Last week, Warren Buffett, Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A and BRK.B), said India's 26% foreign ownership cap on insurers deters him from such an investment. This follows an earlier report that Buffett aims to enter the Indian insurance sector as a corporate agent of Bajaj Allianz General Insurance.

After numerous world calamities, Buffett's focus on insurance companies, and the fact that many hedge funds seem to be heavily focused on banks and neglecting insurance companies -- with the exception of Bruce Berkowitz -- I decided to explore the possibilities.

Even though we can anticipate billions of dollars in claims there still are buying opportunites.

Do you have any interest in insurance companies amidst the turmoil, disaster and current crises in Japan? A crises that followed so closely on the heals of the destruction of the New Zealand city of ChristChurch by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake. Perhaps you think this is even a poorer idea than catching that proverbial falling knife we are always hearing about when stock prices are collapsing.

Certainly there will be billions of dollars in claims. On the other hand, perhaps the burden will be spread around the globe to reinsurer's such that none is struck too hard and this is a buying opportunity. After all, when the dust settles, insurers will cry for mercy, and in particular, rate increases. It is also likely those that never saw the need for insurance have been awakened and demand will increase.

Although many stocks are at or near 52-week highs and the bargains are getting harder to come by, they still can be found with only a modest amount of effort. One such opportunity may be Molson Coors Brewing Company (TAP).

The closing price for the stock on Tuesday April 6 was $42.89. The 52-week high of $51.33 was reached mid October 2009 -- six months ago. At a time when many stocks are at or near their 52-weeks highs, TAP is trading at a 20% discount.

The first quarter of 2010 is closed and the results are in. My picks surpassed the primary indices by a large margin. The original story, Chasing Value: 10 Stock Picks for 2010 , was the culmination of a process presented to our readers and finally narrowed down to the select group using final prices from Monday, December 28, 2009.

For comparison I tracked the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the NASDAQ. Each of these produced positive results for the quarter.

In the U.S. alone, insurance companies hold more than $2.2 trillion in corporate debt, having spent 2009 buying bonds at a faster rate than it had in the past five years. As Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) put it, the market was "raining gold." Net purchases of corporate bonds by the U.S. insurance industry jumped to $153 billion last year, most of it in the first quarter, when yields were highest. In 2008, outflows reached $59 billion. In 2004, inflows hit $172 billion.

According to Judy Greffin, Allstate's (ALL) chief investment officer, tells Bloomberg News, "It has paid off very nicely," as evidenced by the 20% growth in Allstate's corporate debt holdings last year, which reached $33.1 billion. She continues, "With the benefit of hindsight, I would have loved to have bought more." Likewise, Buffett indicated that he should have invested more. MetLife (MET) and Prudential Financial (PRU) also benefited from the corporate debt rally, which has helped them recover much of the capital lost from the financial crisis of September 2008.

Berkshire Hathaway Class B (BRK.B - option chain) shares are are on the move today after Standard & Poor's announced that the stock will be added to its benchmark S&P 500 index, replacing Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNI), which will be acquired by Berkshire. BRK.B will also be added to the S&P 100. If you think that the stock won't fall by too much in the coming months, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on BRK.B, which is now possible with the recent 50:1 stock split.

BRK.B opened this morning at $73.28. So far today the stock has hit a low of $70.82 and a high of $73.28. As of 12:00, BRK.B is trading at $71.08 up $3.09 (4.5%). The chart for BRK.B looks bullish.

The financial world was rocked, more or less, when Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) recently announced a plan to split its B shares -- billionaire investor Warren Buffett, the company's chairman and CEO, famously refused to split the stock for years. (In fact, the A shares are still trading in six-digit territory, upwards of $100,000 apiece.)

On Monday, option players didn't hesitate to express their reservations about the stock split. During the course of the session, speculators on the International Securities Exchange (ISE) bought to open 4,736 puts on BRK.B, compared to just 2,559 calls. The single-day put/call volume ratio arrived at 1.85, with bearish bets nearly doubling their bullish counterparts.

During my tenure at BloggingStocks I have expressed my opinion often about the contribution that dividends make to your overall return. Most shrewd investors, and especially "my pal Warren," know this and understand why I re-emphasize the point when I make my annual selections.

By now I hope you have had a chance to peruse my picks for 2010. If not the links below will give you another opportunity.

The first four picks were all from the contenders list, but here I reach back to earlier in the year, when in May, I wrote about why I thought Williams Companies Inc. (WMB) would outperform four other, more popular stocks.

I compared it to Apple Inc. (AAPL), Google Inc. (GOOG), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.B).

During the past seven months this turned out to be true for half the period, but Apple came on strong and passed it by the second review.

This year's selections do not seem to offer the same dividend opportunities of years past and my first three choices have none at all. That changes with this pick. Home Depot (HD) is distributing a 3.09% yield.

It's getting tiring to relate the demise of various companies to the residential market collapse, high unemployment and so forth, but certainly this company has been greatly affected. In addition, Home Depot was already struggling to recover from a "me first" CEO who happened to be forced out with the small stipend of $200 million, leaving behind shabby stores with questionable customer service while at the same time facing strong competition from Lowe's Cos (LOW).

Where as my fist pick, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) is a large cap diversified conglomerate, my second, Grubb & Ellis Co. (GBE), is a micro-cap stock of $90 million.

GBE is a network of nearly 130 owned and affiliated offices, providing commercial real estate services to property owners, institutional investors, and tenants. Its 1,800 brokers and some 6,000 affiliated real estate professionals offer advisory and brokerage, property management, construction consultation, and other services.

The company has been devastated by the bursting of the residential real estate market bubble, lost equity value, illiquid capital markets and the still impending concern over the commercial real estate market facing rising vacancies as hundreds of billions of dollars in loans must be rolled over.

If there ever was a stock that was hiding in plain sight, it is that of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) which is capitalized at a tad over $150 billion and run by "my pal Warren" and his pal Charlie. That's Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, perhaps the most successful investors in five generations.

Berkshire Hathaway, a textile mill, was Buffett's first turn-around play. He was successful and started generating significant amounts of free cash-flow that allowed him to invest in other things. Those investments also paid off and eventually the original enterprise became the namesake of today's diversified giant holding company.

I selected BRK.B for numerous reasons and believe it will easily beat the market next year as has been it's history.

To arrive at this years ten picks I scoured business journals and editorials, online and off. I also ran through a series of stock screens repeatedly over the last few months filtering for five primary value metrics identifying stocks worthy of further consideration.

The 5 data points were price-to-sales (P/S), price-to-book (P/B), price-to-cash flow (P/CF), dividend yield and return-on-equity (ROE). I did look at other things but these were the subject of my initial focus.

American International Group (AIG) is holding onto its property/casualty division for a while. It originally planned to unload 20% of Chartis (formerly named AIU) via an initial public offering or through a private transaction involving institutional investors.

But CEO Robert Benmosche is concerned that he'd be giving up the operating unit at discount prices. Selling cheap to repay the government won't benefit anybody – not even taxpayers – so he's waiting until an appropriate price can be fetched.

Is it time to take a bite out of Apple, Inc (AAPL) or leave it on the vine? After reviewing the current list by examining the stock yields and price-to-cash flow (P/CF) we will take a look at Apple for 2010.

Yesterday I dropped two stocks, but the list is still too long. In the coming weeks there will be more cuts and if I find anything of more value perhaps there will be something new.