The short term investing stock picks blog

I have been very bullish on Natural Gas since the beginning of 2008.  The commodity has rallied through the $10 mark.  This morning, Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) noted that it now sees summer nat gas to come in over $11 and may be as high as $13 in 2009.  The reason?  International demand is on the rise (sound familiar).  LNG imports are increasing dramatically ex-US, especially in Europe.  GS noted that prices will have to increase in the US to match prices abroad in order to get shipments of the commodity into Henry Hub.  This has lead amny E&P players to begin signing leases like crazy in the less conventional formations, most notably the Marcellus and Utica shale in the Northeast and Canada.
You can play the commodity as a an ETF with AMEX: UNG.  My favorite three E&P plays include Range Resources Company (NYSE: RCC), Cabot Oil & Gas (NYSE: COG), and Chesapeake Energy (NYSE: CHK).

Disclosure: I own shares of CHK in my buy and hold portfolio.

I wanted to announce to the blog audience the creation of Instant ETF.  Instant ETF was an idea I had while trying to find some ETFs for my portfolio a while back.  What I found was that while there are many tools out there, few offered a simple approach to browsing ETFs.  At times, I could get lucky with using Google Finance’s autocomplete, but since most ETFs official name starts with its manager (like iShares), it was hard.  I’ve found ETF Connect’s search function somewhat useful as well, but also limiting if I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, or say if I was an average investor what the heck a closed-end fund was.

Instant ETF offers the ability to simply browse by name, expense ratio, sector, bond type, location, market cap, and investment style (bullish/bearish).  Its a simple system — you can’t currently filter by multiple attributes or search traditionally — these may be added in the future.  The system currently contains around 1,000 ETF/ETNs, which I do not believe is a fully exhaustive list, but pretty darn close.  I know there are probably a few of those closed-end funds that I do not have in there.

In any event, check it out and enjoy!

In August, I wrote an article about the 3 Stanleys in the stock market: Stanley Works (NYSE: SWK), Stanley Furniture (NASDAQ: STLY), and Stanley, Inc (NYSE: SXE).  At that time, I said, hey there is no question here the other two are garbage and Stanley, Inc was the way to go.  Since that time SXE is up 44% and in December hit the mid-high $30s.  If anyone cares, in the same period SWK is down 12.4% and  STLY is down 21.0%.

Back in August, I noted that the main risk facing Stanley, Inc was the potential for it to lose its largest contract, its Passport contract, with the State Department.  Well, good news for the company is that  on 3/17 it was announced that SXE would keep its passport services contract with the government and it would now be worth $570 million over 5 years.  This is obviously significant for a company with a $660 million market cap.  I like this news to hey buoy the stock in troubled market times and look for it to hit a target of $33, or around 12% upside in the next 3 months.

The company has shown an impressive track record of earning contracts over the past year or so.  Analysts currently peg its long term growth rate at 28.3%, not too bad for a company with a trailing P/E of 30 (PEG ratio=1.0).  With continued success on the contract front, Stanley can look for an upside to $40, which it likely would have reached under ‘normal’ market circumstances back in December or early January.

Disclosure: I hold no position in Stanley, Inc.