Road Runner

Readers Pick the Top 20 5-Year Horizon Stocks

TheHague, Don't lose faith in Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart hasn't performed this year simply because it is considered a "defensive stock”, a safe place to put money during tough economic times. Well, during 2009, money shifted out of defensive stocks into potential high growth stocks as the threat of economic catastrophe abated. It has little to do with how Wal-Mart, as a company, is performing. It’s just natural stock rotation.


On Oct 18 09:18 PM TheHague wrote:
> WMT? Nice try! I just sold my shares that I bought in March! I can
> now buy into them cheaper than they were when I bought them! I gave
> up! Their last Div. was not that great! I tried to believe, but some
> thing is not right there! I don't know what it is but it ain't cool!

Readers Pick the Top 20 5-Year Horizon Stocks

I'm impressed by the quality of this list, and how it reached down into some stocks that I didn't think were in the minds of the general investor community, like AONE and BYDDY.PK. Plus, it listed stocks that are truly (not stuck-in-the-mud like Microsoft and Yahoo) innovative companies that are “pushing the envelope” on the technology front like GE with green technology, like Google with search, operating system, and “cloud computing” technology, and like Apple with mobile Internet technology.

A123 Systems (AONE) and BYD of China (BYDDY.PK) are head-to-head competitors in the plug-in vehicle battery market. They both make the Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP or LiFePO4) battery which, when the manufacturing is perfected, will be the ideal battery for vehicles, in my opinion. These are the clearly, in my opinion, the leaders in the quickly emerging LFP battery market. A123 seems to be the high quality player, and BYD seems to be the high quantity player. BYD is an established player with non-LFP batteries so it is well established and profitable. A123 is a startup with only one product – its LFP battery. I see investing in A123 as very speculative but potentially very profitable.

As a side note, if Japan wants to pull itself out of its 2 decade economic stagnation, one of the best things it could do is let Wal-Mart “run wild” in its country. Japan’s retail system is very inefficient. There is a lot of job protection going on. Wal-Mart would cause many jobs to be lost, but it would spur economic growth via a much more efficient retail system that would deliver goods to its citizens at a much lower price. This would leave money left over in people’s pockets that would lead to a higher consumption of other products increasing the economy.