Today Alcoa Inc. (NYSE: AA) announced some restructuring plans that will trim down (SELL) some under-performing consumer packaging and automotive castings divisions. It will be taking some charges to the tune of $845 million as well, and intends to gear up for expansion into higher margin areas. Alcoa also said it raised cash by selling its 7% stake in Chalco, the Aluminum Corp China ADS (NYSE: ACH) and bringing in $2 billion dollars on what was initially a $200 million investment -- "A ten bagger."

It is this latter decision that is not smart, and without further explanation from management I have to question selling a winner. If you look at all of the things that Alcoa did in the last 10 years you will find that the Chalco investment was the smartest, and more importantly, the most profitable, thing it has done. For many years Alcoa stock has been adrift. Since it sold the stock it has only gone up further and as I write these words and look at the price now, ACH is trading up over 5% more to $75.70.

The Hershey Co. (NYSE: HSY), which is the largest U.S. candy maker, is getting a new Chief Executive, David West, who is moving over from the COO suite. Shareholders will be anxious to see if this suite move really translates into a sweet move for the stock, which is down for the year about 25% from $56.75, closing near its 52-week low today at $44.50.

I have been watching this stock for a few weeks now as I search out what will be valuable in the coming year -- and then going forward for a lifetime. As "my pal Warren" likes to say, the proper holding period for a stock is "forever." Chocolate is a candidate for sure, and Buffett certainly would have to support this notion since Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) owns a premier American Brand in See's Candies.

Chocolate may be as recession-proof as beer and lipstick, so this company is worth looking at as an investment opportunity. When I review the numbers I see both good and bad. To the good, it is paying a 2.56% dividend yield, which does sweeten the pot (OK, I'll stop that). To the bad, it is facing increased prices for sugar, now competing I suppose with the energy sector (ethanol), ironic since chocolate bars are promoted as energy food. Oil seems to have dipped in the past few days but I'm not sure the demand for sugar will.

July started off so promising and ended in the dumps. After the DJIA triumphantly closed above 14,000 it beat a hasty retreat scared off by a tumbling housing market, continued worries about sub-prime loans, record highs in oil prices, continued turmoil in Iraq and perhaps a dose of summer vacationitus. In addition, market darlings Apple and Google exited the month with a few unanswered questions. Nothing could be more telling than people speculating about a Dow 15,000...16,000...17,000 the moment it passed the 14,000 mark. And silly guy that I am...thoughts of repeating my 29% 2006 return entered my mind when I reached a 24% IRR earlier. That no longer looks like a possibility although I'm still doing fine - so far.

The month of July started off about stock picking and finished about stock picking as James Cramer of TheStreet.com would support. However, among the good picks were plenty of bad ones and anything remotely associated with housing, and sub-prime loans paid a heavy price by month end. Google maintained its leadership but did take a dive after reporting earnings. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) set so many new highs that it is not news anymore, but then there was news, most of it bad enough to put doubt in investors minds, and the market traded down. Earnings reports still trickle in but nothing major unexpected affected the market. Mergers and acquisitions are showing some signs of slowing, but deals are getting done. This is my seventh follow-up report. For reference, check out my original Dec. 28, 2006 post on this topic.

Although the DJIA has been the market leader among the indices and may indicate that investors are giving large cap stocks their due, it has retreated lately. It also may indicate that the global economy is doing better as a whole than the national economy, creating opportunity for the multi-national corporations.

After reviewing two thirds of the thirty Dow Jones Industrials, I am surprised to find as much opportunity as I have and as there appears to be. I did not start out expecting to find much value, if at all, in the Dow. Yet, out of the nineteen stocks I've covered in the first four parts, I've found six possibilities in total ... and I still have eleven stocks to go.

Here are the value plays so far: Alcoa Aluminum (NYSE: AA), American International Group (NYSE: AIG), Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT), Disney (Walt) Company (NYSE: DIS), and Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) and Home Depot (NYSE: HD). You can link to Part 1 of this series, Part 2, Part 3 or Part 4 for your own review and comments. Stocks 20 through 24 follow.

International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM) has been making some good moves lately and Wall Street has been reacting favorably. I have owned IBM shares several years ago and sold for a modest gain. The stock has been asleep for years and it looks fairly valued to me now. Very little of the data points I see stand out: IBM has an average P/E of 17.5, a lower than average yield of 1.5%. It does clear a good, not great, profit margin of 10.38%. The thing that looks most favorable about IBM, though, is its ROE, which is 30.25 (TTM) and far exceeds the P/E -- this has been a good indicator for me in the past. I would think most of its growth will be overseas but I do not see IBM moving at any faster rate than the index itself. There are many on Wall Street who disagree, pegging IBM as high as $175 per share in a few years based on its focus on higher margin software sales and service contracts, but I'd rather buy the index over the stock.

