I have previously written about Continental Fuels (CFUL.OB) a number of times. I called it the most overvalued penny stock I had ever seen when it was trading around $2.50 per share (although there are now some good competitors for that honor). When its stock price had fallen to $0.70 per share, I said it remained 100-times overvalued. With a current stock price of $0.05 per share, I can finally say that the stock’s inevitable fall is mostly over (although it would still be a poor investment).

The moral of this story is do not invest in over-hyped stocks. Do not invest in stocks mentioned in spam emails, junk faxes, or junk mail. Do not invest in any individual stock unless you have read, and understood its financial statements. For those who are not savvy investors, don’t worry, just invest in broad-market index funds and you will do better than most investors and mutual funds.

Despite high fuel prices, too much capacity in the market, and a slumping U.S. economy, New York-based UBS analyst Kevin Crissey is upgrading most of the legacy carrier’s stocks south of the border after a recent drop off in their stocks, and the prospect of some M&A activity in the industry in the coming months.

“We’ve maintained for quite a while that outside of hopes for industry consolidation we saw no compelling reason to own the U.S. airline stocks. We’ve argued that air travel demand will soften and that, if fuel prices remain high, the stocks are overvalued,” Mr. Crissey said in a note to clients Wednesday.

It is Not Fraud if There are No Lies

Dictionary.com defines fraud as “deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage.” It has been more succinctly defined as “implicit theft” by Murray Rothbard, among others.

I built a simple stock screen to identify companies with multiple characteristics common to the persistent wave of buyouts we have been seeing, and the results are included below.

I was happy when I logged on to the Internet Monday morning and learned that a company I purchased on Friday was a buyout target, and its price was up 7% (not a bad return for one business day).