Top Picks 2007: And the winner is ... financials

Carla Pasternak chooses Ares Capital, while Adrian Day selects Gladstone Investment Corp (NASDAQ:GAIN). Both companies fall in the specialty category known as business development companies -- providing financing to small cap firms that would typically fall under the radar screen of the larger Wall Street financing firms.

As a speculation, Day also chose Virginia Mines (TSX:VGQ), which finances gold-mining projects. Also in the resource financing segment, Mark Leibovit chose Pinetree Capital, which invests in early-stage business in both mining and oil and gas.

Other specialized areas of finance that were chosen as Top Picks include insurance; Richard Moroney chose insurer Philadelphia Suburban, while Jon Markman picked Fundtech Ltd. (NASDAQ:FNDT) , a small cap Israeli firm that provides software to the banking industry.

Small bank specialist Doug Hughes chose Bancal, a regional California banker along with Ohio's Park National Corp (ASE:PRK), a commercial trust. Looking overseas, Jack Adamo chose Lloyds TSB Group, the UK banking firm.

Also in the financial sector, Bernie Schaeffer picked International Securities, which operates the global options exchange, while both Cory Janssen and Paul Tracy selected money transfer agent, Western Union (NYSE:WU).

Finally, under the topic of finance, I would point to those Top Picks that were selected to help investors secure their own personal "financing" through income from dividends.

Sy Harding chose limited partnership Cedar Fair (NYSE:FUN), with its dividend of 6.9% while Carla Pasternak opted for the Zweig Total Return Fund (NYSE:ZTR), with its effective yield of 8%, as her conservative favorite.

Leonard Goodall recommends a dividend-based exchange traded fund -- the iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend Index (NYSE:DVY). And finally, to protect against potential dollar weakness, Martin Weiss looks to the Prudent Global Income Fund (NASDAQ:PSAFX), which is concentrated in short-term foreign government debt.