Imagine how wonderful credit cards would be if they didn't charge interest. You'd get the safest way to pay, plus perks, extra consumer protections, and miles, points or cash back all for free -- unless you opted to pay an annual fee for extra services. For close to half of Americans, that's already a reality, because they never carry forward balances to the following month. The rest, probably a small majority, do sometimes, often or always have credit card debt. And they pay a high price.
Credit card rates today
According to the IndexCreditCards.com�rates monitor, the average consumer non-rewards card was charging 15.48 percent APR in mid-August, while the same figure for a consumer rewards card was 17.83 percent. That "APR" stands for "annual percentage rate," and represents the actual yearly cost of borrowing over the entire term of a loan. So short-term loans can be less expensive than they sound. For example, if you borrow $100 for three months, the actual interest you'd pay at 17.83 percent APR would be just $4.38, according to one of this site's credit card calculators.
5 Best Paper Stocks To Own For 2016: Ecopetrol S.A.(EC)
Ecopetrol S.A. operates as an integrated oil company in Colombia, Peru, Brazil, and the U.S. Gulf Coast. The company engages in the exploration, development, and production of crude oil and natural gas. As of December 31, 2010, its proved reserves of crude oil and natural gas consisted of 1,714.0 million barrels of oil equivalent. The company also transports crude oil, motor fuels, fuel oil, and other refined products, as well as mixture of diesel and palm oil. It owns transportation network consisting of 3,003 kilometers of crude oil pipeline directly, as well as an additional 2,178 kilometers of crude oil pipeline with its business partners; and 3,017 kilometers of multi-purpose pipelines for transportation of refined products from refinery to wholesale distribution points. As of the above date, Ecopetrol S.A. owned 58 stations with a nominal storage capacity of 19 million barrels of crude oil and 6 million barrels of refined products. In addition, the company owns and o perates refineries that produce a range of refined products, including gasoline, diesel, kerosene, jet fuel, aviation fuel, liquefied petroleum gas, sulfur, heavy fuel oils, motor fuels, and petrochemicals, including paraffin waxes, lube base oils, low-density polyethylene, aromatics, asphalts, alkylates, cyclohexane and aliphatic solvents, and refinery grade propylene, as well as provides industrial services to third parties. Further, it markets various refined and feed stock products, including regular and high octane gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, natural gas, and petrochemical products. The company was formerly known as Empresa Colombiana de Petroleos and changed its name to Ecopetrol S.A. in June 2003. Ecopetrol S.A. was founded in 1948 and is based in Bogota, Colombia.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Matt Smith]
What are some of the best bargains?
Growing resource nationalism, continuing government interference in the energy sector, falling crude prices and the pessimistic economic outlook has seen investors shy away from investing in Latin American energy companies. This has seen many of the region's major energy companies including Colombian government controlled Ecopetrol (NYSE: EC ) , Brazilian government controlled Petrobras and Argentine government controlled YPF fall to new 52 week lows.
Hot Safest Companies To Buy For 2015: The Andersons Inc.(ANDE)
The Andersons, Inc. engages in the grain, ethanol, plant nutrient, railcar leasing and repair, turf products production, and general merchandise retailing businesses. It operates in six segments: Grain, Ethanol, Rail, Plant Nutrient, Turf & Specialty, and Retail. The Grain segment operates grain elevators; and is involved in the storage, merchandising, and trading of grains, as well as offers marketing, risk management, and corn origination services to its customers. The Ethanol segment operates three ethanol production facilities; and provides facility operations, risk management, and ethanol and distillers dried grains marketing to the ethanol plants. The Rail segment buys, sells, leases, rebuilds, and repairs a fleet of approximately 23,000 railcars and locomotives; offers fleet management services to private railcar owners; engages in metal fabrication business; and invests in short-line railroad. The Plant Nutrient segment manufactures, distributes, and retails dry an d liquid agricultural nutrients, and pelleted lime and gypsum products to agricultural farm supply dealers; and essential crop nutrients, crop protection chemicals, and seed products, as well as provides application and agronomic services to commercial and family farmers. This segment also offers warehousing, packaging, and manufacturing services to manufacturers and other distributors; and various industrial products, including nitrogen reagents for air pollution control systems. The Turf & Specialty segment produces granular fertilizer and control products for the turf and ornamental markets; and fertilizer and control products, and corncob-based animal bedding and cat litter for the consumer markets. The Retail segment operates The Andersons retail stores; The Andersons Market, a specialty food market; a distribution center; and a lawn and garden equipment sales and service shop. The Andersons, Inc. was founded in 1947 and is headquartered in Maumee, Ohio.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Michael Vodicka]
The Anderson's, Inc. (ANDE) is an agriculture conglomerate, operating in 5 divisions that includes a rail shipping and nutrient business. But its Grain division is its biggest, accounting for more than 60% of revenue, where the company is a wholesaler of grain and grain storage services. The company's share price has been hot in 2013, posting a market and industry crushing return of 58%. Take a look below.
