Hot US Companies For 2015

It’s been a tumultuous few months for PIMCO CIO Bill Gross.

The PIMCO Total Return Fund, which Gross manages, saw $30.4 billion in outflows in 2013, and Gross’ co-CIO, Mohamed El-Erian, recently announced his resignation.

Despite the stock market’s takeoff last year, the new normal that El-Erian predicted is still imminent, Gross told Erik Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle Tuesday on Bloomberg TV, and investors should lower their expectations and prepare themselves for an era of slow global growth.

"I think the era of getting rich quickly is over," he said, "and I think, almost, that the era of getting rich slowly is over, too."

He also told Bloomberg TV why China is "the mystery meat of emerging market countries" and speculated on what’s next for El-Erian.

ERIK SCHATZKER: I think we’ve got to start in the most obvious of places. Why are risk assets correcting? What in your opinion is behind the sell-off?

BILL GROSS: Well risk assets, financial systems are unstable with excessive risk taking on one hand and low returns on the other, which in turn encourages more risk taking. It’s sort of like [George] Soros’ reflexivity. Once you get the levered system going, it hardly knows when and where to stop. And so that’s what we’re seeing. We have a highly levered global financial system with hedged positions that are moving back and forth based on emerging market countries and their growth rates or expected growth rates. And when those change, then positions change. And as levered positions change, you’ve got a lot of volatility and reflexivity, as Mr. Soros would have said.

Top 5 Quality Stocks To Invest In 2016: Ishares Trust Dow Jones United States (IDU)

iShares Dow Jones U.S. Utilities Sector Index Fund (the Fund) seeks investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of the Dow Jones U.S. Utilities Index (the Index). The Index measures the performance of the utilities sector of the United States equity market. The Index includes companies in industry groups, such as electricity and gas, water and multi-utilities. The Index is a subset of the Dow Jones U.S. Total Market Index and is capitalization weighted. The Index is reconstituted quarterly.

The Fund will concentrate its investments in a particular industry or group of industries to approximately the same extent as the Index is so concentrated. The Fund�� investment advisor is Barclays Global Fund Advisors.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Todd Shriber, ETF Professor]

  Unusual volume (at least 5X ADV): iShares Utilities ETF (NYSE: IDU), First Trust Utilities AlphaDEX Fund (NYSE: FXU), iShares MSCI Germany Small Cap ETF (NYSE: EWGS), iShares MSCI USA ETF (NYSE: EUSA), SPDR S&P Emerging Europe ETF (NYSE: GUR), PowerShares Water Resources (NYSE: PHO) and the Vanguard Industrials ETF (NYSE: VIS).

• [By Richard Stavros]

  In early August, Vanguard Utilities ETF (NYSE: VPU), iShares US Utilities (NYSE: IDU), and Fidelity MSCI Utilities Index ETF (NYSE: FUTY) added almost $250 million in new assets combined, more than enough to offset outflows from Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund (NSDQ: XLU).

Hot US Companies For 2015: Material Sciences Corporation(MASC)

Material Sciences Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the design, manufacture, and marketing of material-based solutions for acoustical and coated applications in the United States and internationally. It offers acoustical material-based solutions, which include multilayer composites consisting of metals, polymers, and other coated materials used to manage noise and vibration in automotive body panel parts, brake dampers, engine parts, appliances, and computer disk drives, as well as heating, ventilating, and air conditioning products. The company also provides coated material-based solutions that comprise painted, electrogalvanized protective, decorative, and functional coatings applied to coils of metals for automotive fuel tanks, building products, gaskets, appliances, and lighting fixtures. Material Sciences Corporation primarily serves customers in the automotive, appliance, building and construction, lighting, and electronic markets. The company m arkets its products, services, and technologies through sales and marketing organization, as well as through agents and licensees. Material Sciences Corporation was founded in 1971 and is headquartered in Elk Grove Village, Illinois.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Monica Gerson]

  Material Sciences (NASDAQ: MASC) is projected to report its Q2 earnings at $0.16 per share.

  Blackhawk Network Holdings (NASDAQ: HAWK) is estimated to report its Q3 earnings at $0.05 per share on revenue of $210.94 million.

Hot US Companies For 2015: Greenhunter Resources Inc (GRH)

GreenHunter Resources, Inc., formerly GreenHunter Energy, Inc., incorporated on June 7, 2005, is engaged in providing Total Water Management Solutions to oil and gas operators who are active in the Marcellus, Eagle Ford and Bakken shale plays. The Company operates in three segments: Wind Energy, Water Management and Biomass. All of the Company�� segments are in development stages with no operations. The Company assembled a suite of water management products and services and markets them under the Total Water Management Solutions brand. The Company�� operations includes Total Water Management Solutions, Frac-Cycle, remote access management compliance asset tracking (RAMCAT), equipment and tank rentals, disposal wells, MAG Tank and salt water disposal animation. On February 17, 2012, the Company closed on the acquisition of 100% of the ownership interest of three fully operational commercial salt water disposal (SWD) wells and associated facilities located in Washington County, Ohio and Lee County, Kentucky. In March 2013, GreenHunter Water, LLC closed the purchase of a 10.8 acre barging terminal facility located in Wheeling, Ohio County, West Virginia. In February 2014, its wholly owned subsidiary, GreenHunter Water, LLC, sold its Kenedy Hunter salt water disposal (SWD) facilities and a SWD permit and surface acreage located at another South Texas property to Sable Environmental, LLC.

