United Network Communications Limited (A Share Company), China Unicom (BVI) Limited and China Netcom Group Corporation (BVI) Limited, and Telefonica Internacional S.A.U. held 9.01% of the shares in the Company.

Mobile Business

Unicom�� mobile business consists of GSM and third generation (3G) mobile business. As of December 31, 2010, the Company had a total of 167.43 million mobile subscribers. As of December 31, 2010, its total number of mobile subscribers included 167.43 million. Unicom operates the 3G business based on the WCDMA technology nationwide in China. As of December 31, 2010, the total number of its 3G subscribers included 14.06 million, and had 1.35 million wireless data card subscribers, 2.41 million mobile television (TV) subscribers and over seven million mobile reading subscribers. During the year ended December 31, 2010, the total 3G voice usage was 55.47 billion minutes and the average data usage per subscriber per month was 178M. GSM mobile business primarily consists of GSM voice business and value-added business.

The Company�� mobile ! voice business enables its subscribers to make and receive phone calls with a mobile handset at any point within the coverage area of its mobile telecommunications networks. Its mobile voice business includes local calls, domestic long distance calls, international long distance calls, intra-provincial roaming, inter-provincial roaming and international roaming. As of December 31, 2010, the Company�� total number of GSM mobile subscribers was 153.37 million. Unicom offers a range of GSM value-added services nationwide, including short message service (SMS), Cool Ringtone (a personalized ring-back tone service), mobile Internet and other wireless information services. During 2010, a total of 78.31 billion SMSs were transmitted by its GSM mobile subscribers. As of December 31, 2010, the Company had a total number of 67.26 million subscribers to its Cool Ringtone service. In addition, as of December 31, 2010, it had a total number of 55.81 million mobile Internet subscribers.

Fixed-Line Business

Unicom is a fixed-line broadband and communications operator in northern China. The Company offers a range of fixed-line services nationwide in China, including fixed-line broadband services and data communications services; fixed-line voice services, include local and long distance fixed-line voice services and value-added services, and other services. The Company is a provider of fixed-line broadband services in its fixed-line northern service region. Unicom is a provider of data communications services in its fixed-line northern service region. It offers managed data products, such as those based on digital data networks (DDN), frame relay, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and Internet protocol-virtual private network (IP-VPN). The Company also offers leased line products, including domestic and international leased circuits. Its customers for these services include government entities, large financial institutions and other domestic and multinational businesses, Internet service prov! iders and! other telecommunications operators.

As of December 31, 2010, the Company had established business cooperation relationships with more than 160 overseas operators to provide various international data communications products and services, such as international voice and data services. During 2010, it continued to offer full-scale data communications services to international operators and domestic and international corporate customers. The Company�� fixed-line voice services consist of local voice, domestic long distance, international long distance, value-added, interconnection and personal handyphone system (PHS) services. In addition to fixed-line telephone voice services, it offers a range of value-added services on its fixed-line networks. The Company�� fixed-line, value-added services include Personalized Ring and caller identification services. Personalized Ring services enable its fixed-line subscribers to personalize the ring-back tone for incoming calls. As of December 31, 2010, the number of its Personalized Ring subscribers reached 23.79 million.

Interconnection and Roaming Arrangements

The Company earns interconnection fees for terminating or transiting calls that originate from other domestic telecommunications operators��networks and pay interconnection fees to other operators for calls originating from its networks that are terminated on their networks. It earns and pays such fees in respect of mobile calls, local and domestic and international long distance calls and Internet services, except for the interconnection by fixed-line subscribers calling its mobile subscribers in the same region where no interconnection fee will be charged.

The Company provides roaming services, which allow its subscribers to access its mobile services while they are physically outside of their registered service area or in the coverage areas of other mobile networks in other countries and regions with which it has roaming arrangements. As of April 30! , 2011, U! nicom had roaming arrangements for GSM international voice and SMS services with 242 operators in 521 countries and regions; GPRS international inbound data services with 179 operators in 400 countries and regions and for international GPRS outbound data services with 164 operators in 357 countries and regions, and 3G services with 104 WCDMA operators in 245 countries and regions.

Mobile Networks

The Company�� mobile network consists of cell sites, which are physical locations, each equipped with a base station that houses transmitters, receivers and other equipment used to communicate through radio channels with subscribers��mobile handsets within the range of a cell; base station controllers, which connect to, and control, the base stations, and mobile switching centers, which control the base station controllers and the routing of telephone calls. Its mobile network also consists of a transmission network, which links the mobile switching centers, base station controllers, base stations and the public switched telephone network. It has deployed GSM and WCDMA mobile networks. The Company�� GSM mobile network mainly operates at 900 megahertz. It has also deployed GSM technology that operates at 1,800 megahertz in metropolitan areas to supplement the capacity of its existing mobile network. As of December 31, 2010, the Company had approximately 329,000 GSM base stations.

The Company competes with China Mobile and China Telecom.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Jake L'Ecuyer]

  Leading and Lagging Sectors
  Telecommunications services shares gained around 0.83 percent in the US market on Monday. Top gainers in the sector included China Telecom Corp. (NYSE: CHA),Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri AS (NYSE: TKC), and China Unicom (Hong Kong) Limited (NYSE: CHU). In trading on Monday, basic materials shares were relative laggards, down on the day by about 0.75 percent.