American Capital Strategies (ACAS), which is currently trading around $41-42 a share, pays an enormous dividend of $3.68. This equals out to an approximate yield of 9%. More importantly, ACAS as a company has never decreased its dividend since its IPO in 1997.

Furthermore, the company has raised its quaterly dividend 37 times according to Yahoo Finance. According to the company, $10,000 invested in 1997 in the Company's stock would be worth $69,584 today. That figures to a cumulative gain of 595.8 percent. What's more is that according to its CEO, who addressed this topic considerably in the most recent quarterly presentation, the company has an above average credit rating compared to its peers and very little exposure to the subprime fiasco.

CLNE serves approximately 200 fleet customers who operate approximately 13,000 Natural Gas vehicles in various markets, including public transit, refuse hauling, airports, taxis, and regional trucking. Moreover, the company owns, operates, and supplies 168 Natural Gas fueling stations as well as sell and lease Natural Gas fueling stations to third parties.

The reasons for this are simple. As more and more mortgages default, banks will tighten their lending practices significantly lowering the overall amount of liquidity in the overall market, thus affecting the ability of companies to raise cash.

Recently, concerns regarding the real estate market and the subprime mortgage market have caused shares in ACAS to tank falling over 19% from its 52 week high in a span of roughly six months. These fears are, however, overblown and have created a significant value opportunity for prudent investors seeking both high income and a chance of capital appreciation.

First, ACAS is an extremely diversified firm with investments across many industries and geogrpahic locations with relatively little exposure to the current residential real estate and subprime mortgage woes.

chiefly provides telecommunication and information-related services. Its scope of business covers city call, long distance calls, international calls, GSM, data communication, Internet services, broadband networking, satellite communication, intelligent network, mobile data and multimedia broadband.

Furthermore, the company boasts the following in regards to its subscriber base, range of services, and cooperation with international partners:

Itron produces a wide variety of products, including solid-state meters and automated meter reading technology to enterprise-wide software platforms and real-time analytic applications, for energy and water providers around the world. Currently, these products are in high demand as energy prices have skyrocketed and the nature of providing energy to consumers has changed drastically due to structural changes in the global and domestic energy markets. Furthermore, water resources are, in many parts of the world, well below sustainable levels given current usage patterns, propelling the sell of Itron's portfolio of water utility products as water providers desperately seek to curtail wasteful practices. These developments have, in turn, generated very positive results for shareholders.

The company recently reported strong fourth quarter and record yearly operating results for the period ending Dec. 31, 2006. The company also reported its future profit outlook, which was well ahead of analysts estimates. So far, the year-to-date performance of Itron's shares has been phenomenal and, as of March 8th, 2007, stood at 21.2 percent.

When PetroChina (PTR), the largest integrated oil and gas company in China, sells for 0.38, it is time to buy. Furthermore, the company has a virtual monopoly on its domestic market, due to the fact that it is partially state owned, and receives preferential treatment from the Chinese government in various matters for the same reason. According to Morningstar, PetroChina now yields 4.37 percent in terms of its dividend, which is much higher than the industry average of 1.43 percent. Morningstar goes further stating that the company's forward earnings yield (the annual return the company would generate if all of its profits were distributed to shareholders in the form of dividends) is also much greater than other companies in the Oil and Gas industry. In short, this company is a screaming buy for long term investors and should be bought aggressively.

PTR 1-yr chart

As of Friday's (3/2/07) close, the 4 percent stake purchased by Berkshire Hathaway in 2005, according to CBS MarketWatch, is worth $1.35 billion. Already, the initial investment has more than doubled, rising over 102 percent and providing Berkshire shareholders a considerable return on the initial investment.

The company, based in Kansas City, operates some of the largest and longest running salt mines in North America and the United Kingdom. Up until recently, Compass Minerals was almost entirely dependent on seasonal sales of its deicing services and packed deicers for its annual revenues and profits. This is changing, however, as sales of sulfate of potash accounted for nearly 14 percent of revenues for the three month period ending December 31, 2006.

Moreover, the company has entered into the data storage business and has recently completed an acquisition of Interactive Records Management (a U.K. firm) more than doubling capacity in this very lucrative area.

For the last five years, Greenlight Capital, a hedge fund has been shorting Allied Capitals stock and launching numerous allegations against the company (some ludicrous some not) in hopes of bringing down the share price of the company. Since shorting ALD, Greenlight Capital has taken a beating. The share price of the stock has risen more than 50% and has paid a hefty dividend. The average yield on the stock, since the inception of Greenlight Capital's crusade against Allied Capital, has averaged north of 7%.

The main allegation made against Allied Capital by David Einhorn (the manager of Greenlight Capital) is that the company does not properly value its portfolio of investments correctly. This accusation is so blatantly wrong, however, that even the CEO of Allied Capital's main competitor, American Capital Strategies (ACAS) (for disclosure purposes, I own shares in this company and am very bullish on its prospects) has stated that Allied Capital's method of valuing its investments is not "aggressive" and is typical of private equity firms.