The clock is ticking away the time before the year ends and I have only begun to sort out the possibilities. In Part 1 of this series, I discussed breaking up my potential picks into three categories: contender, on the fence, and out of the running until the 10 stocks have been identified.

Four contenders have been considered so far: American Eagle Outfitters (AEO), Anadarko Petroleum (APC), Anglo American ADR (AAUKY) and Diageo plc (DEO).

Six more are included in today's review: EZCorp Inc. (EZPW), General Electric Company (GE), Wells Fargo & Company (WFC), Annaly Capital Management ( NLY), Intuitive Surgical Inc (ISRG) plus Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B). These include the remaining five from 2009 and one more familiar to most investors.

Yesterday it was announced very loudly that "my pal Warren" was going to acquire the 77.4% of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (NYSE: BNI) railroad, that Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) does not already own, for $100 per share, offering about a $24 premium to Mondays closing price.

Talk about putting your money where your mouth is -- yikes! Buffett has gone all in, betting the economy is healing, and silencing anyone that questioned his integrity or motives for cautious optimism saying it was all talk!

If you are not reading the commentary we receive then you are missing some gems. One of our regulars reminded me of something "my pal Warren" said: "... find companies which can be run by idiots because sooner or later an idiot will be running it."

In Buffett's case he can actually call them up and talk to them. In many cases, he could probably get them to resign. For most of us, all we know is basic things like how's the stock price or has the idiot been indicted?

Despite us being on the heels of the big Russell indexes changing and despite the quarter-end being a day away, this was a boring day. A study showed a small decrease in online job advertisements, but that was the only item on the economic front. Oil traded higher and bond yields came down as traders are voting for more stability the rest of the year there.

Here are today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 8,531.19 +92.80 (1.10%)
S&P 500 927.18 +8.28 (0.90%)
Nasdaq 1,843.34 +5.12 (0.28%)

Top Analyst Calls

Long-term growth stock expert Alexander Green sees long-term upside potential for conservative investors willing to invest along side of Warren Buffett.

Here, the investment director of The Oxford Club reviews Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B), a holding in his model portfolio.

"The market surprised investors with the magnitude of its drop over the last year and a half. Then it surprised them again with a furious rally that began in early March.

"What lies just ahead? No one knows for sure, of course. But we do know several investments that are attractively priced at current levels, such as Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B), a conservative choice, run by investment great Warren Buffett.

This is a follow-up on the short term results comparing the Williams Companies Inc. (NYSE: WMB) to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) , Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.B).

I wrote a series of stories about why I thought WMB would outperform the other more popular stocks and two weeks is not much of a test unless you have been trading on my suggestions instead of investing.

The final post was Serious Money: Better than Apple, Google, Microsoft & Berkshire Hathaway, Part 5 if anyone cares to go back and review that.

"Though the past year has been tough for Warren Buffett, we still like Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B), which we believe is well-positioned for the year ahead," says Paul Tracy.

In his StreetAuthority Market Advisor, he looks at the holding company which is a position in his "undervalued gems" model portfolio. Here's his review.

"For only the second time in the investment-based company's 44 years, Buffett saw the book value of Berkshire drop. Of course his book value decline of 9.6% should be put in context with the 37% loss incurred by the S&P 500.

In what surely must be the PR move of the decade, Moody's Corp. (NYSE: MCO) has downgraded Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) from AAA to AA2.

Why is this a great PR move? Well, Berkshire owns 20% of Moody's. And what could be a better demonstration of Moody's independence and objectivity than its decision to downgrade the financial strength of its biggest shareholder?

Pretty clever, no? Sure -- unless you start to consider that Moody's and the other ratings agencies gorged on fees from investment banks to rate toxic waste for years -- using their AAA credit ratings to convince investors to buy the securities. Now that the ratings agencies have no fees to earn from rating toxic waste, they are studiously trying to rebuild their reputation for objectivity.

