Top 5 Industrial Disributor Stocks To Buy Right Now

Innovation is a wonderful thing. Without it, products would never get better. Services would never improve.

That's exactly what Henry Ford was talking about in one of his most famous quotes: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) is a great example of this dynamic. Before the iPod came along, music lovers were still carrying around racks of CDs that were cumbersome and susceptible to scratches. The iPod not only gave Apple a market-changing product -- and sent its shares rocketing higher -- it also enriched the listening experience with a more user-friendly device.

 

But now, more than 10 years after Apple changed the landscape of consumer electronics, that same cycle of innovation is repeating itself in a different segment of the market.

Best Computer Hardware Companies To Watch In Right Now: Tri-Continental Corp (TY)

Tri-Continental Corporation (the Fund) is a diversified closed-end management investment company. The Fund�� portfolio consists primarily of large-capitalization stocks representing a range of industry sectors.

Tri-Continental Corporation invests to produce future growth of both capital and income, while providing reasonable current income. The Fund�� investment manager is J. & W Seligman & Co. Incorporated.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Rick Aristotle Munarriz]

  Alamy What if there was a way to buy Apple (AAPL) -- recently trading near $568 a share -- for just $500? It's not an outlandish scenario. That's essentially what investors buying into Tri-Continental (TY) are doing. Like many closed-end stock funds, Tri-Continental trades for less than the value of its underlying assets. In Tri-Continental's case, its close on Dec. 24 of $20.18 is a 12 percent discount to its net asset value of $22.95 a share. Tri-Continental invests in some of the country's largest companies across various different industries. Apple just happens to be its largest holding at nearly 3 percent of the portfolio, but it's one of the many stocks in Tri-Continental that investors are buying into for pennies on the dollar. If this sounds too good to be true, you would be right. There's a catch -- and a big catch, at that. But let's first explore the largely ignored universe of closed-end funds. Fun with Funds When investors think about mutual funds they are probably referring to the wide universe of open-ended funds. Led by iconic fund families including Vanguard, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price (TROW), these conventional funds sell an unlimited number of shares. They typically are priced just once at the end of every trading day. Buyers invest and sellers cash out at that day's net asset value, or the closing value of all of the stocks and investments in the funds after subtracting any liabilities that is then divided by the number of shares outstanding. Closed-end funds don't play that way. They trade throughout the day on public exchanges. Tri-Continental, for example, trades on the New York Stock Exchange. A closed-end fund doesn't create new shares when investors want to buy or subtract them when those shares are redeemed. There's a set number of shares, and the free markets of supply and demand dictate their price. Tri-Continental isn't new. The fund has been around since 1929, the same year of a historic market crash. It's one of the hund

Top 5 Industrial Disributor Stocks To Buy Right Now: Syntel Inc.(SYNT)

Syntel, Inc. provides information technology (IT) and knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) services worldwide. It operates in four segments: Applications Outsourcing, KPO, e-Business, and TeamSourcing. The Applications Outsourcing segment provides software applications development, maintenance, testing, migration, and infrastructure services. The KPO segment offers a host of outsourced solutions for knowledge and business processes. It focuses on middle and back-office business processes of the transaction cycle in the capital markets, banking, healthcare, and insurance industries. The e-Business segment provides technology services in the areas of architecting, implementing, and maintaining Web solutions, data warehousing/business intelligence, enterprise application integration, business process management, and enterprise resource planning solutions. The TeamSourcing segment offers professional IT consulting services directly to customers on a staff augmentation basis. It s services include systems specification, design, development, implementation, and maintenance of complex IT applications involving computer hardware, software, data, and networking technologies and practices. Syntel, Inc. provides services to a range of companies primarily in the financial services, healthcare and life sciences, insurance, manufacturing, automotive, retail, logistics, and telecom industries. The company was founded in 1980 and is headquartered in Troy, Michigan.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Brian Pacampara]

  Based on the aggregated intelligence of 180,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free investing community, IT services specialist Syntel (NASDAQ: SYNT  ) has earned a coveted five-star ranking.

Top 5 Industrial Disributor Stocks To Buy Right Now: SLM Corporation(SLM)

SLM Corporation, through its subsidiaries, originates, acquires, finances, and services private education loans in the United States. It offers processing capabilities to educational institutions, 529 college-savings plan program management services, and a consumer savings network. The company also provides servicing, loan default aversion, and defaulted loan collection services for loans owned by the Department of Education (ED), Guarantors of FFELP Loans, and other institutions. In addition, SLM Corporation offers campus solutions, which comprise electronic billing, collection, payment and refund, and tuition payment plan administration services. The company promotes its products through the financial aid offices on campuses, as well as through direct marketing to students and their families. SLM Corporation was founded in 1972 and is headquartered in Newark, Delaware.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By John Kell]

  Sallie Mae sa(SLM)id its fourth-quarter profit slid 22% on bigger losses on derivative and hedging actions, masking lower loan-loss provisions and an increase in loan originations. Core earnings for the latest period missed Wall Street’s expectations, sending shares down 4.2% to $26 premarket.

