The list of stocks under consideration has been reduced from eleven to ten, to seven and now in today's story four. Starting with five major defense contractors and six major oil companies (see Chasing Value: You Must Own Defense and Oil for Safety), I began a search to find one stock in each sector that might be suitable for inclusion in my list of 2011 stock picks posted last week Chasing Value: 2011 Stock Picks -- The Journey Begin.

Today we continue our analysis by examining return on equity (ROE), return on invested capital (ROIC), and price-to-earnings-to-growth (PEG). Each stock is ranked by sector and metric from best to worst. Sometimes there are clear winners and others there is little to separate one stock from the next. However, in total, a picture can be drawn that does portray a superior opportunity.

Warren Buffet often jests about his boring investments. The eight companies we focus on at Blogging Stocks were chosen based on investor interest -- not because they are the best ten stocks to own.

In some ways that makes them the un-boring set. I started to wonder if they could be ranked by their "boring factor," and just for fun, decided to track them periodically to see how they do in this regard. Naturally this is quite subjective so I'll explain my rational with each ranking from most boring to the least. The share prices are from the Friday close, August 25, 2006. The price-to-earnings P/E ratios are trailing figures. Here are the Blogging Stocks eight:

• General Electric (GE) $33.84, P/E 21.52: GE is huge, slow, relatively stable and not getting anybody excited. It has now been unexciting for five years. Jack Welch's leaving, his retirement package and his wives providing most the news for GE. That may be an indicator that it is due for some excitement as it has continued to build shareholder equity. From the perspective of most boring, this would be the place to put your money.
• Wal-Mart (WMT) $43.88, P/E 16.00: Wal-Mart has almost been as unexciting as GE except that it has more law suits, employee and customer controversies and has been in the news everywhere it goes as it tries to open up new stores and new markets.
• Microsoft (MSFT) $25.85, P/E 21.49: I had to give some thought about about whether MSFT of TWX belonged in the third slot. Decided MSFT still has done little to get the market invigorated. Talk of buybacks, and Zune and Vista are big yawns right now and XBox still bleeding cash.
• Time Warner (TWX) $16.42, P/E 17.37: AOL constantly being in flux, Carl Icahn buying up shares and pushing the board to consider breaking up the company, the buy-out of Adelphia and the expansion of its cable assets -- all trumped MSFT to take the 4th slot.

Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Officer Richard Parsons blames the declining value in his company's stock (TWX) this year on "investor wariness of the media industry" while maintaining that the company "is clearly undervalued" (via Bloomberg). However, the relatively stronger performance of rivals such as Disney (DIS), tends to discredit this spin, as the Bloomberg piece also notes.

Yeah, kinda.

This while Time Warner continues to try and do damage control over report after report speculating over the possible outcomes of its rumored billion-dollar paradigm shift -- including lashing out at media for what the company claims are "erroneous reports" about the future of AOL.

Any change this large, to a business this large, was bound to break before company leaders would have wished it to. I expect the changeover from paid to free services will occur. It will certainly be anti-climatic if it doesn't, and information -- maybe the erroneous kind, especially -- that hurls toward critical mass like this story appears to, has a way of overtaking actual events. One way or another AOL is going to be a very different entity before summer is out.