Hot Managed Healthcare Companies To Invest In 2014

John Lekas, CEO, and Scott Carmack, Co-Portfolio Manager, Leader Capital Corp.

John Lekas: Our firm is a hundred percent focused on fixed income securities.  We are not going to veer off into the equity sector like PIMCO and DoubleLine, some of our competitors, have done.  We intend to stay focused on fixed income because we believe that that focus leads to better results for shareholders and investors in general.

Wally Forbes: John, are your funds geared to individuals as buyers or to institutions as buyers ��or both?

Lekas: Both.  We��e got a $2,500 minimum for individuals.  And then we have a $2 million minimum for institutional investors.  And the difference there depends on the share class you buy.  So that shouldn�� preclude anybody from investing.  I think that one of the reasons we��e been very successful in the last couple of years is our propensity towards corporate bonds only.  The events in Europe told us that governments were a bad bet in general.

Hot Managed Healthcare Companies To Invest In 2014: France Telecom S.A.(FTE)

France Telecom provides fixed telephony and mobile telecommunications, data transmission, Internet and multimedia, and other value-added services to consumers, businesses, and telecommunications operators. It also offers personal and home communication services, business network services, international carriers and shared services, and integration and outsourcing services for communication applications. The company operates in France, Spain, Poland, the United Kingdom, and internationally. France Telecom was founded in 1990 and is based in Paris, France.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Sofia Horta e Costa]

  Barclays Plc (BARC) fell to a one-month low as Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. sold a stake in the lender. Fiat SpA lost 6.5 percent as Chrysler Group LLC went in for a vehicle recall. France Telecom SA (FTE) rose after its Orange Business Services unit won a five-year deal to deploy a private network for Heineken NV. Johnson Matthey Plc (JMAT) jumped to its highest price in at least 23 years after posting full-year profit that beat estimates.

Hot Managed Healthcare Companies To Invest In 2014: Blue Note Mining (BNT.V)

Blue Note Mining Inc. engages in the acquisition, exploration, and development of mineral properties in Canada. It primarily explores for gold, base metals, and precious metals. The company primarily has interests in the Croinor gold project consisting of a mining lease of 90 hectares located east of Val-d�Or, Qu茅bec. It also holds interests in various gold exploration properties located in the Val-d�Or area, Quebec; and mining leases on the Sturgeon Lake property located in Ontario. The company was formerly known as Blue Note Metals Inc. and changed its name to Blue Note Mining Inc. in October 2006. Blue Note Mining Inc. is headquartered in Montreal, Canada.

Top 10 Value Stocks For 2015: MineFinders Corp. Ltd.(MFN)

Minefinders Corporation Ltd. engages in the exploration, development, and mining of precious and base metal properties. The company?s principal project includes the Dolores gold and silver mine, which consists of 7 claims in 3 concessions totaling an area of 27,700 hectares, located in the Madera Mining District in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. It also has property interests in Sonora, Mexico; and in Nevada and Arizona, the United States. The company was formerly known as Twentieth Century Explorations Inc. and changed its name to Minefinders Corporation Ltd. in May 1979. Minefinders Corporation Ltd. was founded in 1975 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.

Hot Managed Healthcare Companies To Invest In 2014: Ibio Inc (IBIO.A)

iBio, Inc. (iBio), incorporated on April 17, 2008, is a biotechnology company focused on commercializing its technologies, the iBioLaunch platform for vaccines and therapeutic proteins, as well as the iBioModulator platform for vaccine enhancement. Vaccine candidates on its platform are applicable to newly emerging strains of hemagglutinin type 1 and neuraminidase type 1 (H1N1), swine-like influenza, hemagglutinin type 5 and neuraminidase type 1 (H5N1) avian influenza, yellow fever, and anthrax. The Company licenses or otherwise grants use rights to government and non-governmental organization (NGO) entities for not-for-profit applications of the intellectual property for the development or application for which they granted or were granted funding, and to Fraunhofer USA, Inc. (FhCMB) for research purposes and applications in other fields.

The Company�� platform technology is referred to as iBioLaunch technology or the iBioLaunch platform, and the categor y of this technology is referred to as plant-based technology or as a plant-based platform. The Company has exclusive control over, and the rights to ownership of, the intellectual property related to all human health and veterinary influenza applications of the plant-based technology developed by FhCMB. Its property consists of the technology platform pursuant, to which hydroponically grown green plants can be used for the accelerated development and manufacture of high-value proteins of interest as candidate therapeutic products and vaccines applicable to a range of disease agents, such as influenza, sleeping sickness, anthrax, plague, human papillomavirus (HPV), and veterinary influenza applications.