This is the second update on the stock price status of the first six Chasing Value companies. Closing prices are form May 29, 2007. I keep track of my recommendations and anyone considering my commentary should "do their homework" too, just as James Cramer rants on his Mad Money TV show. Since I was tracking these picks I thought I would summarize the findings for our readers. Yes, the time frame is rather short, nevertheless here is the data through the end of May.

February 16, 2007: Chasing value: Wells Fargo: Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) closed at $35.32 down from $35.76: a loss of 1.5%.

February 23, 2007: Chasing value: Anadarko Petroleum - got it! Anadarko Petroleum Company (NYSE: APC) closed at $52.40 up from $40.84: A gain of 28.3%.

March 3, 2007: Chasing value: Aluminum Corporation of China ADS: Aluminim Corp. of China (ADS) (NYSE: ACH) closed at $46.16 up from $22.98: A gain of 101%.

March 20, 2007: Chasing Value: Anglo American - Inflation hedge & more: Anglo American plc (NASDAQ: AAUK) closed at $30.32 up from $24.65: A gain of 23%

March 23, 2007 Chasing Value: Cemex and LaFarge look solid: CEMEX S.A. B de C.V. (ADR) (NYSE: CX) closed at $38.88 up from $34.92: A gain of 11.34%. LaFarge (ADS) (NYSE: LR) closed at $43.23 from $39.02: A gain of 10.78%.

So far so good; 6 of the 6 stocks are up and 5 of the 6 beat the market indices and I have not included the dividends. Not bad after all.

Those of you who are new to BloggingStocks can check out my other stories and read Chasing Value or Serious Money to find more potential opportunities and verify my track record as well.

Disclosure: I own APC and ACH in several portfolios.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out his other posts for BloggingStocks here.

This is a follow-up on one of my favorite companies. By any measure I can come up with, the Aluminum Company of China Ltd. (ADS) (NYSE: ACH) -- sometimes referred to as Chalco -- is one of the best stock buying opportunities on planet earth, short of having insider information and not getting caught. The numbers are so good that it is driving me nuts trying to figure out how this or any company could be so under-valued. I already own it and advised my readers to jump in at $22 about two months ago (see Chasing value: Aluminum Corporation of China ADS). Those that did have seen over 50% growth in eight weeks. Not bad!

Well, I would like to buy more but there has not been much of a dip. When it went to $26 per share I thought I would buy more if it dipped to $24. You know the drill . . . it keeps staying just out of my reach because I want a deal, I want deep value. So yesterday it closed at $32.93 after reaching a high of just over $35 earlier in the month. So is now the right time?

I keep asking myself what is wrong with this picture? What is it that I do not see? If I buy more of this stock am I going to get broadsided by some accounting scandal? Have they been cooking the books? It is just not possible to be so cheap. When I was crowing about it before I thought it was a screaming steal at $22.98 and I was right. But looking at it today, it still seems like it is.

Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) has been doing some big time cogitating about the future. He plans to donate the lion's share of his wealth to the Gates Foundation. Recently, he said he was looking for an understudy with the right investing temperament and wisdom to lead Berkshire. There are reports that his office has been swamped with resumes. Some are reaching to the bottom of the barrel in suggesting that I seek an audience. Perhaps they were stimulated by another Serious Money: Freight Railroads - BNI, CSX, UNP & more story which I posted the day before Berkshire Hathaway announced it had become BNI's largest shareholder.

So with this and other prescient commentary I recently posted, I was asked to present some ideas on what acquisitions Berkshire might consider given Buffett's eagerness to find a good deal. It is likely that Buffett will bring several people on board to play the role of Chief Investment Officer for different segments of the company. Nobody in their right mind believes that Buffett is replaceable.

In any event here are some of my ideas on the subject. All of my ideas follow a pattern favored by Buffett including low P/E, P/S, P/B, and P/CF's, as well as a high return on equity and low debt.

The luckier I get in my stock picking the more people imagine I have some inside information. Not so, just a lot of effort and study of what works over the long haul. On Monday I wrote Chasing Value: Bear Stearns - cheap and growing and afterward in discussing the post with colleagues it occurred to me that Bear Stearns at $154 per share was a bit steep for investors with less capital or people wanting to invest for kids. So I decided to take a look at something easier to swallow.

