wall street

Every day from Monday to Friday, we post free investment reports on TSINetwork.ca, our company website. We also email the reports to all our paying subscribers who have given us an email address, and to anyone else who requests them. As a subscriber to Wall Street Stock Forecaster, you’re in a particularly good position to profit from this free service. It’s a great supplement to your monthly Wall Street Stock Forecaster newsletter, at no added cost. Wall Street Stock Forecaster focuses on low-risk U.S. stocks with strong profit and growth potential. Our free TSI Network dailies aim to educate you on best practices in investing. They cover a wide range of investment topics. They explain conservative strategies you can use to build the best portfolio for you, and expand your wealth with less risk. They also zero in on the risks and drawbacks of certain investing practices that you should avoid....

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP. $161 (New York symbol IBM, Conservative Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 1.2 billion; Market cap: $193.2 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.0; Dividend yield: 1.6%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.ibm.com) is the world’s biggest computer company. In the past few years, IBM has shifted its focus from making computers to designing computer systems and managing them on behalf of clients. The company now gets 55% of its revenue and 40% of its earnings from computer services. IBM earned $14.8 billion in 2010. That’s up 10.5% from $13.4 billion in 2009. The company spent $15.4 billion on share buybacks in 2010. Because of fewer shares outstanding, earnings per share rose 15.1%, to $11.52 from $10.01. Revenue rose 4.3% in 2010, to $99.9 billion from $95.8 billion in 2009. The company signed $22.1 billion of new service contracts in the fourth quarter of 2010. That’s up 18% from a year earlier. On December 31, 2010, IBM’s order backlog was $142 billion, or 1.4 times its annual revenue....

SARA LEE CORP. $19 (New York symbol SLE; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Consumer sector; Shares outstanding: 639.3 million; Market cap: $12.1 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.1; Dividend yield: 2.4%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.saralee.com) has gained 58.3% since we first recommended it in the December 2009 Wall Street Stock Forecaster. That’s because the company is focusing on its processed-food operations, and has sold most of its less-profitable household and body-care products businesses. As a smaller company, Sara Lee is reportedly attracting takeover offers. However, Sara Lee may instead spin off its meat and beverage businesses as separate companies. Break-ups like this help unlock hidden value, and generally lead to above-average results for a period of years. Sara Lee is still a buy.

When we’re picking stocks to recommend in our newsletters, including Wall Street Stock Forecaster, our publication for conservative investing in U.S. stocks, we like to see companies that benefit from steady revenue streams from high-quality assets, long-term contracts or other reliable sources. That’s because this type of revenue helps cut a stock’s risk. It also cuts its exposure to the ups and downs of the economic cycle.

Conservative investing: Shift toward services has helped this former “Stock of the Year”

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Apple Inc. (symbol AAPL on Nasdaq) makes computers and a variety of other electronic devices. Portable devices, such as the iPod music player, the iPhone smartphone and the iPad tablet computer, dominate Apple’s overall sales. Users of these products also buy music, movie and video-game downloads at Apple’s iTunes online store. Apple is one of the large cap stocks we analyze in our Wall Street Stock Forecaster newsletter. In its fiscal 2011 first quarter, which ended December 25, 2010, Apple sales rose 70.5%, to $26.7 billion from $15.7 billion a year earlier. Earnings jumped 77.7%, to $6.0 billion, or $6.43 a share. A year earlier, the company earned $3.4 billion, or $3.67 a share....

On January 28, Wall Street Stock Forecaster, our newsletter that focuses on U.S. stocks, will unveil a company with the right mix of strong fundamentals and emerging-market exposure to earn big profits in 2011 and beyond. In fact, we think this U.S. stock’s prospects are so bright we’ve named it Wall Street Stock Forecaster’s #1 stock pick for the coming year. This company is solidly focused on fuelling its growth, mainly by focusing on fast-growing markets like Brazil, China and India, where rising prosperity is making its products more affordable to more consumers....

PLEASE NOTE: In next week’s Wall Street Stock Forecaster Hotline, we’ll reveal our #1 U.S. pick for 2011. INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP., $155.50, New York symbol IBM, reported better-than-expected earnings this week, thanks to rising demand for its mainframe computers, software and computer services. The company earned $14.8 billion in 2010. That’s up 10.5% from $13.4 billion in 2009. IBM spent $15.4 billion on share buybacks in 2010. Because of fewer shares outstanding, earnings per share rose 15.1%, to $11.52 from $10.01. That beat the consensus earnings estimate of $11.44 a share....

PLEASE NOTE: Next week, Wall Street Stock Forecaster, our newsletter that focuses on the U.S. stock markets, will reveal its #1 pick for 2011. If you’re not already a Wall Street Stock Forecaster subscriber, click here to learn how you can get one month — including the Wall Street Stock Forecaster Stock of the Year —FREE. ENCANA CORP., $32.00, Toronto symbol ECA, is selling its natural-gas processing plant in Colorado, as well as five pipelines that pump gas into this plant. Encana will receive $303 million when the sale closes by March 31, 2011 (all amounts except share price in U.S. dollars). To put this figure in context, the company earned $98 million, or $0.13 a share, in the three months ended September 30, 2010. The company did not say what it plans to do with the cash....

PLEASE NOTE: Next week, Wall Street Stock Forecaster, our newsletter that focuses on the U.S. stock markets, will reveal its #1 pick for 2011. If you’re not already a Wall Street Stock Forecaster subscriber, click here to learn how you can get one month — including the Wall Street Stock Forecaster Stock of the Year —FREE. AMAZON.COM INC., $177.42, symbol AMZN on Nasdaq, has agreed to pay $320 million for the 58% of privately held Lovefilm International Ltd. that it didn’t already own. Amazon.com took a minority stake in U.K.-based Lovefilm after it sold its DVD rental business in the U.K. and Germany to Lovefilm in 2008....

Intel Corp. (symbol INTC on Nasdaq), is the world’s largest computer chip maker.

For 2010, the company reported record revenue of $43.6 billion. That’s up 24.2% from $35.1 billion in 2009.

Earnings jumped 76.1%, to a record $11.6 billion from $6.6 billion in 2009....