I traditionally never like any of these “canned” ways to buy stocks. The reason that I don’t like them has nothing to do with their effectiveness (some of them may have merit), but it is more to do with what happens when they do prove to have any kind of validity (i.e. everyone follows them, and the reason why they were a good deal becomes non-existent).

I do like to watch the Dogs of the Dow, however, as this often a way to find a decent company at close to its Maximum Historical Dividend Yield, which often is a great long-term entry point. One does have to be careful, however, as even though these are established companies, there are often ones that are "Dogs" for a good reason. A case in point is if one were to follow this rule a couple of years back, you would have ended up with General Motors stock….

Somewhere in the telecommunications afterlife, Ma Bell is hiding her face in shame. The company that was once the powerhouse of American communications has been reduced to being more like that crybaby little kid who sits in a corner of the playground pouting because the other kids beat him at his own game.

AT&T (T) has posted on its Web site an open statement to its customers to whine - again - about those Verizon Wireless (VZ) TV commercials that paint a sad picture of the wireless 3G coverage that AT&T offers in the United States. (see image on right, video below) The statement is really sort of pathetic, an act of desperation that attempts to paint Verizon’s ads as “blatantly false and misleading” even though AT&T has already acknowledged that the ads are not, in fact, false.

Much has been made of the success of the Apple (AAPL) iTunes App store. In just 2+ short years since the iPhone has been released in June 2007, more than 100,000 iPhone/iPod Touch apps have been written and released by the iTunes store.

This success has been attributed to many things: the sexiness of the device, entrepreneurial fever and the clever programming features of the iPhone (the iPhone senses how you move the device in your hand and can change the orientation of the screen based on how you hold it).

Friday I detailed my quest to find the throngs of Droid fans who had woken up at the crack of dawn to grab a place in line before Verizon (VZ) unleashed the phone to the masses. Yet despite reports of lines elsewhere, I failed — the Verizon store in Palo Alto was a ghost town, as was the Best Buy (BBY) down the street. Some commenters took my story and similar reports as an indication that the Droid’s launch had bombed, doomed to play out the same fate of the numerous supposed ‘iPhone killers’ before it. It looks like they may be wrong — that store sold over 70 Droids Friday, according to one of its employees.

Saturday I returned to the Verizon store where Friday’s quest began, looking to get my hands on one of the nifty docking stations that turns your Droid into a desktop clock/multimedia station. And while I expected a handful of other customers to be in the store, I was taken aback by just how crowded it was — each of the registers was busy ringing up a customer while others waited their turn, three people were standing in line just to touch the demo Droid unit, and I had to put my name on the list to talk to someone. When I asked one of the employees if they were selling a lot of Droids, his somewhat breathless response was “Yeah, a lot. Over 70 yesterday, we got a shipment of another 100 in today.” Oh, and they were out of both the dock I had come for and spare batteries. Maybe the lack of an early morning line wasn’t so damning after all.

In this type of market, good management goes further than usual. With depressed prices on almost everything, competent management should be able to leverage their companies' business to take advantage of today’s values and build for the future. The following company not only has a healthy growing business, but has more than able management to help boost the company’s returns for years to come.

NTELOS Holdings Corp. (NTLS)

Today is Droid day — an event that I, like many tech bloggers, have been looking forward to for quite some time. Unlike some people, I wasn’t graced with a test Droid last week, so I was forced to go out and get one the old fashioned way: by getting to the store as early as possible, before the precious devices sold out. And while I was concerned about falling prey to a supply shortage, a part of me still hoped there would be many others like me, helping justify my early morning rise. These are my notes as I searched for the unexpectedly elusive Verizon Droid line.

5:30 AM. I woke up this morning to the soothing chimes of my over-priced alarm clock, took a look at the ungodly hour, and immediately sank back into my pillow. It wasn’t until my second alarm (strategically positioned far out of arm’s reach) kicked in that I remembered the task at hand: Droid day.

