Chevron Corp.

INTEL CORP., $21.02, Nasdaq symbol INTC, reported better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and sales this week. That pushed up the stock by 4%. In the three months ended June 26, 2010, the computer-chip maker earned $2.9 billion, or $0.51 a share. That beat the consensus earnings estimate of $0.43 a share. As well, the latest earnings were up 175.2% from $1.05 billion, or $0.18 a share, a year earlier. The year-earlier results exclude a $1.45-billion charge to settle an antitrust fine in Europe. Intel spends around 15% of its sales on research, so it’s more profitable than it appears. Sales rose 34.2%, to $10.8 billion from $8.0 billion. That beat the consensus sales estimate of $10.25 billion....

SPDR DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE ETF $100.29 (New York Exchange symbol DIA; buy or sell through brokers) holds the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The fund’s top holdings are IBM, Exxon Mobil, Chevron Corp., 3M, Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s Corp., Johnson & Johnson, Caterpillar Inc., United Technologies and Boeing Co. The fund’s expenses are about 0.18% of its assets. SPDR Dow Jones ETF is a buy.

SPDR S&P 500 ETF $106.11 (New York symbol SPY; buy or sell through brokers) holds the stocks in the S&P 500 Index, which consists of 500 major U.S. stocks that are chosen based on their market cap, liquidity and industry group. The index’s highest-weighted stocks are Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Apple, JP Morgan Chase & Co., Johnson & Johnson, IBM, Chevron, General Electric, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and AT&T. The fund’s expenses are just 0.10% of its assets. If you want exposure to the S&P 500 Index, SPDR S&P 500 ETF is a buy.

CHEVRON CORP. $72 (New York symbol CVX; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 2.0 billion; Market cap: $144.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.8; Dividend yield: 4.0%; WSSF Rating: Above Average) is the second-largest integrated oil company in the U.S., after ExxonMobil. Chevron gets 95% of its earnings by producing oil and natural-gas. The remaining 5% comes from its refineries, petrochemical operations and gas stations. In response to the BP oil spill, the Obama administration has banned some drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. This forced Chevron to temporarily shut down an operational well and an exploratory well. However, these shutdowns will probably have little impact on Chevron. That’s because these wells represent a small fraction of its operations in the gulf. As well, the gulf accounts for just 9% of its overall production....

In response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, regulators will probably require offshore drillers to install more equipment aimed at preventing future spills. These extra costs would hurt the profits of companies that are active in the Gulf, including Chevron and Apache. However, any new costs would have little impact on their long-term prospects. As well, the spill should make less-risky onshore producers more attractive. That would favour Encana, with its growing unconventional natural-gas reserves, and Cenovus, which focuses on the oil sands. CHEVRON CORP. $72 (New York symbol CVX; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 2.0 billion; Market cap: $144.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.8; Dividend yield: 4.0%; WSSF Rating: Above Average) is the second-largest integrated oil company in the U.S., after ExxonMobil. Chevron gets 95% of its earnings by producing oil and natural-gas. The remaining 5% comes from its refineries, petrochemical operations and gas stations....

APPLE INC., $255.97, Nasdaq symbol AAPL, has sold 2 million of its new iPad tablet computers since the beginning of April. At this rate, the company should sell many more iPads than the 6 million it was expected to sell in the first year. As well, Apple is now selling the iPad outside the U.S. That should further push up sales. The stock trades at 19.2 times the $13.30 a share that the company will probably earn in its current fiscal year, which ends September 30, 2010. That’s reasonable when you consider that rising iPad sales will lead to more downloads of music, movies and books from Apple’s iTunes web site. As well, Apple’s iPhone continues to improve its share of the increasingly competitive smartphone market....

ING Risk Management Natural Resources Fund, $15.92, symbol IRR on New York (Units outstanding: 22.4 million; Market cap: $357.4 million), is a closed-end fund that holds stocks of companies in the energy, natural-resources and basic-materials industries. Most of ING Risk Management Natural Resources Fund’s portfolio is invested in the U.S. (88%) and Canada (7%). The fund’s breakdown by industry is as follows: Integrated Oil & Gas, 35.53%; Oil & Gas Exploration & Production, 19.54%; Oil & Gas Equipment & Services, 14.76%; Diversified Chemicals, 3.58%; Coal & Consumable Fuels, 3.56%; Diversified Metals & Mining, 3.49%; Gold, 2.83%; Oil & Gas Storage & Transportation, 2.56%; Oil & Gas Drilling, 2.34%; and Steel 1.97%....

CEDAR FAIR L.P., $11.14, New York symbol FUN, is the target of a friendly, $11.50-a-unit takeover offer from Apollo Global Management, a private-investment firm. Cedar Fair owns 11 amusement parks, six outdoor water parks, one indoor water park and five hotels, mostly in the midwest and northeastern U.S. Apollo needs two-thirds of Cedar Fair’s investors to agree to its takeover. Another private-equity firm, Q Funding III LP, holds 10% of Cedar Fair and opposes Apollo’s offer. However, the units are trading at about 3% below the offer, which indicates that investors don’t expect a higher bid....

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) may have a place in your portfolio. That’s because, unlike many other financial innovations, they don’t load you up with heavy management fees, or tie you down with high redemption charges if you decide to get out of them. Instead, they give you a low-cost, flexible, convenient alternative to mutual funds. ETFs trade on stock exchanges, just like stocks. Prices are quoted in newspaper stock tables and online. You’ll have to pay brokerage commissions to buy and sell ETFs, but you will quickly make these back because of the low management fees. Shares are only added or removed when the underlying index changes. As a result of this low turnover, you won’t incur the regular capital-gains bills generated by the yearly distributions most conventional mutual funds pay out to unitholders....

INVACARE CORP. $25 (New York symbol IVC; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 32.3 million; Market cap: $807.5 million; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.5; Dividend yield: 0.2%; WSSF Rating: Average) makes wheelchairs, motorized scooters and other mobility and home-care products. The company may have to pay $12 million to $14 million a year in new taxes. That’s because the U.S. Senate recently passed health-care reform legislation that would impose a sales tax on medical-device makers like Invacare. To put this new tax in context, Invacare earned $16.7 million, or $0.52 a share, in the three months ended September 30, 2009. If the proposed tax becomes law, Invacare would look to offset it by shifting more of its production overseas. It would also cut employee benefits and research spending....