- [By Paul Ausick]
Ethanol producers and farmers are the losers and the RFA is steaming mad. The group claims that the ��PA is proposing to place the nation�� renewable energy policy in the hands of the oil companies.��Producers like Archer Daniels Midland Co. (NYSE: ADM), Pacific Ethanol Inc. (NASDAQ: PEIX), and The Andersons Inc. (NASDAQ: ANDE) don�� have an oil refining business to offset the proposed cuts to ethanol volumes.
Hot Safest Companies To Buy For 2015: Electronics for Imaging Inc.(EFII)
Electronics For Imaging, Inc. provides color digital print controllers, digital inkjet printers, and business process automation solutions. The company?s Fiery products consist of stand-alone print controllers and servers connected to digital copiers and other peripheral devices; embedded and design-licensed solutions used in digital copiers and multi-functional devices; optional software integrated into controller solutions that include Fiery Central and MicroPress; Entrac, a self-service and payment solution; PrintMe, a mobile printing application; and stand-alone software-based solutions, such as proofing and scanning solutions, including ColorProof XF, Fiery XF, ColorProof eXpress, and Xflow. It also offers industrial inkjet products, including VUTEk super-wide format digital industrial inkjet printers and inks used by billboard graphics printers, commercial photo labs, sign shops, graphic screen printers, specialty commercial printers, and digital graphics providers; Rastek hybrid and flatbed entry level production UV wide format inkjet printers; and Jetrion label and packaging digital inkjet printers, integration solutions, and specialty digital UV inks for primary and secondary label applications, and industrial label or flexible packaging markets. In addition, the company provides advanced professional print software products consisting of print production workflow and management information software, including Monarch, PSI, Logic, PrintSmith, and PrintFlow; Pace, a cloud-based business process automation software; and cloud-based order entry and order management systems, which comprise Digital StoreFront, PrinterSite, and PrintSmith Site. Electronics For Imaging, Inc. offers its products through sales force and distribution arrangements primarily in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Japan. The company was founded in 1988 and is headquartered in Foster City, California.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By shash63]
Electronic For Imaging�� (EFII) second biggest segment, Fiery Controllers, contributed 35% of total revenue. This segment provides controllers for digital printers. The company�� big clients in this segment are Xerox, Ricoh, Konica Minolta, and Canon, contributing 80% of this segment�� revenue. These clients are expected to launch new products in future, thus creating further potential for revenue growth.
- [By Brian Pacampara]
What: Shares of digital printing technologist Electronics for Imaging (NASDAQ: EFII ) popped 12% today after its quarterly results topped�Wall Street expectations.
- [By Seth Jayson]
Electronics for Imaging (Nasdaq: EFII ) reported earnings on April 18. Here are the numbers you need to know.
The 10-second takeaway
For the quarter ended March 31 (Q1), Electronics for Imaging beat expectations on revenues and beat expectations on earnings per share.
Hot Safest Companies To Buy For 2015: Amalgamated Gold and Silver Inc (BCHS)
Amalgamated Gold & Silver Inc., formerly Balmoral FX Systems Inc, incorporated on November 13, 1992, is a development-stage company. The Company is a holding Company researching various opportunities for investment in gold and silver mining operations.
The Company is focused on gold and silver mining interests in the United States and Mexico. The Company has conducted or has attempted to conduct operations in several other industries and is concentrating all operations on the development.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Peter Graham]
Small cap mining stocks Discovery Minerals Ltd (OTCMKTS: DSCR), Zinco Do Brasil Inc (OTCMKTS: ZNBR) and Amalgamated Gold and Silver Inc (OTCMKTS: BCHS) have been getting some extra attention lately as one stock surged last Friday while the other two are or have been in the past, the subject of paid promotions. It goes without saying though that small cap mining stocks tend to be riskier than your average stock. But do these three small cap mining stocks have what it takes to produce a mother lode for investors? Here is a deeper dig into all three:
Hot Safest Companies To Buy For 2015: China Unicom (CHU)
China Unicom (Hong Kong) Limited (Unicom), incorporated on February 8, 2000, is an integrated telecommunications operator in China providing mobile voice and value-added, fixed-line voice and fixed-line broadband, data communications and other telecommunications services to its customers. The Company operates in two business segments consisting of mobile services and fixed-line services. The Company is engaged in global system for mobile communications (GSM) and wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) cellular business in 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China, the provision of fixedline voice, broadband and other Internet-related services, information and communications technology services, business and data communications services, and other related telecommunication value-added businesses. As of 30 June 2011, Unicom Group held 57.81% of the shares in the Company through China United Network Communications Limited (A Share Company), China Unicom (BVI) Limited and China Netcom Group Corporation (BVI) Limited, and Telefonica Internacional S.A.U. held 9.01% of the shares in the Company.