Heading into the week's end, we find that the ground under Wall Street has shifted a little. For at least one week this year, investors have looked at the glass as half full, lending some support to a story I posted earlier in the week: Is the stock market spring loaded? Could it move 3,000 points higher now?

Given that there was plenty of bad news, and some of the good news was suspect, I think investors simply decided "it is better to light one small candle than curse the darkness."

With the stock market hovering around a 12-year low, Warren Buffett is back on the hunt for U.S. acquisitions.

The Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) mogul told Bloomberg that the depressed U.S. market and lack of cash available to fund deals is making the domestic market attractive in a way that it hadn't been in years. "The way things are going, there's a lot of things that may be happening in the United States," he said.

Buffett has already made preferred stock and convertible bond deals with a number of distressed companies with strong long-term prospects, taking fat yields along with a chance to profit from turnarounds. Buffett also told Bloomberg that his GEICO business is doing well as cost-conscious consumers look for better deals on car insurance, but added that Berkshire's other consumer-oriented companies are flailing along with the broader economy.

One of our reader's who blesses us with frequent comment's, B. Harrison, left the following tidbit for us recently (responding to: Buffett suffers big losses at Berkshire Hathaway) and I thought I would share it because this sentiment comes to us frequently.

• "And the American people are simply apathetically sitting back while our CORRUPT Congress who enabled and allowed all of the corporate FRAUDS, continues to allow the CORRUPT CEOs and Boards of Directors run those corporations, and to keep their ill gotten "weath" that they amassed while mismanaging the corporations, and orchestrating and perpetuating all of those FRAUDS."

I do not agree that the American people are "apathetically sitting back".... They are voicing their opinions on the web, in letters and emails to their representatives, they take to the streets and protest, they sell the stock of poorly run companies and file class action suits. The truth is that they are frustrated because our representatives have an unwavering singular focus, and that is to sustain themselves in office. Nothing takes a higher priority then that; it's called political self preservation.

With the economy in "shambles," Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) spent a good chunk of last year cutting jobs. Not including the company's acquisition of Marmon Holdings, Berkshire shrunk its number of employees by 2% during 2008.

Among the hardest hit subsidiaries were Clayton Homes and Shaw Industries, which cut their workforces by 16% and 6.2% respectively. Buffett gives the executives in charge of the operating companies tremendous autonomy over their operations, so it's entirely possible that he personally had no role in the decision to cut staff.

The plight of the US and global economy, and how it touches everyone, has most people believing we are in for a long drawn out period of sluggish growth, and that a lot of pain is still to come. For most companies and individuals this means they can not obtain enough liquidity, reduce debt or increase their net cash positions fast enough.

In reading recent stories that Warren Buffett continues to increase his stake in Burlington Northern Santa Fe (NYSE: BNI) -- now standing at 22.4% -- I started to wonder if some day the name might be changed to "Berkshire" Northern Santa Fe RR?

'My pal Warren' is no doubt looking long term, and for most of the past two years has been up on Berkshire Hathaway's (NYSE: BRK.A) BNI investment. However that is not the case today as his most recent purchase at $75.00 per share (not bought in the open market) is under water; the shares closed at $66.04, down 12%. He is losing even more on his average purchase price.

The honeymoon between Warren Buffett and the biographer he allowed access to his personal records has ended. For more than a decade, each Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) annual meeting has included a question and answer session between Alice Schroeder and the Oracle of Omaha.

The event -- held as a dinner at a local country club has been canceled, "apparently because of his displeasure with some aspects of Ms. Schroeder's 960-page encyclopedic best seller about his life," according to The New York Times.

Buffett and Schroeder deny any particular rift and say that they still do communicate, though with less frequency because the work on the book is finished.

If Buffett is concerned about the public knowing intimate details of his life, he shouldn't be. The book has sold a lot of copies but at 976 pages, it's doubtful that the majority of buyers ever actually read it.