While many investors’ focus has tilted toward natural resources like corn, copper and oil, the most important commodity still remains absent from their portfolios.
Best Consumer Service Companies For 2015: Tennant Company(TNC)
Tennant Company engages in the design, manufacture, and marketing cleaning solutions worldwide. The company offers floor maintenance and outdoor cleaning equipment; chemical-free cleaning technologies; and specialty surface coatings and related products for protecting, repairing, and upgrading floors. Its products are used to clean and coat surfaces in factories, office buildings, parking lots and streets, airports, hospitals, schools, warehouses, shopping centers, and other retail environments. The company also provides parts, consumables, and service maintenance and repair; business solutions, such as pay-for-use offerings, and rental and leasing programs; and cleaning technologies that enhance the performance of its cleaning equipment. In addition, it offers Green Machine 500ze, an electric vacuum street sweeper to clean crowded urban areas. The company serves building service contract cleaners, end-user businesses, healthcare facilities, and schools, as well as local, state, and federal governments through its direct sales and service organization, and authorized distributors. Tennant Company was founded in 1870 and is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Marc Bastow]
Floor maintenance and cleaning service company Tennant (TNC) raised its quarterly dividend 11% to 20 cents per share payable June 6 to shareholders of record May 30.
TNC Dividend Yield: 1.29% - [By Seth Jayson]
Tennant (NYSE: TNC ) reported earnings on April 22. Here are the numbers you need to know.
The 10-second takeaway
For the quarter ended March 31 (Q1), Tennant missed estimates on revenues and missed estimates on earnings per share.
Top 5 US Companies To Watch For 2014: Market Vectors Global Alternative Energy ETF (GEX)
Market Vectors-Global Alternative Energy ETF (the Fund) seeks to replicate as closely as possible the price and yield performance of the Ardour Global Index (Extra Liquid) (the Index). The Index, published by Ardour Global Indexes, LLC and calculated by Dow Jones Indexes, is a benchmark for the global alternative energy industry. The Index is a rules-based index that seeks to track the overall performance of a global universe of listed companies engaged in the alternative energy industry. As of April 2007, the Index consisted of publicly traded stocks of 30 of the largest, most actively traded alternative energy companies from worldwide. Companies included in the Index generate over 50% of their revenues from alternative energy and/or related technologies, and are engaged in five core industry sectors: alternative energy resources (solar, wind, bio-fuels, water and geothermal), which constitute approximately 70% of the Index; distributed generation, which constitutes approximately 3% of the Index; environmental technologies related to alternative energy, which constitutes approximately 9% of the Index; energy efficiency, which constitutes approximately 4% of the Index, and enabling technologies, which constitutes approximately 14% of the Index.
The Index consists of the 30 stocks in the Ardour Global Index (Composite) with the highest average of daily trading volume and market capitalization. The Ardour Global Index (Composite) is a modified capitalization-weighted, float-adjusted index comprising publicly traded companies engaged in the production of alternative fuels and/or technologies related to the production of alternative energy power. The Fund will normally invest at least 80% of its total assets in stocks of companies primarily engaged in the business of alternative energy. The Fund, utilizing a passive or indexing investment approach, attempts to approximate the investment performance of the Index by investing in a portfolio of securities that generally replicate the Index. The ! Fund will hold all of the securities, which comprise the Index in proportion to their weightings in the Index. The Fund will normally invest at least 95% of its total assets in securities that comprise the Index. Van Eck Associates Corporation serves as the investment advisor of the Fund.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Todd Shriber, ETF Professor]
The news was predictably good for a pair of ETFs that should be known as "Tesla ETFs." The Market Vectors Global Alternatve Energy ETF (NYSE: GEX) and the First Trust NASDAQ Clean Edge Green Energy Index Fund (NASDAQ: QCLN) both traded higher on a down day for U.S. stocks, rising to within pennies of their previous 52-week highs.
