Best Cheap Stocks To Invest In 2014

On Monday, Nomura Securities reported that it has begun coverage on apparel retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (ANF).

The firm has initiated coverage on ANF with a “Buy” rating and $43 price target. This price target suggests a 15% upside from the stock’s current price of $36.45.

Analyst Simeon Siegel noted: “We believe ongoing top-line deceleration has been priced in (shares are -25% YTD vs. +3% for our coverage group) and expense initiatives coupled with a healthy cash balance make ANF attractive at current levels as a longer-term investment. With minimal visibility on trends, we lack conviction in a near-term comp recovery and believe Street estimates beyond 3Q may still prove too high. However, we believe that cheap valuation (11.6x PE, 4x EBITDA, and 9.6% FCF yield for FY14), $0.80-0.85 of expense-driven EPS support and $0.20+ benefit from share repurchases make ANF attractive at current levels for investors willing to wait. We estimate FY13/FY14 EPS of $1.90/$3.10 vs. Street at $2.10/$3.12. Our target price of $43 is based on 14x our FY14 estimate, versus the peer group average multiple of 14x and the company�� historical average of 14.8x.”

5 Best Up And Coming Stocks For 2015: Global Payments Inc.(GPN)

Global Payments Inc. provides electronic transaction processing services for merchants, independent sales organizations (ISO), financial institutions, government agencies, and multi-national corporations located in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. It offers a comprehensive line of processing solutions for credit and debit cards; business-to-business purchasing cards; gift cards; and electronic check conversion and check guarantee, verification, and recovery, including electronic check services, as well as terminal management. The company also offers proprietary software products to establish revolving check cashing limits for the casinos? customers in the gaming industry. In addition, it sells, installs, and services automated teller machine and point of sale terminals; and provides card issuing services, including card management and card personalization. The company markets its products directly, as well as through ISOs, retail outlets, tra de associations, alliance bank relationships, and financial institutions. Global Payments Inc. has a joint venture with La Caixa Group to provide merchant acquiring services to merchants in Spain. Global Payments Inc. was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Laura Brodbeck]

  Wednesday

  Earnings Expected From: Uniferst (NYSE: UNF), Constellation Brands (NYSE: STZ), RPM International (NYSE: RPM), Global Payments (NYSE: GPN) Economic Releases Expected: German trade balance, German factory orders, Australian retail sales

  Thursday

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  Global Payments�(GPN) has gained 6.8% to $54.12 in pre-open trading after the payment processing company reported a profit of $1 a share, beating analyst forecasts of 95 cents. It also said it would buy back stock.

• [By Laura Brodbeck]

  Thursday

  Earnings Expected From: Global Payents Inc. (NYSE: GPN), Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: MU), Synnex Corporation (NYSE: SNX) Economic Releases Expected: �US services PMI, Canadian imports and exports, US trade balance, eurozone services PMI, ECB interest rate decision, British services PMI

  Friday

Best Cheap Stocks To Invest In 2014: Hewlett-Packard Company(HPQ)

Hewlett-Packard Company and its subsidiaries provide products, technologies, software, solutions, and services to individual consumers and small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), as well as to the government, health, and education sectors worldwide. Its Personal Systems Group segment offers commercial personal computers (PCs), consumer PCs, workstations, calculators and other related accessories, and software and services for the commercial and consumer markets. The company?s Services segment provides consulting, outsourcing, and technology services to infrastructure, applications, and business process domains. Its Imaging and Printing Group segment provides consumer and commercial printer hardware, supplies, media, and scanning devices, such as inkjet and Web solutions, laser jet and enterprise solutions, managed enterprise solutions, graphics solutions, and printer supplies. The company?s Enterprise Servers, Storage, and Networking segment offers industry standard s ervers, business critical systems, storage platforms, and networking products, including switches, routers, wireless LAN, and TippingPoint network security products. Its HP Software segment provides enterprise IT management software, information management solutions, and security intelligence/risk management solutions. The company?s HP Financial Services segment offers leasing, financing, utility programs, and asset recovery services; and financial asset management services for enterprise customers, as well as specialized financial services to SMBs, and educational and governmental entities. Hewlett-Packard Company also provides business intelligence solutions that enable businesses to standardize on consistent data management schemes, connect and share data across the enterprise, and apply analytics, as well as licenses its specific technology to third parties. The company was founded in 1939 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Rick Munarriz]

  We can start with Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ  ) . The world's leading PC maker surprised investors with a better-than-expected quarterly report, and it's sharing the wealth. HP's new rate of $0.1452 a share is a 10% increase to its earlier rate.

• [By Eric Bleeker, CFA, Lyons George, and Alison Southwick]

  In this segment, Eric and Lyons look at the cutthroat pricing battles in the tablet market as detailed this week in the�Financial Times. While American consumers might be wowed by cheap tablet pricing such as�Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL  ) iPad Mini at the $330 price point, or Google's Nexus 7 at $200, or�Hewlett-Packard's (NYSE: HPQ  ) Slate 7 tablet at $140, those "cheap" prices are nothing compared with the tablet battles in China.�

• [By Monica Wolfe]

  Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)

  Richard Pzena�� largest holding is in Hewlett-Packard where the guru maintains 30,611,328 shares of the company�� stock. His position in the company represents 4.2% of his total portfolio and 1.61% of the company�� shares outstanding.

