Newsletter advisor and economist Mark Skousen recently had the opportunity of spending several hours with Warren Buffett.

The editor of Forecasts & Strategies explains, "I met with Buffett at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, where I teach economics at a four-year college degree program at the prison. Buffett's sister, Doris, is a major donor to the program and she invited him to attend the graduation ceremony.

This post is part of a special report, Top Picks for 2010, the 27th annual survey in which TheStockAdvisors.com asks the nation's leading advisors for their single favorite stock for the new year. See all 80 stocks listed here.

"Annaly Mortgage Management (NLY) is our favorite investment idea for 2010," says Jack Adamo.

In his Insiders Plus newsletter, he explains, "The company buys only Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds, all of which now have explicit U.S. government guarantees."

MFA Mortgage (NYSE: MFA) had a good trading session yesterday. A cool thing, since it's well off its recent highs. The stock closed yesterday at $7.01, having risen over 11%. What was the catalyst? Well, some bullish commentary from an analyst certainly helped out, but, for my money, the bigger news was the increase in the dividend. MFA announced a Q1 payout of $0.18 per share, which is 24% higher than the previous quarter's dividend.

This is exactly what I want to see. I'm figuring that, over time, MFA will be able to make more increases to its dividend as it benefits from further rate cuts by the Fed. Granted, MFA did choose to reduce its leverage profile, as I mentioned in a recent post. Nevertheless, this dividend increase, in my opinion, shows that this particular mREIT is a cut above many and worth holding for now. It's going to be a volatile ride, and I expect some profit-taking based on yesterday's action, especially considering the fact that the volume of shares traded wasn't overly high.

Two of my other mREIT investments, Newcastle Investment (NYSE: NCT) and CapitalSource (NYSE: CSE), also fared well in yesterday's session. Another mortgage entity I'm keeping my eye on, Annaly Mortgage (NYSE: NLY), had a good day as well. Let's hope the financials are finally stabling -- granted, many financials, such as MFA, are way off their 52-week highs, but I have to say, I liked the way the second quarter started, and I certainly enjoyed MFA's dividend change.

Disclosure: I own shares of MFA, MFA preferred, CapitalSource, and Newcastle Investment; positions can change at any time.

A mortgage lender stock? In this market?

Yes, if you can tolerate high risk, and Annaly Capital Management, Inc. (NYSE: NLY) is the company to consider.
Analysts believe Annaly Mortgage has taken the steps needed to position itself in the challenging and risky residential mortgage-backed securities market, with most analysts expecting earnings growth to accelerate in 2008. The Reuters FY 2007/FY 2008 EPS consensus estimates for NLY are $1.27 to $1.96

That's not to say that mortgage sector conditions will improve universally, but the point here is that NLY is in a decent position well before attitudes toward the industry are likely to change. In that sense, NLY is a 'get ahead of the pack' play, but it's only for high-risk investors.

For the most part, Annaly has realigned its portfolio to remove credit risk and has a business model that concentrates on managing interest rate and prepayment risk.

The First Call mean rating for NLY is: Buy [12 firms]. Mean 2008 target: $18.90 [high: $20, low: $18].

Stock Analysis: Annaly Mortgage is a high-risk investment not suitable for low-risk or moderate-risk investors. Sell/Stop Loss if you to purchase shares in this company: $9.

Disclosure: Lazzaro has no positions in stocks. In addition to private real estate holdings, he owns corporate and municipal bonds, and cash certificates of deposit.