Final Weekend Holding May 2013 Tranche

Sitting here on a beautiful Friday afternoon in CT. Still early spring here, about 64 and partly cloudy. The flowers are starting to blossom, I am chilling out, listening to my iTunes Radio with the seed artist Diana Krall.  S'wonderful.

My May 6th 2013 portfolio has had a nice spurt down the stretch.  It is up a very satisfactory 32.7%, versus a bit under 20%.  That will make it my third straight winner (November 2012 won 43.7% to 36.7% and February 2013 won 78.3% to 21.1% - that one was a bit one sided).  The other three open portfolios are up an average of 20.6%, besting the R3K by almost 12 points. Needless to say, I would love to keep those types of margins and absolute gains.

So in that vein, I have been giving a lot of consideration to the next five stocks. Maybe ten days ago, I was leaning towards AAPL, MSFT, NOC, CSCO and LO.  But AAPL and LO have moved up pretty nicely since then and are not quite as desirable now. I may re visit them in August should they pull back. MSFT had good earnings, but then I remembered that they have bought the phone business from Nokia.  Given that NOK is up from about $4 to $7.40 since that was announced and GOOG divested themselves of Motorola, I do not expect this to be a crown jewel for MSFT.

So I have a new five stocks I am leaning towards, although I am known to change my mind the last day (the worst one was IQNT, which I actually bought, then sold when I changed my mind. It is up about 96% since then).

AVG - this is a stock in my November tranche that provides security for computers. They had a blow out earnings in February, but have given most of that back. SYMC is one of their big competitors and is in complete disarray.  They are a billion $ company.

NSR - this is your classic out of favor company. There are strong rumors they may be losing a contract that provides a big chunk of their revenues and profits. But that seems (to me) to be entirely priced in and I do not expect it to be as bad as people think.  This is a bit of a "risky" play, but to me seems to be a calculated risk.  They are 1.6b in size.

RCII - this is a stock I have not discussed here before. They do not come up on the traditional MFI screens, but they show up in my top 200 list. They are "Rent A Center", which I personally find to be a bit of a distasteful business. But it is also a relatively successful business model, and to me is one of the more attractive options out there. They pay a 3.5% dividend, they are $1.5 b in market cap, they are relatively cheap and they are growing modestly.

CSCO - I know I sold all my shares a quarter ago. I may have been a little hasty. Not much to say here, not a sexy company, but still a blue chip. Over a hundred billion in market cap and a 3.3% dividend.

CA - good old Computer Associates from my February 2012 tranche. They were very solid for me the first time, up 32%. They have sold off over 6% since then.  They also have a 3.3% dividend and a $13 b market cap.

Other stocks still on the close watch list include: AGX, SNDK, NTES, COH, ATVI and ORCL.  So if something material happens to either the stocks on close watch or in top five, I could change my mind.