Mobile Business
Unicom�� mobile business consists of GSM and third generation (3G) mobile business. As of December 31, 2010, the Company had a total of 167.43 million mobile subscribers. As of December 31, 2010, its total number of mobile subscribers included 167.43 million. Unicom operates the 3G business based on the WCDMA technology nationwide in China. As of December 31, 2010, the total number of its 3G subscribers included 14.06 million, and had 1.35 million wireless data card subscribers, 2.41 million mobile television (TV) subscribers and over seven million mobile reading subscribers. During the year ended December 31, 2010, the total 3G voice usage was 55.47 billion minutes and the average data usage per subscriber per month was 178M. GSM mobile business primarily consists of GSM voice business and value-added business.
The Company�� mobile ! voice business enables its subscribers to make and receive phone calls with a mobile handset at any point within the coverage area of its mobile telecommunications networks. Its mobile voice business includes local calls, domestic long distance calls, international long distance calls, intra-provincial roaming, inter-provincial roaming and international roaming. As of December 31, 2010, the Company�� total number of GSM mobile subscribers was 153.37 million. Unicom offers a range of GSM value-added services nationwide, including short message service (SMS), Cool Ringtone (a personalized ring-back tone service), mobile Internet and other wireless information services. During 2010, a total of 78.31 billion SMSs were transmitted by its GSM mobile subscribers. As of December 31, 2010, the Company had a total number of 67.26 million subscribers to its Cool Ringtone service. In addition, as of December 31, 2010, it had a total number of 55.81 million mobile Internet subscribers.
Fixed-Line Business
Unicom is a fixed-line broadband and communications operator in northern China. The Company offers a range of fixed-line services nationwide in China, including fixed-line broadband services and data communications services; fixed-line voice services, include local and long distance fixed-line voice services and value-added services, and other services. The Company is a provider of fixed-line broadband services in its fixed-line northern service region. Unicom is a provider of data communications services in its fixed-line northern service region. It offers managed data products, such as those based on digital data networks (DDN), frame relay, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and Internet protocol-virtual private network (IP-VPN). The Company also offers leased line products, including domestic and international leased circuits. Its customers for these services include government entities, large financial institutions and other domestic and multinational businesses, Internet service prov! iders and! other telecommunications operators.
As of December 31, 2010, the Company had established business cooperation relationships with more than 160 overseas operators to provide various international data communications products and services, such as international voice and data services. During 2010, it continued to offer full-scale data communications services to international operators and domestic and international corporate customers. The Company�� fixed-line voice services consist of local voice, domestic long distance, international long distance, value-added, interconnection and personal handyphone system (PHS) services. In addition to fixed-line telephone voice services, it offers a range of value-added services on its fixed-line networks. The Company�� fixed-line, value-added services include Personalized Ring and caller identification services. Personalized Ring services enable its fixed-line subscribers to personalize the ring-back tone for incoming calls. As of December 31, 2010, the number of its Personalized Ring subscribers reached 23.79 million.
Interconnection and Roaming Arrangements
The Company earns interconnection fees for terminating or transiting calls that originate from other domestic telecommunications operators��networks and pay interconnection fees to other operators for calls originating from its networks that are terminated on their networks. It earns and pays such fees in respect of mobile calls, local and domestic and international long distance calls and Internet services, except for the interconnection by fixed-line subscribers calling its mobile subscribers in the same region where no interconnection fee will be charged.
The Company provides roaming services, which allow its subscribers to access its mobile services while they are physically outside of their registered service area or in the coverage areas of other mobile networks in other countries and regions with which it has roaming arrangements. As of April 30! , 2011, U! nicom had roaming arrangements for GSM international voice and SMS services with 242 operators in 521 countries and regions; GPRS international inbound data services with 179 operators in 400 countries and regions and for international GPRS outbound data services with 164 operators in 357 countries and regions, and 3G services with 104 WCDMA operators in 245 countries and regions.
