Financial TV News Monitoring, Stock Reports, Investment Information and Analysis from Ockham Research

For investors worried about the near term future of the stock market, this may be a decent defensive option with a beta coefficient of only 0.39. Furthermore, the yield which has been steadily rising also offers some protection for investors. With limited downside risk and a valuation that suggests plenty of upside, we think long term value investors should begin to familiarize themselves with Vectren.

Dividend investors continue to delight in the shareholder-friendly actions of United Technologies' (UTX) board, as they have increased the dividend from $.39 to $.43. The change will become effective as of their first quarter payout in March for shareholders of record on Feb 19th. Despite the nearly 20% drop in earnings per share results for the full year from 2008 to 2009, they maintained the impressive streak of yearly dividend increases.

The Enterprising Investor's Guide weekly newsletter for 2-8-2010

Barrick Gold (ABX) has made a number of bold moves in the past year in order to take advantage of all time high gold prices. In early September, as gold was crossing the $1000 per ounce level, Barrick Gold announced that it would issue a secondary offering in order to raise capital and buy themselves out of some bad hedging bets from prior years. It was clear that they had hedged their industry leading production to a price level that was well below the current market value. It was at that point that they developed a plan to undergo the expensive processes of buying out their hedges.

Bloomberg.com is running a story about an underreported potential windfall for the nation's largest drug store chains Walgreen (WAG) and CVS Caremark (CVS). The reason for the optimism is the end of patent protection for the world's two best selling drugs Lipitor and Plavix. Soon after blockbuster drugs lose patent protection is a very profitable time for drug stores as they have more control over pricing, and even though generic drugs are cheaper than branded drugs they generally provide better profit margins for the pharmacies. According to the article, pharmacies pay 90% less for the generics, but do not pass all of those savings on to end consumers.

Considering Airgas' more attractive growth and valuation, we can understand why APD has been in hot pursuit of their cross state rival. If the board rebuffs this offer, there is a good chance that Air Products will go straight to the shareholders in hopes of pushing it through. Based on current fundamentals, our methodology suggests that this offer is a fair price and anything more would be stretching.