The Company�� subsidiary GreenHunter Water, LLC (GreenHunter Water) is focused on water resource management specifically as it pertains to the unconventional oil and natural gas shale resource plays with its business operations in the Appalachian and South Texas basins. GreenHunter Water engaged in providing a full range of solutions to address producers��needs and is built upon an identified need in the oilfield, to deliver a Total Water Management Solution to its customer base through long term agreements. The Company�� Total Water Management Solutions are custom developed to meet producers��wat! er resource planning needs. These solutions include owning and operating saltwater disposal facilities, fluids handling and hauling and logistics services, frac tank and next-generation modular above-ground tank rentals, mobile water treatment technologies and remote asset tracking to provide as value added services to its customers.

The Company�� asset included a fleet of nine water hauling vacuum trucks, and 37 frac tanks (500 barrel capacity each). As of December 31, 2011, total salt water disposal capacity is 9,000 barrels per day, of which 6,000 barrels per day is from two wells located in Ohio and approximately 3,000 barrels per day is from one well located in Kentucky. The Company is engaged in exploring various alternative means of water transport that include temporary and permanent above-ground or below-ground pipeline systems, and the use of rail and barge transport.

GreenHunter Water has assembled a variety of equipment and tanks for rental. Products available in the Eagle Ford and Marcellus Shale areas include 500 barrel frac Tanks, 425 barrel Weir Tanks, modular above-ground temporary storage tanks to replace frac ponds, available up to 41,000 barrel in capacity, frac manifolds and glass lined steel tanks, up to 100,000 barrel. During the year ended December 31, 2011, the Company Completed a project, that included the removal of chemicals and impurities in a sufficient amount for reuse in new wells that were scheduled for fracture stimulation. The project also included the treatment of a gel frac flowback and multiple sources of flowback water blended together. The Company purchased equipment assets to be used to service a long term contract to haul and dispose produced water for several oil companies that control mineral leasehold acreage positions in the Marcellus and Utica Shale plays located in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. The equipment consists of five Peterbilt 388 trucks, five 130 barrel Vacuum Trailers and five vacuum pumps and related equipme! nt.

The Company�� water treatment services name is Frac-Cycle. Frac-Cycle�� flexible design allows the user to take in flow-back or produced water and recycle to either clean brine or fresh water. Recycled water can be used in subsequent frac jobs and in some cases an NPDES permit can be obtained to discharge fresh water into a stream. The Company�� RAMCAT is a system and compliance tool that bundles a combination of its software, advanced hardware and communications technologies to provide a method for remote activity observation via a Web-based portal for management of well-head fluids. RAMCAT includes online data monitoring, which provides oil and natural gas producers near real-time dynamic information on fluid levels, tank temperature, recent transactions, date and time of on-load and off-load, truck and driver identification, H2S and critical condition alarms and battery voltage.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By James E. Brumley]

  In a perfect world, a stock's price is merely a reflection of a predictable combination of a company's history and forward-looking prospects. We don't live - or trade - in a perfect world though. In the real world, a chart not only tells a story, but illustrates traders' changing opinion of a stock. The good news is, traders move, thing, buy, and sell in fairly predictable patterns, and when you see certain hints fall in place, you can make a very good trade. Enter Authentidate Holding Corp. (NASDAQ:ADAT) and Greenhunter Resources Inc. (NYSEMKT:GRH). Both GRH as well as ADAT have taken on a bullish shape as of today, and both are apt to be at much higher levels in the foreseeable future.

Hot US Companies For 2015: Knight Transportation Inc (KNX)

Knight Transportation, Inc. (Knight), incorporated on August 31, 1989, is a provider of multiple truckload transportation services, which generally involve the movement of full trailer or container loads of freight from origin to destination for a single customer. The Company is a provider of multiple truckload transportation services with a nationwide network of service centers through which it operates one of the tractor fleets. In addition to its own fleet, the Company also partners with third-party equipment providers to provide truckload capacity and a broad range of solutions to truckload shippers. The Company has five operating segments comprised of three asset-based operating segments: dry van truckload, temperature-controlled truckload and port services and two non-asset-based operating segments brokerage and intermodal services. Through its asset-based and non-asset-based capabilities the Company is able to transport, or can arrange for the transportation of, general commodities for customers throughout the United States and parts of Canada and Mexico.

The Company's asset-based businesses generally include dry van truckload, refrigerated truckload, dedicated truckload, and drayage services. Its non-asset-based services generally include rail intermodal and truckload brokerage services. However, within its asset-based services, the use of independent contractors to provide tractors lowers the capital investment in its dry van and refrigerated operations. In addition, drayage operations generally involve less expensive tractors with longer lives and do not require a investment in trailering equipment. As of December 31, 2012, it operated 3,627 company-owned tractors with an average age of 1.9 years. It also had under contract 507 tractors owned and operated by independent contractors. Its trailer fleet consisted of 9,564 53-foot long trailers with an average age of 5.5 years and includes 1,092 temperature-controlled trailers.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Sean Williams]

  Swift Transportation (NYSE: SWFT  ) , for example, delivered a 4% increase in revenue this past quarter in spite of having fewer trucks in service. The company was able to realize better utilization of its existing fleet and actually saw fuel prices fall from the previous year. The results were even more robust for Knight Transportation (NYSE: KNX  ) , whose shareholders saw revenue rise by 7% as the company grew from the year-ago quarter for the 14th straight time and delivered growth from each of its business segments.

• [By Victor Nguyen]

  A report released Thursday morning, Citigroup analyst Christian Wetherbee upgrades Knight Transportation (NYSE: KNX) to BUY from NEUTRAL, increasing price target from $17 to $22.

• [By Seth Jayson]

  Calling all cash flows
  When you are trying to buy the market's best stocks, it's worth checking up on your companies' free cash flow once a quarter or so, to see whether it bears any relationship to the net income in the headlines. That's what we do with this series. Today, we're checking in on Knight Transportation (NYSE: KNX  ) , whose recent revenue and earnings are plotted below.