Through FhCMB and their funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, it is developing vaccine candidates targeting pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) viruses based upon the iBioLaunch platform. These candidates have demonstrated immunogenicity and have been s uccessfully tested in mice and ferrets for protective effi! ca! cy. Like its candidate vaccines for seasonal influenza, its candidate vaccines for avian influenza are subunit vaccines. iBio has commercial rights to vaccine candidates developed pursuant to its business structure based on fusing a protein component of HPV called the E7 antigen, to the LicKM protein of the bacterium Clostridium thermocellum. It has commercial rights to an oral anthrax booster vaccine candidate developed by FhCMB in collaboration with the Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC).

Hot Managed Healthcare Companies To Invest In 2014: Amarantus Bioscience Holdings Inc (AMBS.PK)

Amarantus BioScience Holdings, Inc., formerly Amarantus BioSciences, Inc., incorporated on March 22, 2013, is focuses on developing intellectual property and proprietary technology in order to develop drug candidates and diagnostic blood tests to diagnose and treat human diseases. The Company owns the intellectual property rights to a therapeutic protein known as Mesencephalic-Astrocyte-derived Neurotrophic Factor (MANF), owns the intellectual property rights to biomarkers related to oncology and neurodegeneration named BC-SeraPro and NuroPro respectively, has a license to an Alzheimer�� disease blood test named LymPro, and owns a number of proprietary cell lines called PhenoGuard. MANF was the first therapeutic protein discovered from a PhenoGuard Cell Line. In December 2012, the Company acquired neurodegenerative diagnostic portfolio from Power3 Medical Products. On March 22, 2013, the Company was merged with into Amarantus Bioscience Inc.

The Company a lso owns an inventory of 88 cell lines that Amarantus refers to as PhenoGuard Cell Lines. MANF is a protein that corrects protein misfolding. The Company�� MANF product development effort is centered on a therapy for Parkinson�� disease.

Hot Managed Healthcare Companies To Invest In 2014: National Research Corporation(NRCI)

National Research Corporation provides performance measurement and improvement services, healthcare analytics, and governance education to the healthcare industry in the United States and Canada. The company?s services include data collection, best practice identification, and delivery of value-added business intelligence. Its performance measurement and improvement services enable its clients to collect, analyze, and utilize meaningful business intelligence to improve performance relative to satisfaction, quality, cost, clinical outcomes, and other key performance metrics; Web-based electronic delivery systems provide clients the ability to review results and reports online, independently analyze data, query data sets, customize various reports, and distribute reports electronically; and business intelligence solutions provide clients with current key metric results, as well as best practice benchmarking information. The company also provides assessments, including consu mer quality perceptions, product-line preferences, service use, and visit satisfaction for approximately 4,900 hospitals and health systems. In addition, it offers subscription-based governance education services to the boards of directors and medical leadership of hospital and healthcare systems. The company provides information regarding organization governance, as well as emerging healthcare issues through online content, publications, periodicals, reference books, and associated videos through its resource catalog; and produces various executive healthcare leadership conferences. It primarily serves senior care profession and home health markets. National Research Corporation was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Hot Managed Healthcare Companies To Invest In 2014: Zillow Inc (Z.O)

Zillow, Inc. (Zillow), incorporated on December 13, 2004, is a real estate and home-related information marketplaces. Zillow provides products and services to help consumers through every stage of homeownership buying, selling, renting, borrowing and remodeling. The Company make home-related decisions, and enabling homeowners, buyers, sellers and renters to find and connect with local professionals. Individuals and businesses that use Zillow have updated information on more than 37 million homes and have added nearly 100 million home photos. These profiles include detailed information about homes such as property facts, listing information, and purchase and sale data. In June 2012, the Company acquired RentJuice Corporation. In October 2012, the Company acquired Buyfolio, an online and mobile collaborative shopping platform. In December 2012, the Company acquired San Francisco-based HotPads, a map-based rental and real estate search site.

Zillow generates r evenues from local real estate professionals, primarily on an individual subscription basis, and from mortgage professionals and brand advertisers. The Company�� revenues include marketplace revenues, consisting of subscriptions sold to real estate agents and advertising sold on a cost per click (CPC) basis to mortgage lenders, and display revenues consisting of advertising placements sold primarily on a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) basis. The Company provides current home value estimates, or Zestimates, and current rental price estimates, or Rent Zestimates, on approximately 100 million United States homes.

Marketplace Revenues

Marketplace revenues consist of subscriptions sold to real estate agents under its Premier Agent program and CPC advertising related to the Company�� Zillow Mortgage Marketplace sold to mortgage lenders. The Company�� premier agent program offers a suite of marketing and business technology solutions to help re al estate agents grow their businesses and personal brands! . ! The premier agent program allows agents to select products and services that they can tailor to meet their business and advertising needs. In Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, participating qualified mortgage lenders make a prepayment to gain access to consumers interested in connecting with mortgage professionals. Consumers who request rates for mortgage loans in Zillow Mortgage Marketplace are presented with personalized lender quotes from participating lenders. The Company charges mortgage lenders a fee when users click on their links for more information regarding a mortgage loan quote. Mortgage lenders who exhaust their initial prepayment can then prepay additional funds to continue to participate in the marketplace.

