Top 5 Prefered Stocks To Watch For 2014

DELAFIELD, Wis. (Stockpickr) -- Professional traders running mutual funds and hedge funds don't just look at a stock's price moves; they also track big changes in volume activity. Often when above-average volume moves into an equity, it precedes a large spike in volatility.

Must Read: 10 Stocks George Soros Is Buying

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Major moves in volume can signal unusual activity, such as insider buying or selling -- or buying or selling by "superinvestors."
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Unusual volume can also be a major signal that hedge funds and momentum traders are piling into a stock ahead of a catalyst. These types of traders like to get in well before a large spike, so it's always a smart move to monitor unusual volume. That said, remember to combine trend and price action with unusual volume. Put them all together to help you decipher the next big trend for any stock.
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With that in mind, let's take a look at several stocks rising on unusual volume recently.

Hot Semiconductor Companies To Invest In 2015: Aegon NV(AEG)

AEGON N.V. provides life insurance, pensions, and asset management products and services worldwide. The company?s life insurance products include traditional, term, universal, whole, and other life insurance products sold as part of defined benefit pension plans, endowment policies, post-retirement annuity products, and group risk products; supplemental health insurance products comprise accidental death, other injury, critical illness, hospital indemnity, medicare supplement, and student health; specialty lines consists of travel, membership, and creditor products; and long term care insurance products for policyholders who require care due to a chronic illness or cognitive impairment. It also offers a range of savings and retirement products and services, including mutual funds, and fixed and variable annuities, savings accounts and investment contracts, segregated funds, guaranteed investment accounts, and single premium immediate annuities, as well as investment advice to individuals. In addition, the company offers employer solutions and pensions, such as retirement plans, pension plans, and pension-related products and services; investment products, including onshore and offshore bonds, and trusts; reinsurance products and solutions to life insurance and financial services companies; general insurance products comprising house, car, and fire insurance; and asset management products and services, including general account assets, unit-linked funds, and third party activities. AEGON N.V. markets its products through independent and career agents, financial planners, registered representatives, independent marketing organizations, banks, broker-dealers, benefit consulting firms, wirehouses, affinity groups, institutional partners, independent managing general agencies, and specialized financial advisors, as well as through online, direct, and worksite marketing. The company was founded in 1900 and is headquartered in The Hague, the Netherl ands.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Will Ashworth]

  Assuming it delivers on its outlook for 2014, its current free cash flow yield is a very enticing 20%. This isn�� a growth stock, but its brands still possess hidden value. As cheap stocks go, it�� very attractive.

  Cheap Stocks to Buy: Aegon (AEG)

  It�� not often that you can buy a $19 billion market cap for under 10 bucks. Aegon�� a Dutch insurance company that�� had a rough ride over the past few years, and its stock�� suffered as a result. In the late ’90s AEG stock traded around $60 — it hasn�� been anywhere close since. However, it�� got some good assets that should bear fruit in the years to come. Aegon has 12,000 employees in the Americas doing business primarily under the Transamerica brand, which has been a part of AEG since 1999.

Top 5 Prefered Stocks To Watch For 2014: Towers Watson & Co (TW)

Towers Watson & Co. operates as a global professional services company that provides human capital, and financial consulting services worldwide. The company operates in four segments: Benefits, Risk and Financial Services, Talent and Rewards, and Exchange Solutions. The Benefits segment offers benefits consulting and administration services, such as retirement solutions, which support organizations in designing, managing, administering, and communicating retirement plans; and health and group benefits that provides advice on the strategy, design, financing, delivery, ongoing plan management, and communication of health and group benefit programs. This segment also offers its technology and administration solutions to deliver benefit outsourcing solutions; and international consulting services, which provide expertise in dealing with international human capital management and related benefits, and compensation advice. The Risk and Financial Services segment offers risk cons ulting and financial modeling software solutions primarily to the insurance industry; reinsurance and insurance brokerage services; and investment consulting and solutions covering investment strategy risk assessment, asset allocation, and investment manager selection to institutional investors. The Talent and Rewards segment provides executive compensation advisory services; employee rewards, talent management, and communication and change management services; and data, analytics, survey, and technology solutions. The Exchange Solutions segment operates the private Medicare insurance exchange in the United States that enables employers to transition their retirees to individual, defined contribution health plans. The company was formerly known as Watson Wyatt Worldwide, Inc. and changed its name to Towers Watson & Co. in January 2010 as a result of merging with Towers, Perrin, Forster & Crosby, Inc. Towers Watson & Co. was founded in 1871 and is headquartered in New York, N ew York.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Benjamin Shepherd] The US health care industry is among the heaviest regulated in the nation. Most health care-related companies must answer to federal, state and, in many cases, local regulators.
  
  That regulatory burden will only grow more complex, as myriad new rules under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” come into effect over the next few months. In just 22 days, the first insurance exchanges are supposed to come online. On January 1, the individual mandate and changes in coverage standards become effective.
  
  Many health care businesses and organizations were dragging their feet in complying with Obamacare’s provisions, waiting to see how the Supreme Court would come down on the law. The court didn’t rule on Obamacare until June 2012, a decision in which it upheld the law almost in its entirety.
  
