Canadian Banks Shine Amid Tarnished Financial Sector

By Brad Kenagy:This article will be the second in a series where I look for stocks I think will do well this upcoming year. In this article I am focusing on Basic Materials stocks and to screen for them I will use the same criteria that I used in a previous article of mine for finding stocks in the financial sector.

By Brad Kenagy:This article will be the Sixth in a series where I look for stocks I think will do well this upcoming year. In this article I am focusing on Services stocks and to screen for them I will use the same criteria that I used in a previous article of mine for finding stocks in the financial sector.

By Brad Kenagy:This article will be the Third in a series where I look for stocks I think will do well this upcoming year. In this article I am focusing on Consumer Goods stocks and to screen for them I will use the same criteria that I used in a previous article of mine for finding stocks in the financial sector.

Gary Townsend submits:There are few true growth stories in American banking today, but one mid-sized New York City-based commercial bank surely fits the description. Tuesday, Signature Bank (SBNY) reported 4Q10 operating EPS of $0.70 (GAAP EPS was $0.72), handily beating the $0.64 consensus estimate. Earnings accelerated again. In 2010, this $2.2 billion market cap company earned $2.30 per share on an operating basis, up +43.3% from $1.61 in 2009, when operating EPS grew 20.6%.

By Kapitall:Do you prefer stocks expected to see high earnings growth? If so, we ran a screen you might be interested in. We began by screening the services sector for high-growth stocks, with 5-year projected EPS growth above 15%.Then to analyze these companies' profitability, we ran DuPont analysis on the names. DuPont analyzes profitability by breaking up return on equity (net income/equity) into three components:ROE= (Net Profit/Equity)= (Net profit/Sales)*(Sales/Assets)*(Assets/Equity)

By Kapitall:Do you prefer stocks that pay regular and reliable dividends? If so, here's a look at some interesting high-growth dividend names. We began by screening for dividend stocks: those paying dividend yields above 2% and sustainable payout ratios below 50%. We then screened for those with high-growth trends, with five-year projected EPS growth above 15%.

Scott's Investments submits:I recently started tracking the US Dividend Champions list on my site. Dividend Champions are a list of companies that have increased their dividend payout for at least 25 consecutive years. The list is compiled, updated monthly and tracked at DRIP Investing.

By Kapitall:Do you like to follow earnings season to try and find stocks that may announce an earnings surprise? For a look at interesting companies reporting next week, we ran a screen. We began with stocks reporting their first-quarter earnings next week for those that appear undervalued relative to earnings growth, with PEG below 1.