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  Last September, the folks who manage the Dow Jones Industrial average decided it was time to add some new blood to the venerable blue-chip index.� So in came Goldman Sachs (GS), Visa (V) and Nike (NKE), and out went Bank of America (BAC),�Alcoa (AA) and Hewlett-Packard�(HPQ).

Best Cheap Stocks To Invest In 2014: Merck & Company Inc.(MRK)

Merck & Co., Inc. provides various health solutions through its prescription medicines, vaccines, biologic therapies, animal health, and consumer care products. The company?s Pharmaceutical segment provides human health pharmaceutical products, such as therapeutic and preventive agents for the treatment of human disorders in the areas of bone, respiratory, immunology, dermatology, cardiovascular, diabetes and obesity, infectious diseases, neurosciences and ophthalmology, oncology, vaccines, and women's health and endocrine. This segment also offers human health vaccines, such as preventive pediatric, adolescent, and adult vaccines. Its Animal Health segment discovers, develops, manufactures, and markets animal health products. This segment offers antibiotics, anti-inflammatory products, vaccines, products for the treatment of fertility disorders, and parasiticides for cattle, swine, horses, poultry, dogs, cats, salmons, and fish. The Consumer Care segment develops, manufac tures, and markets over-the-counter, foot care, and sun care products. Its over-the-counter product line includes non-drowsy antihistamines; treatment for occasional constipation; decongestant-free cold/flu medicine for people with high blood pressure; nasal decongestant spray; and treatment for frequent heartburn. This segment?s foot care products comprise topical antifungal, and foot and sneaker odor/wetness products; and sun care products include sun care lotions, sprays and dry oils; and sunburn relief products. The company serves drug wholesalers and retailers, hospitals, government agencies, physicians, physician distributors, veterinarians, animal producers, and managed health care providers, as well as food chain and mass merchandiser outlets in the United States and Canada. Merck & Co., Inc. was founded in 1891 and is headquartered in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Sean Williams]

  This week saw two new drugs approved by the FDA: Raptor Pharmaceuticals' (NASDAQ: RPTP  ) Procysbi and Merck's (NYSE: MRK  ) Liptruzet.

Best Cheap Stocks To Invest In 2014: Progress Software Corporation(PRGS)

Progress Software Corporation operates as an enterprise software company worldwide. Its products include Progress OpenEdge platform, which offers development tools, application servers, application management tools, and an embedded database; Progress Orbix to address enterprise integration problems with standards-based solutions; and Progress ObjectStore, an object data management system to store data faster than relational database management system or file-based storage system. The company?s products also comprise Progress Responsiveness Process Management suite for business users; Progress Control Tower, an interactive business control panel; Progress Sonic, which comprises an enterprise messaging system and the enterprise service buses; Progress Actional that provides operational and business visibility, root cause analysis, and policy-based security and control of services; Progress Apama, which offers tools for creating, testing, and deploying strategies for applicat ions, including algorithmic trading, market aggregation, smart order routing, market surveillance and monitoring, and risk management; Progress Savvion BusinessManager, a business process management software; and Fuse products that provide customers with access to professional open source integration and messaging software. In addition, it offers Progress DataDirect Connect products, which provide data connectivity components; Progress DataDirect Shadow to provide foundation architecture for standards-based mainframe integration; and Progress Data Services product set that offers data integration for distributed applications. Further, the company provides maintenance, consulting, training, and customer support services. Progress Software Corporation sells its products to independent software vendors, original equipment manufacturers, and system integrators through direct sales force and independent distributors. The company was founded in 1981 and is based in Bedford, Massac husetts.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Rich Duprey]

  Believing it should have a single, cohesive platform for the development of�cloud and mobile application development technologies, Progress Software (NASDAQ: PRGS  ) announced this morning it was selling its�Apama�complex event processing solution to Software AG for an undisclosed sum.

• [By John Kell and Lauren Pollock var popups = dojo.query(".socialByline .popC"); ]

  Progress Software Corp.(PRGS) trimmed its expectations for the fiscal first quarter, as the business-software provider said results were hurt by lower license sales. Shares dropped 12% to $22.27 premarket.

• [By Jake L'Ecuyer]

  Progress Software (NASDAQ: PRGS) shares tumbled 11.15 percent to $22.82 after the company issued a weak Q1 forecast.

  FireEye (NASDAQ: FEYE) was also down, falling 9.35 percent to $81.20 after the company's secondary offering lead to fear on the street.