Top 5 US Companies To Watch For 2014: Track Data Corp (TRAC)
Track Data Corporation is a financial services company that provides real-time financial market data, fundamental research, charting and analytical services to institutional and individual investors through telecommunication lines and the Internet. The Company also disseminates news and third-party database information from approximately 100 sources worldwide. The Company operates in three segments: professional market, which provides market data services and trading, including electronic communications network (ECN) services, to the institutional professional investment community; non-professional market, which includes Internet-based online trading and market data services to the non-professional individual investor community, and arbitrage trading. Its wholly owned subsidiary, Track Data Securities Corp. (TDSC) is a registered securities broker-dealer. Track Data provides an integrated Internet-based online trading and market data system, proTrack, for the professional institutional traders, and myTrack and myTrack Edge, for the individual trader. It operates Track ECN, an ECN that enables traders to display and match limit orders for stocks.
Professional Market
MarkeTrack provides domestic and international market information, updating quotelines, options and futures displays, real-time spreadsheets, tick-by-tick updating graphics, news services and third-party databases, user-defined screen layouts, access to back-office order and execution services. The solution allows users to calculate theoretical values of options and determine the most beneficial investment strategy through calculating returns on alternative investments, including options and futures. MarkeTrack serves approximately 700 customers in trading and institutional investment management positions. Customers include floor traders, block traders, market makers, over the counter (OTC) traders, options specialists, head traders, arbitrageurs and hedge fund managers.
The Company offers proTrack ! as a direct access trading system for the professional market. Among the trading features offered by proTrack are point and click equities and options trading, direct access to market makers and ECNs, hot keys, smart order routing, reserve book, quick modification of existing orders, multiple order types and a variety of market data and news. proTrack offers trading through TDSC and clearing through Penson Financial Services, Inc. It is also available for use by other broker dealers under a service bureau arrangement.
TDSC operates an ECN that enables traders to display and match limit orders for stocks. The ECN allows trading of National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation (Nasdaq) Global Market, Nasdaq Capital Market, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and American Stock Exchange (AMEX) listed securities, and exchange-listed securities on its platform. Track ECN displays orders on the National Stock Exchange (NSX). Track Data Corporation's NewsWatch service includes a consolidated news ticker, including database with text indexing and access to a variety of third-party databases.
The Company competes with Bloomberg Financial, Thomson/Reuters Group, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Inc., Lava, Inc., Acquire Media, NYSE, Nasdaq, DirectEdge and BATS.
Non-Professional Market
Track Data offers Internet-based online trading and market data services through its myTrack and myTrack Edge products. myTrack and myTrack Edge offer trading of United States-based stocks, options and mutual funds, as well as stock index-based futures. For those traders who are the most active and engage in day trading, the myTrack Pro contains multi windows-based features and enhancements that are designed to satisfy the needs of the trader community. myTrack Edge provides access to information on stocks, options, indices, and news, including bid and ask prices, charts, research and other information for any listed or Nasdaq-traded stock and numerous over-the-counte! r bulleti! n board (OTC-BB) stocks, as well as the ability to establish and track securities, cash, margin and buying power positions on a real-time basis. Real-time quotes, news, charting and technical analysis are available in various pay packages. Volume trading can result in rebates equivalent to the service plan charges.
The Company also offers AIQ Systems and Dial/Data Service. AIQ Systems develops and markets artificial intelligence (AI) based stock market analysis and charting software for personal computers. By simulating the reasoning of top market technicians, AIQ's Expert Systems delivers trading signals and market insight, as well as advanced technical charting and screening capabilities. Dial/Data is an Internet-based service that provides historical and end-of-day pricing data for United States, Canadian and European exchange-traded equities and related instruments, futures, equity options, futures options, mutual funds, bonds, government issues, money markets and indexes.
The Company competes with E*Trade Group, Inc., Trade Station Group, Inc., Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., Options Express, TD Ameritrade, Inc., e-Signal, DTN, AT Financial, Data Corp., The Dow Jones Retrieval Service, Compuserve, Telescan, Commodity Systems, Inc., Equis International, Windows on Wall Street and Omega.
