Stock Picking Contest: Update

Halfway through our annual stock picking contest, the bears have the edge. On average, their picks have declined 1%, versus the market’s 5% advance since last Halloween. Bulls, as a group, are just beating the market with a 6% gain as of yesterday’s close.

We call this exercise “Love Only One,” and we’ve been doing it for decades. The gist of it is to pit the finest minds on Wall Street against the market. Twelve bulls each give us one stock they think will beat the S&P 500 over a one-year period, while five bears offer up one that need only lag the index’s performance. Anyone successful gets invited back for another year.

Full story at Forbes.com

Congress Tees Up Dividend Stocks

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In early March, we noted that Beltway analyst Stuart Sweet saw a 70% likelihood that Congress would extend tax rate cuts on dividends. It took a bit longer than Sweet expected, but that extension now appears to have a rendezvous with President George W. Bush’s pen.

At the time of our earlier story, we also relayed that Sweet, based on his bullishness on the tax-cut extension, was advising clients to consider stocks paying nice dividends. So we put together a list of five dividend standouts. As of midday today, that group was up 8%, on average, versus the market’s 3% advance.

Full story at Forbes.com

Beer Biz Fends Off The Big Box

WASHINGTON, D.C. – This week, beer brewers and distributors meet for their annual legislative conference. One thousand of them will rub elbows, drink beer and charge up to Capitol Hill to call on their elected representatives.

“This is the time when we tell the industry story,” says Craig Purser, president of the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA).

That story has plenty of positives to it, as any aficionado of brews will tell you. American brewers, 2,400 of them, make the U.S. the world’s No. 1 beer producer. According to NBWA, the industry is responsible for 1.8 million jobs and chips in $30 billion to state and federal tax coffers annually.

But it won’t be all happy talk from the beer crowd to Congress this week. On the top of the agenda: warding off challenges to the regulatory status quo. “There’s an erosion of the ability of states to regulate licensed beverages,” says Purser.

Full story at Forbes.com

Wall Street’s Defense Worthies

WASHINGTON, D.C. – To find out what’s going on in Washington, sometimes the best place to turn is Wall Street. That’s particularly true when it comes to the defense business and the research analysts who track it.

Given the size of the military-industrial complex, there’s no shortage of analysts focused on aerospace and defense companies. By Thomson Financial’s count, for example, 22 analysts cover Lockheed Martin.

One way to cut through the clutter here is our third annual analyst rankings, published this week on Forbes.com. Conducted by our partners at StarMine, a research organization that evaluates analyst performance, the survey identifies Wall Street’s best in two categories: stock picking and accuracy in earnings estimates.

Full story at Forbes.com