This post is part of a special annual report -- Top Stock Picks '09 -- in which TheStockAdvisors.com asked 75 leading newsletter advisors to select their favorite investment for the new year.

"An excellent idea for 2009 is PowerShares Value Line Industry Rotation (NYSE: PYH), says growth stock expert Tom Bishop.

In his BI Research newsletter, the advisor explains, "The fund only buys stocks that earn Value Line's top rating. For years, I have sought an easy way to invest in the Value Line stocks ranked 1, and now, here it is.

"If you look at the top 10 worst declines in the stock market back to the depression, these averaged 43%, with a median of 40% and makes the current bear market the second worst on record.

"And the average rebound in the 12 months following the low point? A whopping 55.6%. We may have hit that low point on November 20th. Only time will tell, but I have noticed that while the bad news keeps pouring in, the market is now up about 20% since then despite it. This is a possible sign that we have hit bottom.

"I am recommending PowerShares Value Line Industry Rotation, which is comprised of 75 stocks ranked 1 by Value Line, restricted to its top 50 ranked industries, with two in each of the top 25 industries.

Last weekend I was cleaning out a box of long-forgotten business research documents and notebooks that have travelled around with me from office to office over the years from Houston to Copenhagen, back to Houston, to Chicago, and ultimately back to Houston. As a broker and portfolio advisor in Denmark in part of 1995 and almost all of 1996, AOL was a company we either directly had accounts in, or, if not, we at least had to refer to it as "the" company to emulate when doing comparative analysis.

I found a Value Line research report from June 7, 1996, just over 10 years ago. Back then, AOL was not only independent, but it was not even listed on the NYSE -- the stock traded as AMER on NASDAQ. It was priced then at $54 and it had already had three two-for-one stock splits. Its market cap was deemed quite lofty at some $5.1 billion.

At that time you had to close your eyes if you were an investor because you almost never got to see the stock pull back that much. If it ever "went on sale" with more than a 10% correction, everyone piled in because they knew AOL was a beast.