Best Cheap Stocks To Invest In 2014: Ford Motor Credit Company(F)

Ford Motor Company primarily develops, manufactures, distributes, and services vehicles and parts worldwide. It operates in two sectors, Automotive and Financial Services. The Automotive sector offers vehicles primarily under the Ford and Lincoln brand names. This sector markets cars, trucks, and parts through retail dealers in North America, and through distributors and dealers outside of North America. It also sells cars and trucks to dealers for sale to fleet customers, including daily rental car companies, commercial fleet customers, leasing companies, and governments. In addition, this sector provides retail customers with a range of after-sale vehicle services and products in the areas, such as maintenance and light repair, heavy repair, collision repair, vehicle accessories, and extended service contracts under the Ford Service, Lincoln Service, Ford Custom Accessories, Ford Extended Service Plan, and Motorcraft brand names. The Financial Services sector offers vari ous automotive financing products to and through automotive dealers. It offers retail financing, which includes retail installment contracts for new and used vehicles; direct financing leases; wholesale financing products that comprise loans to dealers to finance the purchase of vehicle inventory; loans to dealers to finance working capital, purchase real estate dealership, and/or make improvements to dealership facilities; and other financing products, as well as provides insurance services. Ford Motor Company was founded in 1903 and is based in Dearborn, Michigan.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Jake L'Ecuyer]

  Ford (NYSE: F) was also falling on Wednesday's session, dropping 6.23 percent t $15.66 after the company announced that it sees its fiscal year 2014 automotive revenue roughly equivalent to 2013, while it expects a lower pre-tax profit.

• [By Sofia Horta e Costa]

  Fiat SpA (F) fell 2.2 percent to 5.70 euros, its lowest price since July. The Italian carmaker lowered its forecast for trading profit this year to 3.5 billion euros to 3.8 billion euros. It had projected earnings on that measure of as much as 4.5 billion euros. The company also posted third-quarter profit in Latin America that tumbled 52 percent to 165 million euros.

• [By Bret Kenwell]

  Instead, sales have stagnated and been unimpressive.�Its cross-town rival,�Ford's� (NYSE: F  ) �Lincoln brand, has had the opposite luck, with sales climbing 15.9% so far this year.�

• [By John Rosevear]

  Ford� (NYSE: F  ) reported strong earnings in North America this past week, a third-quarter profit of $2.3 billion. That came as Ford's sales have been increasing, but there's a new challenge emerging as Ford keeps pushing to increase production to keep up with demand.

Best Cheap Stocks To Invest In 2014: Rent-A-Center Inc.(RCII)

Rent-A-Center, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, primarily engages in leasing household durable goods to customers on a rent-to-own basis. The company?s stores offer durable products, such as consumer electronics, appliances, computers, and furniture and accessories under flexible rental purchase agreements that allow the customer to obtain ownership of the merchandise at the conclusion of an agreed upon rental period. It also provides merchandise on an installment sales basis in its stores. As of December 31, 2010, the company operated 3,008 company-owned stores in the United States, and in Canada, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, including 42 retail installment sales stores under the names ?Get It Now? and ?Home Choice?; and 18 rent-to-own stores located in Canada under the ?Rent-A-Centre? name. It also operates 209 franchised rent-to-own stores in 32 states under the ColorTyme trade name; and 384 kiosk locations under the ?RAC Acceptance? model. In addition, the company, th rough its ColorTyme?s franchised stores, offers custom rims and tires for sale or rental under the trade names ?RimTyme? or ?ColorTyme Custom Wheels?. Rent-A-Center, Inc. was founded in 1986 and is headquartered in Plano, Texas.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Grace L. Williams]

  Rent-A-Center (RCII) grabbed our attention when the new CFO joined a director for a cluster buy. Most notable were Guy Constant, who bought 10,000 shares for $248,400 and J.V. Lentell, a director, who bought 5,000 shares for $119,000. InsiderScore notes that the buys occurred in the wake of a three-year low at the rent-to-own durable goods retailer.

Best Cheap Stocks To Invest In 2014: LifePoint Hospitals Inc.(LPNT)

LifePoint Hospitals Inc., through its subsidiaries, operates general acute care hospitals in non-urban communities in the United States. The company?s hospitals provide a range of medical and surgical services comprising general surgery, internal medicine, obstetrics, emergency room care, radiology, oncology, diagnostic care, coronary care, rehabilitation services, and pediatric services, as well as specialized services, such as open-heart surgery, skilled nursing, psychiatric care, and neuro-surgery. Its hospitals also offer outpatient services, including one-day surgery, laboratory, x-ray, respiratory therapy, imaging, sports medicine, and lithotripsy. As of December 31, 2009, LifePoint Hospitals owned or leased 47 hospitals with a total of 5,552 licensed beds in 17 states. The company was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee. Lifepoint Hospitals Inc. (NasdaqNM:LPNT) operates independently of HCA Inc. as of May 11, 1999.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  Yesterday afternoon, Pennsylvania announced that it would use federal dollars to pay private insurers to cover eligible Pennsylvanians. UBS analysts A.J. Rice and Jailendra Singh think Community Health Systems (CYH), Tenet Healthcare (THC) and LifePoint Hospitals (LPNT) stand to benefit the most from the deal:

• [By Keith Speights]

  The fun wasn't just limited to the big three hospital operators. Lifepoint Hospitals (NASDAQ: LPNT  ) stock jumped 5% on the CMS news, reflecting a $109 million market cap expansion. Likewise, Vanguard Health Systems (NYSE: VHS  ) shares climbed 5%, bumping its market cap up by�$55 million.