Here are the next four of my 2011 picks. I am behind schedule, after publishing the first 5 earlier in the week (see: Chasing Value: 2011 Stock Picks -- 5 of 11). This year instead of starting completely anew, I am adjusting my 2010 picks. There is no sense in abandoning good ideas just because the calendar turned a page.

You will actually find support of running themes I have been writing about over the past few months. One of these is the idea of making a contrarian investment in a basket of stocks that have been both scalded and scolded in the headlines. Six stocks were included in such a group that I called the "toxic stocks" (see: Chasing Value: Toxic Stock Update #3 -- BAC, BP, C, GE, GS, RIG).

This is the fifth year that I am posting my stock picks for the year. There is a lot of foolishness in doing so because each year that I have made such suggestions, including 2009 when I owned all of the picks, it is assumed that I would hold all of the positions without responding to market conditions, or changes in the specific company. No adding to, or cutting a position. This is not the real world.

It is not possible for everything to remain static. For example, you might find that you hold a stock that made a great run through three quarters, beyond your wildest expectations, and decide it has passed a point where the metrics cannot support anything close to the price. Under normal circumstances you might sell it, except you cannot. By the end of the year the profit you might have realized fades away and you end up reporting on something that is not a true measure of your objective strategy. Nevertheless, once again I will stick with this approach because this seems to be how its done in every publication's annual picks. This year there are eleven.

The year 2010 has come and gone and my results are in. This is my fourth annual stock results to be reported on BlogginStocks, so something of a track record is starting to form. This past year ended with a modest improvement over the unmanaged Standard & Poors 500 index

The original story, Chasing Value: 10 Stock Picks for 2010, took readers through a review of many candidates, concluding with the ten picks, using prices from Dec. 28, 2009.

So, last month, I sold out of my long-term General Electric Company (GE) position. I didn't really want to do it, but sometimes you have to make tough money-management decisions.

Why did I sell out? Well, we're all playing the tax game right about now, am I correct? I had some gains to offset, so I took a hard look at my portfolio to see what I might be able to do to reduce the burden that my profit implied.

Diversified industrial giant General Electric (GE), first discussed here on June 2, 2009, at a price of $13.80, continues to put the summer's bottom at/near $13.75 behind it, with the shares vectoring toward $20, and I obviously still like the stock at this juncture.

Look for GE's energy infrastructure, consumer/industrial, technology units to post revenue increases in 201q, boosted by both emerging market and developed-world demand and order increases. GE should record impressive gains in oil and gas products, health care imaging, and airplane engines. Meanwhile, losses at GE Capital Finance should decline in 2011, as it did it in 2010.

Could a stock that you made 1,100% on still have room to run? Yes, it is possible. In particular if it had a near death experience as a penny stock for a while.

That is the case with Newcastle Investments (NCT), the CMBS lender and real estate investment company that reached a recent high of $7.10 and has settled back down, most recently hovering between $6.70 to $7.00. It closed Thursday December 23 at $6.71.

Little Fockers, the comedy sequel starring Ben Stiller and Robert DeNiro, distributed by General Electric's (GE) Universal Pictures, came in first this past weekend. According to early estimates over at Box Office Mojo, the film made $34 million for the Friday-through-Sunday frame (it opened last Wednesday, so its total is now approaching $50 million).

That easily beat the other new movie in the marketplace, Viacom's (VIA.B) True Grit. This one stars Jeff Bridges and was directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Grit was second with roughly $25 million. It also opened last Wednesday; it has so far captured over $36 million.

To paraphrase Mark Twain "The reports of our death are greatly exaggerated". The world economy has been in shambles for a few years now, and our nation has much work ahead of it. 2010 was an improvement over 2009 and I believe 2011 will show further improvement.

There are lots of ideas running through my mind as I consider where the economy might be heading in 2011. What opportunities lay in front of us waiting to be picked up or passed over? Just five trading days left, and market activity will slow down except among fund managers making adjustments for tax purposes or window dressing. You should examine your tax situation, too.