• [By Rich Duprey]

  Private student loan provider�Sallie Mae� (NASDAQ: SLM  ) �announced yesterday�its third-quarter dividend of $0.87125�per share on its Series A preferred stock.

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  Gerald Herber/AP Student loans have become an increasingly large portion of the debt burden that Americans face. During the past six years, consumers have paid down their outstanding balances on most forms of debt, including mortgages, credit cards and auto loans, according to the New York Federal Reserve. But student loan balances have continued to increase. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau noted earlier this year that outstanding student debt would shortly hit the $1.2 trillion mark. Most of the loans that students take are federal government loans, with various features that can include subsidies for interest payments while you're in school, fixed interest rates throughout the life of your loan, and opportunities for deferments, forbearance, and even outright loan forgiveness under certain circumstances. But even though private student loans represent a small portion of the overall loan market -- about 14 percent, according to figures from the CFPB -- the lenders that offer private loans have gotten a number of complaints from borrowers citing various problems. Let's take a look at the CFPB report that goes through types of trouble borrowers have had recently with their student lenders to find some key conclusions. 1. Lenders Want Your Business. For the most part, few borrowers cited any problems with actually a private student loan. Just 4 percent of the complaints to the CFPB had to do with obtaining loans, strongly suggesting that most of those who need financing aren't having banks turn them away. Lenders have good reasons to prefer student loans. Unlike most other forms of debt, student loans give creditors protection against discharge in bankruptcy, meaning that borrowers often have to repay their student debt even if they go bankrupt and have other debts wiped out. 2. Competition Is Limited. Looking at which lenders got the most complaints, Sallie Mae (SLM) was the winner by far, with nearly 800 complaints representing almost 40 percent

• [By Jon C. Ogg]

  The wild card by our take�is how this will impact SLM�Corporation (NYSE: SLM). If this is going to be a huge win for Sallie Mae it is not being reflected in the price of its stock as the stock was up only by one-cent at $24.21 late on Thursday. SLM is worth just over $10.5 billion and it is somewhat remarkable that it survived the government takeover of the industry.

Top 5 Industrial Disributor Stocks To Buy Right Now: Gastar Exploration Ltd (GST)

Gastar Exploration Ltd (Gastar) is an independent energy company engaged in the exploration, development and production of natural gas and oil in the United States. The Company�� principal business activities include the identification, acquisition, and subsequent exploration and development of natural gas and oil properties with an emphasis on unconventional reserves, such as shale resource plays. As of December 31, 2011, it is pursuing the development of liquids-rich natural gas in the Marcellus Shale in the Appalachia area of West Virginia and, to a lesser extent, central and southwestern Pennsylvania. The Company also holds prospective acreage in the deep Bossier play in the Hilltop area of East Texas and conduct limited coal bed methane (CBM) development activities within the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana. The Company is a holding company. Advisors' Opinion:

• [By David Smith]

  Earlier, the company had pocketed $75.2 million by selling to Gastar Exploration (NYSEMKT: GST  ) leasehold acreage in Oklahoma's Kingfisher and Canadian counties. It'll obviously require a passel of sales of that magnitude to shore up an overweight balance sheet.

• [By Josh Young]

  The parallel to Goodrich in the transaction is Gastar Exploration (GST), which has approximately 100,000 net acres in the Hunton (excluding additional exposure from the WEHLU deal). Gastar, similar to Goodrich prior to the Sanchez TMS deal, seems to trade at a discount to a $2,000 per acre implied value for its unconventional oil acreage. In fact, Gastar's CEO recently said he thought the current liquidation value of Gastar's Marcellus assets would be $4-7 per share, net of debt, versus the current $4.25 share price.

• [By Robert Rapier]

  Gastar Exploration (NYSE: GST) is another Aggressive Portfolio pick made on Dec. 11, and so far it has rallied quite aggressively, producing a three-week capital gain of 26 percent. It helped here too to catch the very bottom of the recent correction, but Gastar has continued to report strong test well results from the Hunton Limestone play it’s pioneering in Oklahoma.

• [By Heather Ingrassia]

  Gastar Agreement: On April 1st it was announced that Gastar Exploration, Ltd. (GST) had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire proven reserves and undeveloped leasehold interests in Kingfisher and Canadian counties of Oklahoma from Chesapeake Energy Corporation, repurchase Chesapeake's common shares of the Company and settle all litigation for $1 million. Although smaller in scope than most of Chesapeake's previous asset-shedding transactions, the agreement with Gastar accomplishes two things. First, is the fact the settlement resolves the legal wrangling both companies were engaged in and as a result Chesapeake walks away with $85 million of the potential $130 million they were suing for. Second, is the fact Chesapeake wipes it hands of acreage, that although producing, may not be producing as much as Chesapeake had once hoped, and therefore was worth much more to Gastar in the long run.