I ran a stock screen with some very basic criteria and came up with 29 companies. I took out the financial institutions, and the riskier stocks and came up with three possibilities using the following criteria ranges:

• Price range: $5 to 15
• Price/Sales: 1.0 to 2.0
• Price/Book: 0.0 to 4.0
• Yield: 1% to 3%
• P/E Ratio: 10 to 25

How can you do better than a current price-to-book (P/B) value of less than 1.0? You can throw in a dividend yield of 4% that's how! Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK) has been rewarding investors for many years and is likely to continue to do so. Last year it had negative growth which may account for the equally negative sentiment that created this bargain but for value investors I do not see anything but prosperity ahead. You can find it in Chasing down 007 picks: Q1 is done - Valero is tops and the original review Duke Energy: Vote for this boring stock for 2007.

DUK's closing stock price Tuesday, April 10, 2007 was $20.83. It has a reasonable P/E ratio and a higher than average dividend yield.

• Dividend Yield: 4.04%
• Price-to-earnings ratio - P/E: 11.94

The P/S, P/B and P/CF are amazing - do you see what I see Warren?

• Price-to-sales ratio P/S: 1.59
• Price-to-book ratio - P/B: 0.98
• Price-to-cash-flow - P/CF: 8.16

The return-on-equity (ROE), return-on-assets (ROA), and return-on-invested capital (ROIC) are nothing special and reflect the down year they are coming out of, but the profit margin of 11.24% is very good and consistent.

Warren Buffett has said that you should invest in stocks as if you were buying a business. Would I want to own this business - absolutely! However, it is capitalized at just over $26 billion so I would come up a bit shy. I am likely to add to my current shares from time to time.

It also makes sense for those seeking a "defensive" stock to anchor your portfolio into retirement - just like I said about Johnson and Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) last week. And the two would be a great start to a new portfolio.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out his other posts for BloggingStocks here.

All I can say is if you want to improve at something seek out the best advice you can get and try to follow it. If I was studying golf and Tiger Woods was willing to coach me, that would be the best opportunity I could hope for. If I wanted to improve my jump shot and Kobe Bryant had some spare time to work with me, that would be fantastic.

Well, guess what, if you are an investor there is a wealth of information available, and you can learn from the best. The best is Warren Buffett and you should do what he does. That is what I have been trying to do. I have been discussing Buffett in many of my stories and reminding people that he is the master and if you are doing anything else you are missing the point. Sure Smush Parker is also a starting guard for the Los Angeles Lakers, and that is amazing because the odds of being a starting guard in the NBA are astronomically small, but I would rather learn from Kobe.

So you can quote anybody you want and search far and wide for opportunities, but if you consider yourself a shrewd investor and are not studying Buffett you are making a mistake.

This is an update through March 30, 2007 bringing the first quarter to a close. Earnings season is now upon us. It is my third follow-up report. Three months is a short time in the market for long term investors, and an eternity for a day trader. If you want to refer to the original article from December 28, 2006 see: You don't have to be 007 to find the best picks for 2007!.

Summary of Results:

• James Cramer's average return on his 9 picks was 2% after two months but now stands at: +2.82% an improvement. Adding the dividend portion (.66 x .25) of 0.165 brings Cramer's gain to 2.99%. Last month it was his speculative stocks that supported his gains. This month they pulled back and his gains came from his best pick so far, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)
• The Indexes remained slightly negative, the DJIA leading the way south: -1.2%. Adding it's portion of the dividend yield (1.8 x .25) of .45 brings it up to a gain of 0.85 for the quarter.
• My picks are down for the year, but improved from -1.9% last month, to a negative of -0.61% for the quarter. Adding the dividend portion of (3 x .25) of .75 brings my quarter to a slight gain of 0.14% which is negligible. My picks are the most volatile now with super gains over 25% from Valero Energy (NYSE:VLO) and super losses from PetroChina Co. (NYSE:PTR) which was at an all-time high when I mentioned it. Both companies are in the same industry, but PetroChina's profits are more closely regulated.
• Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) provided an +8.1% return in January, slipped to -2.9% in February and YTD has moved up for a smaller loss: -1.0% Although it has been an erratic three months Google has managed to float within a tighter range lately.

Not much change since last month. Since the quarter has concluded I added one quarter of the the dividends to the results. This is one of the criteria I used in my stock picks and will have an impact on the final results. Only 3 of Cramer's picks pay dividends averaging about .66%; the Indexes pay a higher average of 1.8%; my picks average still higher at about 3%; and Google does not pay a dividend. The flatter the market is this year the more the dividends will be a factor.

