With the S&P 500 priced 16% below its 52-week high, mustering the courage to make an investment in a big company isn’t easy. In certain cases, however, it might be worth it.

What cases are those? Philip Tasho, portfolio manager of the ABN AMRO/TAMRO Large Cap Value fund, suggests looking for outfits with ample cash flow, healthy debt-to-capital ratios and consistent results. “Look at how the company has performed through good and bad times,” he says.

Full story at Forbes.com

WASHINGTON – Anyone with a computer and data feeds can come up with an investment model. We normally don’t pay much attention to such methodologies unless they’ve been evaluated over a long period of time and with real money at stake. But we came across a relatively new idea, known as SPF, that seems worthy of being put to the test.

The inventor of this model isn’t a newcomer to the investment business. Joseph S. Kalinowski, the director of research for New York brokerage Puglisi & Co., has six years of experience, five of which were spent analyzing databases at IBES International, an aggregator of analyst estimate information. Kalinowski has been with Puglisi since May.

Kalinowski’s SPF is an acronym for “sentiment,” “persistence” and “fundamentals.” In each of these categories, he ranks stocks according to a variety of metrics. Taken together, the rankings produce an SPF profile signaling whether to buy, sell or hold.

Full story at Forbes.com

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In mid-May, Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta pulled the wraps off the Bush Administration’s proposal for a six-year, $247 billion highway and transportation bill. The reaction from the road building lobby? Disappointment. But the freight and shipping industry had few complaints.

“We’re pretty happy about it,” says Joanne Casey, president of the Intermodal Association of North America, a group representing railroads, water carriers, ports, truckers and other freight outfits. “It’s a good starting point.”

The administration’s proposal is called the Safe, Accountable, Flexible and Efficient Transportation Equity Act of 2003, or SAFETEA. It addresses the reauthorization of the current law, known as the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), set to expire at the end of September.

So why does the cargo crowd like SAFETEA? Several provisions in the bill zero in on the issue of intermodal shipping, or the seamless movement of containers from boats to trains to trucks. Most important, SAFETEA establishes dedicated funding to build out the so-called intermodal connectors, or roads that link the ports, airports and rail and truck terminals to inland interstates and highways. It also would make tax-exempt bonds available for freight projects and free up credit for private rail infrastructure investment under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, or TIFIA.

The freight lobby has been pushing for such provisions for years. Its primary argument: America faces a freight capacity crisis. That may be a hard one to believe these days, what with the nation’s manufacturing capacity at 20-year lows.

Full story at Forbes.com