After first reading this headline this morning: Philip Morris second-quarter profit rises

This headline became amusing: Pfizer profit doubles, but anti-smoking drug lags

I guess all the laid-off people are depressed and smoking more, and don’t need anti-smoking drugs to recover for a job…because there are none.

**Disclosure: Long PM**

Jim Cramer has always said, its not “buy and hold” but “buy and homework.” Too many “investors” do not know what they own when they buy a stock, which is just reckless, but I don’t think its completely their fault. Most people don’t now how to do proper research, or have the background to understand how to do it. Even my friends who work at mutual funds often ask me where I get my info for the analysis I put on this site. This is why I started SuckingLess.com - an investor research and education magazine/community.

SuckingLess.com is a collection of the best industry and company websites to learn about the companies you own. When you own a stock, you’re, in a sense, an owner in the company. So, you should at least understand the basics of the business or industry, which means you should probably read what someone who works in that industry would read. Still, this ISN’T you’re actual job and making it so would be too time consuming, so I’ve also tried to filter SuckingLess.com to have only the most relevant and easiest to understand websites.

I want SuckingLess.com to be a COMMUNITY, a tool for ALL OF US. So, I invite everyone to come and participate on the site, SUBMIT your favorite research resource to help others learn the way I’m trying to get this started with my own favorite bookmarks. Please RATE the sites you’ve used before to help others know what’s most useful, and leave comments on how you’re using the sites or anything you’ve learned. Again, to help others. I’m sure you’ll learn something from the site, so give back a little and share your investing knowledge and experience with us!  Sometimes its not immediately obvious what you can learn from a website, so give people a little insight too if theres a special way you’ve found to tap into the markets with a certain website.

For example, I don’t have many resources on financials, healthcare, or retail/discretionary because, as readers of this site you know, I focus on industrials, tech, and energy sectors. So, help me learn a bit too!

Finally, PLEASE PLEASE send me feedback on how to make the site more useful to you. This is a tool for all of us, so lets make this what WE need to do the best research. And get your friends and trading buddies to help build SuckingLess.com too. Thanks and hope this is what we all need to become better investors, i.e. Suck Less!

P.S. 90% of mutual funds underperform the markets…so sucking is not something to be ashamed of. We just have to suck less as we learn more.

Finding my comfort zone. Restructuring the portfolio to suit my strong point. Not trying to run a diversified portfolio. I’m not running this for retirement. Its a specialized fund in science, engineering, and technology. Most picks here are for the long term, looking at supercycles of 7-14 years that will dwarf the credit crisis we have now, which is already making Paul Bunyan look like a baby (much much bigger, and hairier).