I still remain very comfortable with my stock picks and believe this year will prove to be a "Tortoise and Hare" story. It is my belief that 'Value' will beat 'Growth' and 'Indexing' over the long run. Google is a wild card! Two of my picks continue to be mentioned as buyout candidates; Dow Chemical Co. (NYSE: DOW) and Home Depot (NYSE:HD). Home Depot is receiving the most negative discussion in business circles these days but I see it as becoming a greater value at the lower price.

The following are the closing prices as of December 28, 2006 and three month returns for the seven stocks I recommended plus the addition of Spectra Energy that was spun out of Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK).

Anglo American plc (ADR) (NASDAQ: AAUK) is really a United Kingdom based company with no American history, although a long history it has. We are continuing our search for value stocks as we very methodically place new money in the market. Our first purchase was an old favorite: Washington Mutual, Inc. (NYSE:WM). We recently acquired it at $40 per share after following it down from $47. Yesterday, Georges Yared posted Washington Mutual: A ridiculously cheap pick in sub-prime panic and we agree with him totally....take a look at the depressed price, the 5.3% yield and more.

We like the Anglo American company and the stock for numerous reasons. It came to our attention initially because it has a 1.17 price-to-sales ratio (P/S), a price-to-book ratio of 1.29 (P/B), and a yield over 2%. To go along with those metrics it has been growing at 15% to 20% over the last few years as the world demand for gold and platinum has increased. You can check out the fundamentals at AOL Money & Finance as a starting point for your own research if you are interested.

Terrible market not hurting Valero Energy (NYSE: VLO) stock....looks bullet proof for now. Almost everything is going down but not Valero and even more interesting it still has very strong fundamentals after a 20% run-up this year. I own Valero and find that the story is still compelling. I may even buy more. As I write this post, the market is down and Valero is up.

Last month when I wrote Valero - everyone jumping on the bandwagon I was marveling about how this company seemed to be the darling of so many that it made me self-conscious to be part of the group. However, I had pegged VLO in my stock picks for 2007 months earlier: Valero Energy: Unbelievable value for 2007.

Since the China meltdown last week; and all the turbulence in world markets; and Greenspan and Bernanke comments; and this weeks recovery of half the losses ... I came back to my terminal after taking a break for a couple of days to find good news.

Since my post Chasing value: Aluminum Corporation of China ADS last week, (NYSE:ACH) has continued to recover and is now up considerably. Having a buy order in at a 20% discount to a bargain, execute, and go up after scooping me up and keep on going in a positive direction is delightful. REALITY CHECK: Yes It could dive again just as fast!

But there is a lesson here. Investors that do their own stock picking must have a watch list, be patient, and be willing to act on their predetermined evaluation no matter what dumb things happen in the market. ACH was a bargain at approximately $27 per share but I do not feel comfortable buying when a stock is at an all-time high. However, at $22 my buy order triggered and I picked up a bargain that closed today at $24.35. If I was a stock trader I would take my 11% profit in 4 days and run. As a buy-and-hold guy I'm keeping this one for the long haul. ACH has a 5.4% yield with a P/E of 8.4. If the stock goes nowhere the rest of the year. I will have a 16.4% return -- very nice, but I see the demand for aluminum in China continuing to increase for the next few decades and this stock as one of my best picks ever.

Read the story and check it out for yourself. Peace to all.

Check out my other posts for BloggingStocks here.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm.

So January 2007 is already history and this is my first follow-up report. I recognize that from an investment perspective it is almost meaningless to gain any insight into the quality of my stock selections after only one month.

In truth, even a year is an arbitrary length of time to know anything for sure. On one occasion I sold Boeing (NYSE: BA) after holding it about 18 months, shortly before its rise, when its new CEO exercised some ethically and morally 'poor secretarial judgment'. Then I watched the stock double in quick order.

If you want to refer to the original article from December 28, 2006 see: You don't have to be 007 to find the best picks for 2007!.

Summary of Results:

• Google provided an 8.1% return heading into reporting season. It has since slipped.
• James Cramer's average return on his 9 picks was 5.86% which was very good. There might be some Cramer bump but if there is it will fade and for now he has done great.
• The Indexes were all in positive territory.
• Liber return was slightly negative for January -0.55% held down by my inclusion of PetroChina. I cautioned about buying this stock at close to an all time high. However, for the purposes of this story I used that number as my starting point and believe it will be up this year.

After each quarter I will be adding the dividend yields to the results. This is one of the criteria I used in my stock picks and will have an impact on the final results.

Here are the closing prices as of December 28, 2006 of the seven stocks I recommended plus the addition of Spectra Energy that was spun out of Duke: