Category: Stock Option Advisory

Riding a wave of premium product sales, Levi Strauss & Co.’s first-quarter earnings rose 61%. The company also cited growth in emerging markets and brand-dedicated retail stores for the increase.

In its most recent edition, Entrepreneur Magazine released its pick for the top nationwide franchises for 2007. The magazine takes an in-depth look at which franchises would make the best investment for its hopeful readership. In this installment of the PowerOptions weblog, we take a look at some of the publicly traded companies on the list and research the potential option trades.

If another bad hurricane season were to hit the Eastern United States and the Gulf Coast it could be a boon for commercial construction as well as residential. Today, PowerOptions weblog will take a look at Home Depot (HD) and Lowes (LOW) covered call opportunities as the stocks have suffered tremendously recently and may receive a bump on the hurricane news.

With the Masters Golf Tournament kicking off this week, we’ll look at investing in the Golf industry. The sport of golf is several hundred years old. The exact birth of the game of golf is debatable. Generally, the game of golf is considered to have originated in Scotland, but some suggest it may have originated in China or the Netherlands, several hundred years before appearing in Scotland.

This article is a continuation of the series in the examination of the world’s economies, and in this article we will consider France. France has the sixth largest economy after the United States, Japan, Germany, China and the United Kingdom. France is the most popular tourist destination in the world with over 75 million visitors each year. The second and third most popular tourist destinations, Spain and the United States, are not even close with around 50 million visitors each year.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the young prince Hamlet utters the phrase “To be or not to be-that is the question..” as he is considering whether to commit suicide or not. The question we ponder in this article is “should we invest in the United Kingdom or not?” With this article, we continue the evaluation of world economies with the examination of the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has a long and fragmented history. It is the fifth largest economy in the world after the United States, Japan, Germany, and China. At one point, the United Kingdom had dominion over the largest land mass and population in the world encompassing large portions of Europe, America and Asia.

Many Oil and Gas companies have looked attractive to investors for the last few months. Many have said the scarcity of the resource and the price insensitive demand will ensure profits well over the horizon. Audio Podcast: An audio podcast of this article is available at: poweropt.com/podcasts/2007_03_22_RDC.mp3 Rowan Companies (RDC) provides a range of onshore and offshore contract drilling services in the United States and internationally. This stock is down substantially this year. The company significantly increased their capital expenditures last year ($200M in 2005 to nearly $500M in 2006). Another telling factor is their Net Income, less than zero three years ago, increased 50% in 2006 to over $300M.

With analysts predicting the Feds will not cut interest rates because of inflation woes and Alan Greenspan saying publicly there is a 33% chance of recession, it leaves little for investors to be optimistic about. Noting this, we will take a look at promising small cap covered call option opportunities.

Goldman Sachs has stated it believes it can get fire sale prices on companies in the subprime-lending market. The investment firm earned higher than expected first-quarter profits and expects to keep generating them by buying companies it feels are a good investment.

Japan’s GDP grew at a very nice 1.3% in the last quarter of 2006. Japan’s economy was in the doldrums for over a decade and in the last few years has started to perk up. In the early 1970’s the term “Japan Inc” was coined, as it appeared the Japanese were going to dominate the globe with their business and manufacturing acumen. But “Japan Inc” turned into “Japan Red Ink” as Japan experienced a severe real estate bubble and faced increasing competition from Korea and China.