Mobile Networks
The Company�� mobile network consists of cell sites, which are physical locations, each equipped with a base station that houses transmitters, receivers and other equipment used to communicate through radio channels with subscribers��mobile handsets within the range of a cell; base station controllers, which connect to, and control, the base stations, and mobile switching centers, which control the base station controllers and the routing of telephone calls. Its mobile network also consists of a transmission network, which links the mobile switching centers, base station controllers, base stations and the public switched telephone network. It has deployed GSM and WCDMA mobile networks. The Company�� GSM mobile network mainly operates at 900 megahertz. It has also deployed GSM technology that operates at 1,800 megahertz in metropolitan areas to supplement the capacity of its existing mobile network. As of December 31, 2010, the Company had approximately 329,000 GSM base stations.
The Company competes with China Mobile and China Telecom.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Garrett Cook]
On Friday, the telecommunications services sector proved to be a source of strength for the market. Leading the sector was strength from RRSat Global Communications Network Ltd. (NASDAQ: RRST) and China Unicom (Hong Kong) Limited (NYSE: CHU).
Hot Safest Companies To Buy For 2015: Weyco Group Inc.(WEYS)
Weyco Group, Inc. engages in the distribution of men?s foot wear primarily in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, Asia, and South Africa. It offers casual, dress, and fashion shoes. The company offers its products under the brand names of Florsheim, Nunn Bush, Stacy Adams, Umi, Brass Boot, and Nunn Bush NXXT. Weyco Group sells its products to shoe specialty stores, department stores, and clothing retailers. As of December 31, 2010, it owned 35 retail stores in the United States and an Internet business. The company was formerly known as Weyenberg Shoe Manufacturing Company and changed its name to Weyco Group, Inc. in April 1990. Weyco Group, Inc. was founded in 1896 and is based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Seth Jayson]
Calling all cash flows
When you are trying to buy the market's best stocks, it's worth checking up on your companies' free cash flow once a quarter or so, to see whether it bears any relationship to the net income in the headlines. That's what we do with this series. Today, we're checking in on Weyco Group (Nasdaq: WEYS ) , whose recent revenue and earnings are plotted below.
Hot Safest Companies To Buy For 2015: Rite Aid Corp (RAD)
Rite Aid Corporation, incorporated in 1968, is a retail drugstore chain in the United States. As of March 3, 2012, the Company operated drugstores in 31 states across the country and in the District of Columbia. As of March 3, 2012, it operated 4,667 stores. In the Company�� stores, it sells prescription drugs and a range of other merchandise, which it calls front end products. During the fiscal year ended March 3, 2012 (fiscal 2012), prescription drug sales accounted for 68.1% of its total sales. The Company carries a range of front end products, which accounted for 31.9% of its total sales in fiscal 2012. Front end products include over-the-counter medications, health and beauty aids, personal care items, cosmetics, household items, beverages, convenience foods, greeting cards, seasonal merchandise and other everyday and convenience products, as well as photo processing. It offers a variety of products under its private brands, which contributed approximately 17% of its front end sales in the categories where private brand products were offered in fiscal 2012. As of March 3, 2012, the Company had opened over 2,100 GNC stores-within-Rite Aid-stores. During fiscal 2012, the Company sold two owned operating stores to independent third parties.
During fiscal 2012, its stores filled approximately 295 million prescriptions and served an average of 2.1 million customers per day. The overall average size of each store in its chain is approximately 12,600 square feet. As of March 3, 2012, 60% of its stores were freestanding; 51% of its stores included a drive-thru pharmacy; 24% included one-hour photo shops, and 46% included a GNC store-within-Rite Aid-store. The Company�� customers may also order prescription refills over the Internet through www.riteaid.com, or over the phone through its telephonic automated refill systems for pick up at a Rite Aid store. It has a strategic alliance with GNC, a retailer of vitamin and mineral supplements.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Maria Armental var popups = dojo.query(".socialByline .popC"); popups.forEach]
Among the companies with shares expected to actively trade in Thursday’s session are KBR Inc.(KBR), Pier 1 Imports Inc.(PIR) and Rite (RAD) Aid Corp.
- [By Brian Nichols]
Continuing the trend
By the quarter, pharmacies are proving that their strong performances are not flukes. Back in mid-September Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD ) delivered a phenomenal report that catapulted its shares to multiyear highs, making its one-year stock gain 325%. - [By Laura Brodbeck]
Next week investors will be waiting for several key earnings reports including JP Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Alcoa Inc. (NYSE: AA), Rite Aid Corporation (NYSE: RAD) and Family Dollar Stores (NYSE: FDO).
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