  Given that delayed decision, a study conducted by the Government Accountability Office this past June found that only 44 percent of key activities required for full compliance had been completed, particularly where health insurance exchanges were concerned.
  
  As a result, there’s a massive scramble underway to achieve minimum compliance levels with the law. But there’s a paucity of workers with the requisite knowledge of federal and insurance regulations required to help companies and state governments navigate the labyrinth of regulations.
  
  That’s creating a lot of work for consultancies such as Huron Consulting Group (NSDQ: HURN), which focuses almost exclusively on the health care sector.
  
  While the company also works in the legal, financial, education and life sciences arenas, it primarily helps hospitals, health systems and physician groups reduce costs, maximize reimbursements from both federal and private insurers and transition towards the value-based care mandated under Obamacare. In future years, reimbursements will transition towards rewarding health care organizations tha
• [By Anna Prior]

  Towers Watson(TW) & Co.’s board authorized a roughly 22% increase to the consulting firm’s dividend. The company said Friday it will now pay a quarterly cash dividend of 14 cents per share, up from 11.5 cents a share previously.

Top 5 Prefered Stocks To Watch For 2014: PDF Solutions Inc.(PDFS)

PDF Solutions, Inc. provides infrastructure technologies and services for the design and manufacture of integrated circuits (IC) in Asia, the United States, and Europe. It offers manufacturing process solutions that include process research and development, and process integration and yield ramp; volume manufacturing solutions; and design-for-manufacturability (DFM) solutions, such as logic DFM, circuit level DFM, memory DFM, and pdBRIX Physical IP solutions. The company also offers characterization vehicle (CV) infrastructure, which includes CV test chips, pdCV analysis software, and pdFasTest electrical wafer test system; Yield Ramp Simulator software that analyzes an IC design to compute its systematic and random yield loss; and Circuit Surfer software, which estimates the parametric performance yield and manufacturability of analog/mixed-signal/RF blocks. In addition, it provides pdBRIX platform, which includes software for identifying and developing a set of physical IP building blocks that are tailored to a given manufacturing process and target product application; dataPOWER YMS platform that collects yield data, loads, and stores it in an integrated database and allows product engineers to identify and analyze production yield issues; FDC software, which provides fault detection and classification capabilities to identify sources of process variations and manufacturing excursions by monitoring equipment parameters; and YA-FDC service and software platform that allows online modeling to create real-time virtual measurements of final product attributes during processing. PDF Solutions sells its technologies and services through direct sales force, sales representatives, and strategic alliances to integrated device manufacturers, fabless semiconductor design companies, and foundries in the microprocessors, memory, graphics, image sensor solutions, and communications segments. The company was founded in 1992 and is headquartered in San Jo se, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Magic Diligence]

  Liberator is a direct-to-consumer provider of medical supplies, primarily urological catheters, ostomysupplies, mastectomy fashions, and diabetic supplies, aimed at Medicare-eligible seniors. The company has an attractive revenue growth ramp, with sales growing at a 5-year average of nearly 50%. This has leveraged costs, leading margins up from just 5% in 2011 to 18% today. Liberator pays a 4.3% dividend yield and has a solid balance sheet with $20 million in cash and just $3 million in debt. Below $3, the stock is at the bottom of its 52-week range.

  PDF Solutions Inc (PDFS)

  Far from an electronic document company, PDF Solutions provides software, IP, hardware, and services designed to speed the process and lower the cost of designing and manufacturing custom integrated circuits (ICs), especially in the area of yield improvements. PDFS has booked solid 3-year average revenue growth of 18%, has exploded operating margins from 2% in 2010 to over 35% today, generates free cash flow in excess of net income, and has no debt with a nice cash cushion of $65 million. At under $13, the stock is more than 50% below its 52-week high and carries a bargain 12% earnings yield.

Top 5 Prefered Stocks To Watch For 2014: Oci NV (OCI)

Oci NV is a Netherlands-based company, which divides its activities into two groups. The first group is engaged in the design, construction and maintenance of industrial and commercial infrastructures and buildings, such as roads, ports, railroads, hospitals, stadiums and water treatment units. The second group is engaged in the production of fertilizers, such as anhydrous ammonia, granulated urea, calcium ammonium nitrate and urea ammonium nitrate, among others. The Company is a subsidiary of Orascom Construction Industries SAE, an international fertilizer producer and construction contractor based in Cairo, Egypt. In September 2013, it announced spin-off of its subsidiary OCI Partners LP. Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Ahmed A. Namatalla]

  OCI attracted $2 billion in commitments from a group of investors including Cascade Investment LLC, Gates�� personal investments vehicle, to help finance the move to Amsterdam, which it said would lower borrowing costs and boost its global profile. Yesterday�� settlement prompted Cairo-based investment bank Pharos Holding to raise Orascom to buy from hold, saying the construction and fertilizer company would proceed with an offer to investors to buy its Cairo-listed shares or swap them with OCI NV (OCI) stock.