1. Union Pacific (UNP) - Weak dollar. Lets keep exporting stuff! Maybe some lead back to China? Just kidding. How about just some POT(ash).
2. Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, Inc. (POT) - If you saw how excited the CEO was on Fast Money talking about the potential growth, you’d think he was smoking some. Perfect explanation of the growth: once people taste meat, they don’t go back. Meat requires several times more grains to produce. Show me the POT baby.
3. Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (RIO) - Steel producers being able to raise prices?  I think the real beneficiary here is Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (aka CVRD).  CVRD is the hand that’s squeezing the toothpaste of steel producers’ margins.  I don’t think steel producers want to raise prices.  Commodity prices are forcing them to.  They’re just passing on CVRD’s price hikes, not really expanding margins and making more mula.
4. Southern Copper Corp. (PCU) - Even though we don’t notice it, civilization is built on copper.  And man oh man are we building.
5. Precision Castparts Corp. (PCP) - Riding the commercial airplane replacement and buildout cycle. Also, essential for the furnaces going into the power plants popping up in China every 2 weeks.
6. ABB Ltd. (ABB) - Perfect play on the power grid (along with PCU and PCP), both the decaying ones in the U.S. and the new grids to be build in China, India, Russia, Europe, Mid East, and Latin America. A growth-value. Hard to say that about many stocks. A lot of advanced energy-generation and energy-conservation technologies no one talks about.
7. Foster Wheeler, Ltd. (FWLT) - No MDR, but should approach MDR’s perfection with the opportunities in the Middle East and especially in Asia. The new products they’re pushing including the CFB and Pluto platforms should help margins & efficiency explode.
8. McDermott International Inc. (MDR) - 4000% over 5 years, and still trading at the lower end of it’s P/E range. This should not be classified as a Engineering & Construction company. It’s a highly efficient mass (low cost) producer of oil & gas infrastructure.
9. TransOcean, Inc. (RIG) - love National Geographics’ “Oil, Sweat, and RIGs” series.
10. Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK) - Natty (natural gas) is so much cheaper on a BTU energy basis than oil. L.A.’s Long Beach harbor is already switching to NatGas for clean energy, other municipalities will do the same.
11. First Solar, Inc. (FSLR) - CdTe is the RIGHT semiconductor material for capturing solar energy, silicon is not. Simple as that.
12. L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. (LLL) - Best defense contractor. Period. Little to no operational risk and in a highly efficient niche of government contracts. No design and manufacturing problems that everyone from Lockheed Martin (LMT) to Northrop Grumman (NOC) and Boeing (BA) deal with daily. Raytheon (RTN) could have been like LLL, except RTN’s management prefers to run RTN like feudalism Japan.
13. Corning Inc. (GLW) - How awesome is that signal on the oscilloscope for the ClearCurve optical fibers?!?!!! THAT…is what gives engineers wet dreams.
14. Apple Inc. (AAPL) - iPhone should NOT a smartphone and shouldn’t be compared to a Blackberry (RIMM) or a Nokia (NOK) product. The iPhone is a full-fledged tablet PC with a complete operating system.
15. FTI Consulting, Inc. (FCN) - Anticipating lots of legal activity required in the aftermath of the credit/mortgage apocalypse. Municipals suing financial corporations, corporations restructing, etc.
16. Annaly Capital Management, Inc. (NLY) - Attempt to be the vulture, not the meat in this credit crisis. I can take the pain. No pain no gain.
17. Hologic Inc. (HOLX) - @ forefront of women’s diagnostics technology. Because like most people, I have a mother.
18. Altria Group Inc. (MO) - Yield, weak dollar, defensive diversification.  Don’t smoke. It’ll make you ugly…like a camel.
19. McDonald’s Corp. (MCD) - MickyD’s Baby! Yield, weak dollar, defensive diversification.

**Disclosure: Author is long UNP, POT, RIO, PCU, PCP, ABB, FWLT, MDR, RIG, CHK, FSLR, LLL, GLW, AAPL, FCN, NLY, HOLX, MO, MCD as of this post. **

Amidst a string of schizophrenic positive-negative-positive news, I closed my position in prison operator The GEO Group (GEO) early last week.

• 9/13/07: The GEO Group Wins Contract Re-Bid for the Continued Management of the 890-Bed Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre (Australia)
• 9/14/07: New Mexico: Court Rules Against Private Prison
• 9/26/07: The GEO Group Receives Notice of Intent to Award a Contract from the State of Florida for the 384-Bed Expansion of the 1,500-Bed Graceville Correctional Facility
• 9/28/07: Feds Sue Prison Over Muslim Head Scarf Ban
• 10/2/07: The GEO Group Announces Discontinuation of Contract by the Texas Youth Commission for the Management of the 200-Bed Coke County Juvenile Justice Center
• 10/7/07: Why Prison Stocks Look Tempting (Barron’s)
• 10/8/07: Geo Group Will Hold Onto Texas Criminal Justice Contracts, Analyst Says (First Analysis Securities)

Barron’s identified the prison operator sector’s recent weakness as a buying opportunity. I agree that the prison population is more likely growing at the 13% forecast by the Pew Charitable Trusts than the incomplete Census report of a 4% growth. We all know how reliable government data are…just look at other statistics like the Jobs Data. However, with the stock up 70% year-over-year, I wanted to take profits. With such an amazing run and with some increased near-term risk, I’d like to see some consolidation or pullback as these issues work themselves out. I want to observe the following situations from the sidelines and am more than willing to jump back into GEO: Read the rest of this entry »