Do you see something strange in this screenshot of Google’s homepage today? No, not Bert and Ernie (it’s Sesame Street’s 40th birthday). It’s that ad for the Verizon Droid right there under the search box (today is also Droid Day). Although, the juxtaposition does make it seem like Bert and Ernie are trying to get you to buy a Droid.

If you are a tech lover, there is nothing quite like the launch day of a much hyped new gadget. Expectations run high. And since those expectations are rarely satisfied once you have the special little device in hand, it’s a moment to savor. In the hours before you own it, that device is perfect in every way. It will make you happier, a better person. There are no bugs, there are only features. It is whatever you want it to be.

Launch day of a new cool gadget is the closest thing to being a kid again on Christmas day (or whatever your winter solstice holiday of choice). You’ve anticipated the day. You’ve called in sick to work. And you are standing out in the freezing cold at 7 in the morning, hoping your place in line assures you a device before the carefully-planned sell out occurs. You’ve worked yourself into…a Fever Pitch.

AT&T (T) has filed a lawsuit against Verizon Wireless (VZ) over those “There’s a map for that” commercials - but not because AT&T is disputing the accuracy of those 3G coverage maps. (PDF of complaint) Nope, AT&T thinks that consumers are too dumb to differentiate between 3G and non-3G coverage and it wants those maps changed - specifically, the colors. (Techmeme)

The Verizon map is largely covered by red, meant to represent its 3G coverage areas. The AT&T map, by contrast, is sparsely covered by blue - meant to represent its 3G coverage - and has vast sections of the nation covered in white, representing areas without 3G coverage.

Coach (COH), Williams-Sonoma (WSM), Tiffany (TIF), Nordstrom (JWN), Ralph Lauren (RL), Wal-Mart (WMT), Stanley Works (SWK), Black and Decker (BDK), Newel Rubbermaid (NWL), American Tower (AMT), AT&T (T), Verizon (VZ)

click to enlarge

Note: The Hitwise data featured is based on US market share of visits as defined by the IAB, which is the percentage of online traffic to the domain or category, from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US internet users. Hitwise measures more than 1 million unique websites on a daily basis, including sub-domains of larger websites. Hitwise categorizes websites into industries on the basis of subject matter and content, as well as market orientation and competitive context. The market share of visits percentage does not include traffic for all sub-domains of certain websites that could be reported on separately.

As you can see from the table above, the top 10 companies on the list represent 53.51% of the Index , so for example if all those 10 companies have a terrible day and the rest of the 20 have a decent day, the DJIA Index will still show a large loss.

What a crazy month we had!

The Dow began the month of October at 9,712 and finished the month of October at EXACTLY 9,712. Now I don’t want to say the market is manipulated but… No, I’ve got nothing, there are no buts - the market is totally manipulated! Either that or you believe that the random outcome of tens of millions of traders around the globe trading hundreds of billions of shares of stock would just so happen to begin and end the month within .50 after going as low as 9,378.77 (on the 5th) and as high as 10,157.94 (on the 21st). So that is literally a 1 out of the 779-point swing coincidence to hit that 9,712 nail on the head.

Following Novatel’s (NVTL) 3Q report and 4Q guidance last Thursday evening, NVTL stock dropped over 25% on Friday. Investors had expected strong MiFi revenue growth for 4Q, but management stated that this was unlikely to happen, despite continued channel sell-through improvement. The culprit was simply an inventory build-up in 2Q and 3Q, presumably at Sprint and/or Verizon Wireless.

Aside from sell-through catching up with inventories by 1Q, there are other more fundamental technology shift reasons why NVTL should see very strong MiFi growth throughout 2010:

Maybe there is something to this idea that, in a recession, Voice over IP service is an affordable alternative to traditional telephone service.

In the first half of 2009, VoIP services brought in nearly $21 billion in revenue, with both residential and business services looking healthy and poised for even more growth for the second half of the year, according to a report by market research firm Infonetics Research.

Call notes on upcoming phones from Sprint (S). Wow what a roster of truly mediocre phones. Their Android phones look heavily dominated by HTC which makes phones with great specs but they almost always feel tacky and flimsy (I rarely return gadgets---but I returned the first HTC phone I had).