Arbitrage Trading
The Company engages in arbitrage trading activity. Its trading strategy consists principally of establishing hedged positions consisting of stocks and options. The Company also engages in options trading. The Company's trading strategy consists of selling short deep out-of-the-money calls and puts.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Bill Smith]
FDS operates in a highly competitive industry, some with more resources. Their competitors include:
Thomson Reuters Corp. (TRI)BloombergInteractive (IDC)MSCI Inc. (MXB)Morningstar Inc. (MORN)Track Data Corp. (TRAC)Edgar Online (EDGR)McGraw-Hill (MHP )
Top 5 US Companies To Watch For 2014: Shutterstock Inc (SSTK)
Shutterstock, Inc. (Shutterstock) operates as a marketplace for commercial digital imagery. Commercial digital imagery consists of licensed photographs, illustrations and videos that companies use in their visual communications, such as Websites, digital and print marketing materials, corporate communications, books, publications and video content. As of April 30, 2012, Shutterstock's image library contained more than 19 million images. It operates in North America, Europe and Rest of the world. The Company offers a range of content types, including photography, illustrations, vector art and video footage. Shutterstock�� brands include Shutterstock and Bigstock. Its online marketplace provides a freely searchable library of commercial digital images that its users can pay to license, download and incorporate into their work. Users can search its library and preview watermarked versions of its content. In November 2011, Shutterstock launched Shutterstock for iPad, an application enabling visitors to search, browse and organize images using an iPad.
The Company�� products consist of Photographs, Illustrations and Vector Art, and Video Footage. The Company offers photographs that cover a range of subjects, including animals/wildlife, the arts, backgrounds/textures, beauty/fashion, buildings/landmarks, business/finance, celebrities, education, food and drink, healthcare/medical, holidays, nature, objects, people, religion, science, sports/recreation, technology and transportation. Its photography collection is made up of images that can be used in both commercial and editorial contexts. Images that are marked as editorial-only, such as photographs of celebrities and newsworthy events, which constitute fewer than 5% of its total images, cannot be used to promote a product or service; instead these images are licensed for use in editorial settings, such as newspapers, blogs and magazines. Photographs are available in a range of sizes, including small files that are appropriate for mobile b! rowsing and large files appropriate for large format prints and high-resolution displays. As of December 31, 2011, photographs made up 69% of its library.
In addition to photographic images, the Company also offers images that have been created using illustration tools and software. These images are made up of two types: illustrations (raster graphics) and vector art (vector graphics). Raster graphics are stored as a fixed set of pixels, whereas vector graphics are stored using geometric modeling. As of December 31, 2011, illustrations an vector art made up 28% of its library. For users engaged in producing video advertisements, commercial motion pictures, television programming, video games, interactive applications and other video-based media, it also provides video footage. Footage clips are available in a range of formats and sizes, including high definition (HD). As of December 31, 2011, its video footage library contained more than 400,000 video clips and made up 3% of its library.
The Company competes with iStockphoto, Fotolia, Dreamstime, Getty Images, Corbis Corporation, Reuters Group PLC, the Associated Press, Thought Equity Motion, Facebook and Flickr.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Paul Ausick]
But the real news is the near vertical trajectory in share prices for the two stocks. This could be another manifestation of the market�� hunger for some momentum plays, as we noted earlier this morning the bump to share prices for both JinkoSolar Holding Co. Ltd. (NYSE: JKS) and Shutterstock Inc. (NASDAQ: SSTK), both of which held secondary share sales this morning.
- [By Sean Williams]
Commercial digital image library Shutterstock (NYSE: SSTK ) looked picture-perfect today with an 18.9% gain after the company announced better-than-expected fourth-quarter results, and an optimistic full-year forecast after the closing bell last night. For the fourth quarter, Shutterstock delivered revenue growth of 38%, to $68 million, as the number of paid downloads increased 31%, to 28 million, and the number of images in its collection vaulted higher by 8.9 million, to 32.2 million. Net income, however, fell by roughly three-quarters, to just $7.9 million, or $0.26 per share in adjusted EPS. Comparatively, Wall Street had only expected Shutterstock to report a $0.21 EPS profit on $65.8 million in revenue. Looking ahead, Shutterstock anticipates full-year revenue will be in the range of $305 million-$310 million, which is modestly higher than the current consensus of $304.5 million. There's little denying that Shutterstock is gaining online acclaim, but at 70 times forward earnings, I'd consider passing on the stock here.
- [By Sean Williams]
Why don't you take a picture -- it'll last longer
Seriously, why don't you take a picture of Shutterstock's (NYSE: SSTK ) chart, because I'm fairly confident that you'll need a picture to remember when it was this high a year from now.
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