GE (GE) definitely wanted Wellstream Holdings, which is a UK-based provider of energy equipment. At first the company made a $1.19 billion bid and it was swiftly rejected. So the next step was a more amenable offer: $1.3 billion.

GE had no choice. Wellstream is a hot property and attracted bids from a variety of other strategic buyers.

Why all the interest? Wellstream develops equipment for deep-sea oil exploration. True, in light of BP's (BP) oil spill, this business is in flux. Yet the fact remains that the world needs to find new sources of oil. Besides, the oil spill will put more emphasis on premium equipment offerings.

In the middle of the summer with the stock market smoldering from the economic aftershocks of the BP (BP) oil spill, I decided to post a contrarian story emphasizing a very common refrain among value investors, "my pal Warren" being head of the class: buy on fear (sell on greed). This notion is continuing to work for what I called the toxic stock portfolio.

This is the third update to my ranting five months ago that six of the most reviled and most highly traded stocks featured by daily bad press as a group would outperform the overall market. It has, with the big winner rising from being one of the biggest losers.

Nobody knows what the future holds. But there are a few things shaping up that suggest certain things will most likely happen. Here are some of the major ones.

Interest Rates: Low at the beginning of the year, then headed higher for a long time. If you have an adjustable rate mortgage and you're still paying it, it's the perfect time to get it refinanced, if you can qualify. Interest rates are definitely going up; it's just a matter of when. As long as the Fed is pumping money in (QE2 is targeted with $800 billion .... with the possibility of more behind it), rates will stay low, unless investors think inflation will get way out of hand. Then rates will go higher no matter what the Fed does as investors sell longer term bonds to beat the coming inflation. Initially, rising interest rates will be bullish as they are a precursor to a healthy economy. But that bull will morph and become a bear when rates start jumping as the Fed tries to get ahead of inflation. Tricky business. Investors will do well to have floating rate assets and fixed rate liabilities.

Beckman Coulter (BEC), a top medical diagnostic instruments company, has been public over 20 years. But it looks like its days of independence may soon be over. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Beckman is in the process of selling itself. So far in today's trading, the shares are up 27% to $72.57, with the market cap at about $5 billion.

Beckman's products span many categories like biomedical testing and lab automation. The installed base is roughly 200,000. In fact, a large portion of the revenues come from recurring sources (such as refilling supplies for the machines). In other words, Beckman has sturdy cash flow stream.

General Electric Company (GE) is promoting a new standard in LED lighting for consumer use. Although the new LED technology from GE may be expensive for now, the company could be, once more, changing how the world looks at light bulbs.

According to GE, this new LED technology produces a quality of light similar to that of the old incandescent light bulbs, but which is so efficient it has been awarded Energy Star designation. No other similar LED light bulb has yet accomplished that. Better yet, the new GE LED bulbs contain none of the harmful lead which makes today's compact florescent light bulbs rather undesirable.

Economists and public policy professionals, among others who closely follow the economy, often get asked questions at dinner parties about where the U.S. economy is headed.

Many who ask know a great deal about their own line of work, of course, but often don't know much about the U.S. economy's overall performance, and that's not surprising, given our busy, time-pressured lives these days.

One short-hand I offer those who who don't have the time to review the U.S. Federal Reserve's Beige Book data or the U.S. Labor Department's jobs report, is to keep an eye on General Electric Company's (GE) operational performance, and, by extension, its stock performance.

DreamWorks Animation's (DWA) Megamind movie didn't have such a great debut last weekend, in my opinion. This weekend, however, I have to give it at least some credit: It once again captured the top spot at domestic theaters. Box Office Mojo says that the project made $29 million from Friday through Sunday, bringing the total gross so far to nearly $89 million.

Don't expect me to jump up and down for joy, though -- and I highly doubt shareholders of the studio are happy that the film didn't at least crack the $100 million mark by this point.