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    • At the height of its glory in late 2007, Google (GOOG) was trading above $700 a share, was worth more than $225 billion and was about 30% bigger than Apple (AAPL).

      Since then, Google's market value shrunk by roughly $40 billion, expenses and headcount have mushroomed, and the company has done little to diversify its income stream and reliance on search.

      Today, Google is about half the size of Apple, and its stagnant stock is testing the patience of an increasing number of investors and analysts who are hungry to see its next big product. "Google has been a one-trick pony as far as earnings are concerned," says portfolio manager Michael Sansoterra of Silvant Capital Management. Like the rest of us, he is taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the new Chromebook laptops that begin shipping today, and asking for a "show-me story."

      In a marketplace dominated by $500 iPads, it remains to be seen if consumer demand for the comparably priced but lesser-equipped Chromebook, a device Sansoterra describes as "a tablet with a lid and a keyboard," will do anything to compete with tech giants like Apple. The iMac maker has a proven its "ability to innovate and grow their business," Sansoterra says.

      Read More »from Can Google’s Chromebook Compete With Apple?
    • 4 Stocks to Buy… Maybe

      Michael Sansoterra, a managing director at Silvant Capital Management and portfolio manager of the RidgeWorth Large Cap Growth fund (STCFX), is a bright and articulate guy who thinks the roughly 7% pullback in the S&P 500 is a buying opportunity. He has a list of stock picks from his favorite sectors right now: Tech, consumer discretionary and industrials.

      Since this site is about making you money, I'm just going to run through Sansoterra's stock ideas one by one and tell you what I think. Manners are in the kiddie seat, my id's going to drive this one.

      Buckle up and let's roll:

      Baidu (BIDU): Sansoterra likes Baidu, the "Google of China," saying the company faces no competition due to the oppressive Chinese government.

      The "Google of China" label is damning Baidu with faint praise. Baidu is better than Google (GOOG), and it's a monopoly. The downside is the fact that the Chinese government will pull a "reverse merger" with Baidu at the slightest provocation. The upside is Baidu won't come out with a product line of pure idiocy like Google's new "Chromebook" laptops which amount to an iPad with a lid. When I was in business school, Larry Ellison of Oracle (ORCL) gave an awesome speech on dumb computers operating off the Internet. That was 1997.

      BorgWarner (BWA): Sansoterra likes this consumer discretionary company that makes pumps for cars because there's a secular trend of drivers looking for ways to get better mileage.

      With oil prices falling and unemployment over 9%, you have to be a little bit high to think new car demand is poised to explode. Used cars? Maybe. New cars with turbo chargers? Not in my opinion. BorgWarner has an agriculture kicker, but I'd rather play Caterpillar (CAT) if I didn't think the cyclical names were poised to cycle lower.

      Read More »from 4 Stocks to Buy… Maybe
    • "Unemployment is the biggest Achilles' heel to the bull case," says Michael Sansoterra, four-star portfolio manager overseeing the RidgeWorth Large Cap Growth Fund (STCFX). With jobless claims rising and the unemployment rate still above 9 percent, the idea of the meager economic recovery from the lows of the Great Recession is losing favor among market intelligentsia, even to believers like Sansoterra.

      Away from a stubborn lack of job growth, the fund-runner sees the glass as half full. The end of quantitative easing is scary to some, but Sansoterra isn't worried about a double dip. In fact, he goes so far as opining that the expiration of QE2 is an unambiguously good thing. He says a "natural" growth rate of 2 percent to 3 percent may be seen as disappointing, but it beats the idea of QE3, and "the reality of injecting more liquidity will not fix hiring."

      Put Sansoterra is in the rather sizable camp of folks largely unconcerned about the pullback in stocks that was so obvious, even my partner Nesto and I saw it coming. The roughly 7 percent move lower "is not completely unexpected...it's actually somewhat healthy for the market," Sansoterra says. It's a fair point that not even a trading guy such as myself could deny. Markets that don't correct are not to be trusted. While a summer stock slump is as unpleasant as it is predictable, it's nothing worth getting your undies in a bundle over... unless 1,250 breaks.

      Read More »from Markets That Don’t Correct Are Not to Be Trusted: Macke
    • Sell Stocks, Buy Cows: Casey

      Feeling lost in your quest for fresh money-making opportunities these days? Well, you're not alone. Even a globe-trotting speculator like Doug Casey, whose namesake firm, Casey Research, prides itself on being "intensely curious, focused on facts," says there just aren't many good places to hide anymore.

      "Good investment ideas are not thick underfoot these days," says Casey. "The next few years will be marvelous from the point of view of a speculator, but horrible for the average guy." Casey's definition of a speculator is not a gambler or a trader, but rather someone who capitalizes on politically caused distortions in the marketplace, and he's expecting a lot of them. As such, and not surprisingly, Casey loves gold and hates the dollar.

      On the former, Casey sees the bull market in gold eventually entering a "mania stage," which he thinks could push it to $5,000 an ounce. Even so, he says the recent run-up to $1,500 is cause for "hesitation." Still, broadly he advises that people "should own a lot of gold."

      As for the dollar, and major currencies in general, his commentary is more caustic, as he blasts the long-term washout that looms as a result of "trillions of currency units that all these stupid governments are creating."

      Casey openly does not like to link his predictions with timelines. He says in the years to come, the dollar will trade to its intrinsic value (as in -- be worth the paper it's printed on), which "will be quite ugly." This despite his belief that "the EU is going to fall apart and euro will cease to exist" within the next five to 10 years.

      And there's more sunshine where that came from.

      Read More »from Sell Stocks, Buy Cows: Casey

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