| Sponsored Now That We've Avoided the Cliff... What Else Will 2013 Bring? Will gold see a resurgence? Will real estate finally rebound? Will the bond market finally face the collapse predicted by so many experts?
Obviously, there are a lot of questions going in to the upcoming year.
Which is why Investment U readers should immediately review The Oxford Club's latest predictions in the 2013 Investors' Forecast Issue... Inside, they'll show you which companies look to be the safest and most profitable investments this year.
Last year's issue predicted three stocks that on average tripled the performance of the S&P. And this year could be even better.
Find out more by clicking here.
| | The Top Tech Stocks for 2013 | by David Eller, Investment U Contributing Editor
Tuesday, January 8, 2013 | | January is here and predictions for the coming year are rampant.
There are so many great cutting-edge technology companies and hopes for the next 12 months, it's easy to lose your discipline and let greed take over.
I'd love to spend the next 500 words talking about companies like Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) and Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG). But we're at a triple top on the S&P. And even if companies meet their earnings expectations, companies with high valuations can drop as investors become more conservative.
As we've detailed in the past, a company's share price is made up of the book value (or liquidation value) plus earnings potential. Even if the balance sheet is healthy and the company meets current earnings estimates, your $80 stock could become a $60 stock overnight if the expectation for future growth slows.
Since stocks like Facebook have few net assets and low (if any) current earnings, the expectations for future earnings have a huge impact on the share price. Here at Investment U, we prefer following tangible earnings growth rather than speculating. So for today's forecast I looked through more established companies, with real assets, and at least one stable earnings stream in addition to a good case for growth. In short, if the growth story doesn't work out as quickly as Wall Street expects, you won't end up holding an empty bag.
After diligent research, I see the following four tech companies as standouts for safe outperformance in 2013: | Sponsored When NASA Needs Futuristic Technology, They Go Here It doesn't get much more high-tech than sending a spaceship to Mars. And when NASA's Curiosity rover recently landed on the red planet, it was all thanks to one small company. Next up for it? Conquering a $357 billion consumer technology market. As it does, we expect shares to shoot from $9 to $224. Details here. | - Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) has been left for dead. Semiconductor investors have been focusing on wireless and low-power rather than PC suppliers. That shouldn't be a surprise since PC makers had a very tough 2012. The corporate PC refresh cycle was extended due to the weak economy. Tablets became mainstream. Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) and HP (NYSE: HPQ) continued to disappoint. Intel tried to get into mobile computing, but the Ultrabook isn't effectively competing with the iPad. However, the corporate computing market isn't going away. Expectations are low, the stock is cheap… and with a 5% dividend, you are being nicely paid to wait for earnings to improve. The CEO transition will bring an increased focus on mobile, which will hopefully increase the number of design wins for Intel's low-power Medfield product line.
- Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) is loved by its customer base, but it remains a hardware company. After being disappointed by Dell and HP throughout 2012, professional investors have not been willing to acknowledge that Apple may be different, and that traditional hardware margin compression may not be in store for Apple. The fact is that Apple is selling a closed ecosystem of products, not commodity products that interact with third-party hardware. This is similar to IBM's early days, but with one major difference: Apple provides a better user experience for its customers. Estimates as well as expectations have come down over the last two quarters, and Apple is now trading at less than 10x forward earnings. The company merely needs to execute on its current product line to meet estimates and see a dramatic increase in share price. If it executes on a revised Apple TV product, or builds out a Netflix-like, on-demand content offering, these new revenue streams would dramatically increase Apple's earnings potential. It seems strange but a combination of execution and new product offerings - at a time when expectations (and valuation) are low - could drive 50% upside to its existing massive valuation.
- Synchronoss (Nasdaq: SNCR) may be the most widely used company that you've never heard of. It provides an activation platform for mobile services and recently expanded into cloud computing through its recent acquisition of NewBay. As an activation vendor, Synchronoss has a relatively stable and boring business that is likely to grow through tablet adoption. However, carriers are attempting to increase their service offerings and NewBay provides the infrastructure to allow the carriers to do it. Synchronoss has the relationships and NewBay has the infrastructure. The date marking the beginning of the recent run in the share price was the date of the company's presentation at the Credit Suisse conference, November 28. Professional investors have been building positions, but the game is still in early innings.
- Teradata (NYSE: TDC) is a "big data" management vendor. All of the little bits of information that insurance companies and social media vendors collect and use need to be correlated, stored and used to predict future behavior. This may mean you'll get more direct mail and unwanted sales calls, but at least you can profit from this trend in the market. Teradata is the most highly recommended vendor by Gartner group. It's positioned in Gartner charts in "the upper right" quadrant for being the best executor, as well as the best innovator. The stock pulled back in the second half of 2012 due to weakness in U.S. business, but revenue and profits held up in Europe. Why? When the economy is difficult, companies scrutinize their books more heavily. There are two bright spots for Teradata. First, it's a rapidly growing business in Asia where, as a spinout of NCR, Teradata has a unique competitive advantage. Also, a unified appliance (called Aster) will allow Teradata to offer a cheaper, "out of the box" solution. Sure, you can buy a solution from SAP (NYSE: SAP) or Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL). But if you want to connect multiple vendors together, a third party can be more appealing.
Each of these companies has an established underlying business in a rapidly growing sector of technology.
They may not sound as sexy as a Tesla but, in my opinion, each will likely outperform the overall market in 2013, without the concerns of drawdown similar to Groupon (Nasdaq: GRPN).
Good Investing,
David Eller
   
Market Metrics Things Have Changed The nation's job market recovery has been the worst on record since World War II. Why?
Some blame the sluggish housing-sector rebound. Others blame a global slowdown.
And then there's the crowd that points a finger at the fine folks in Washington.
Today's chart shows that this recovery is different. It's a clear outlier. So I decided to see what may have changed.
One big variable: unemployment insurance.
Whether it's cause or effect, we can't say. But here are the facts.
When Franklin Roosevelt put his signature on the Social Security Act of 1935, he virtually ensured all 50 states would give unemployed American's the right to just 16 weeks of unemployment benefits. When the clock ran out, the checks would stop.
But over the next few decades, a handful of states began to pay out-of-work citizens for up to 26 weeks. And by the 1980s, just about every state offered unemployment compensation for a full six months.
And we all know what happened in 2010. Washington extended benefits to a full 99 weeks... and has kept them there ever since.
Again, we don't know if the extended cushion is part of the problem or the solution. But we do know this recovery is different. Something has changed.
- Andrew Snyder 
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