much risk you can take with your housing. Can you extend yourself for a high-priced house because you think it’s going to go up a lot and make a lot of money? Well, if you’re wrong and the economy is bad and you’ve got a high mortgage payment and you can’t make it, you’re in a lot of trouble, especially if that house is not worth what you paid for it. I think it’s very important that investors or individuals look at their housing as one of the basic staples of life and treat housing as much as a staple [of life] and expense as they do as an investment. Think of it as one of the areas for lowering their risk
RANDALL ELEY, The Edgar Lomax Co.
| Stock (Exchange: Ticker) |
Price at |
12-Month |
| Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) |
$36.68 |
$43.00 |
| Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE: MRK) |
53.72 |
62.00 |
| Eastman Kodak Co. (NYSE: EK) |
28.16 |
33.00 |
| *AS OF AUGUST 19, 2003 SOURCE: ZACKS.COM; RANDALL ELEY | ||
Exxon Mobil: “When you look at the balance sheet … [and] income statements for the last 10 years, Exxon is a powerhouse. It’s an earnings machine. Their credit rating is much better than most companies. There would have to be a series of the most improbable events [for] Exxon to not be making money and a sufficient return on its investment over the next 10 years.”
Merck: “Here is a company in the healthcare sector where stocks have been generally priced at higher P/E ratios, lower yields and yet Merck is carrying a [dividend] yield of 2.3%. I think that can go up in light of the preference in the most recent tax law being given to dividend returns.”
Eastman Kodak: “We’re not looking for extraordinary growth in the future. It’s just that the stock is so depressed because earnings have been going down. [If] earnings stabilize, you would have a big pop in the price of the stock.”
ISAAC GREEN, Piedmont Investment Advisors
| Stock (Exchange: Ticker) |
Price at |
12-Month |
| Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) |
$36.68 |
$42.00 |
| Applied Materials, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMAT) |
20.08 |
25.00 |
| AOL Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: AOL) |
16.00 |
25.00 |
| *AS OF AUGUST 19, 2003. SOURCE: ZACKS.COM; ISAAC GREEN | ||
Exxon Mobil: “We think that Exxon Mobil is very high quality, very stable [and] very rich in cash. If oil prices spike and that derails the economy, Exxon Mobil is also a very strong financial company that would weather that storm very well and outperform the market.”
Applied Materials: “It’s the dominant manufacturer of semiconductor equipment. They produce the equipment that other companies use to manufacture chips. This is a blue-chip name within the technology sector that makes a backbone product and, as confidence in technology builds, we think Applied Materials will participate quite nicely.”
AOL Time Warner: “We think that AOL Time Warner is a company that has great franchises, both on the media and entertainment side, and substantial