Display Revenues

Display revenues primarily consist of graphical Web and mobile advertising sold on a CPM basis to advertisers primarily in the real estate industry, including real estate brokerages, home builders, mortgage lenders and home services providers. The Company�� advertising customers also include telecommunications, automotive, insurance and consumer products companies.

Hot Managed Healthcare Companies To Invest In 2014: American Express Company(AXP)

American Express Company, together with its subsidiaries, provides charge and credit payment card products, and travel-related services worldwide. The company?s product portfolio consists of charge and credit card products; expense management products and services; consumer and business travel services; stored value cards, including travelers cheques and other prepaid products; network services; merchant acquisition and processing, point-of-sale, servicing and settlement, and marketing and information products and services for merchants; and fee services comprising market and trend analyses and related consulting services, fraud prevention services, and the design of customer loyalty and rewards programs. In addition, it publishes luxury lifestyle magazines; business and travel resources; general interest, cooking, travel, wine, cocktail, financial, and time management books; and international and electronic editions. The company sells its products and services to consumer s, small businesses, mid-sized companies, and large corporations through direct mail, on-line applications, targeted direct and third-party sales forces, and direct response advertising worldwide. American Express Company was founded in 1850 and is headquartered in New York, New York.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By John Divine]

  Piggybacking on the financial rally was American Express (NYSE: AXP  ) , which ended as the second-biggest blue chip gainer, adding 2.5%. Today's advances bring the credit card giant's year-to-date returns to nearly 25%, and the stock reached 52-week intraday highs today. Apart from the rally in financials, which were up 1.5% Tuesday, there wasn't much to report.��

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  The scope of Visa's business is truly astonishing. In the first quarter, Visa topped the $1.6 trillion mark in total dollar volume, staying ahead of the surging MasterCard (NYSE: MA  ) with its faster 12% dollar-volume growth rate bringing it to almost $950 billion. That keeps the pair comfortably ahead of American Express (NYSE: AXP  ) , which gets a big portion of its revenue not from payment processing but from taking on credit risk associated with actually issuing its own cards. Visa had 2.1 billion cards with its logo as of the end of 2012, beating out its rivals on that score as well.

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  But JPMorgan has had to deal with plenty of distractions during the quarter. A California lawsuit alleged that the bank once again used robo-signing tactics, this time to try to collect debt from credit card customers. Card giants Citigroup (NYSE: C  ) and American Express (NYSE: AXP  ) are likely to face similar charges, but the fact that the California attorney general chose to go after JPMorgan first suggests that the AG's office believes it has a better case against JPMorgan than its peers. In addition, although Jamie Dimon survived his vote of confidence, it nevertheless took attention away from the business of dealing with tough banking conditions.

• [By Matt Thalman]

  The big losers
  The worst-performing Dow component of the week was American Express (NYSE: AXP  ) , which lost 5.24% of its value. The stock probably moved lower for a number of reasons this week, including a stock downgrade, a poor initial stock rating from another firm, a weak consumer sentiment number, and rioting in the Middle East. The downgrade came from Barclays, which lowered the rating from "overweight" to "equal weight" but increased the price target from $72 to $82 per share. Oppenheimer also gave the company a less than stellar rating, as it initiated coverage on American Express this week and rated the stock a "perform." The weak Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index may indicate that Americans will cut back on spending and the use of credit, which will have a negative effect on American Express and the other credit card companies. And lastly, the rioting in Turkey this week may hurt American Express, as it earns a great deal of revenue from the tourism industry, and with Istanbul being such an important tourist destination, revenues may take a hit. �

Hot Managed Healthcare Companies To Invest In 2014: Natural Gas(NG)

NovaGold Resources Inc., through its subsidiaries, engages in the exploration and development of mineral properties primarily in North America. The company primarily explores for gold, silver, copper, zinc, and lead ores. It holds interests in the Donlin Creek property covering 81,361 acres and the Ambler property comprising 90,614 acres located in Alaska; and the Galore Creek property comprising 293,838 acres located in northwestern British Columbia, Canada. The company was formerly known as NovaCan Mining Resources (1985) Limited and changed its name to NovaGold Resources Inc. in March 1987. NovaGold Resources Inc. was founded in 1984 and is based in Vancouver, Canada.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Rich Duprey]

  The worst performer in the sector was NovaGold Resources (NYSEMKT: NG  ) , which fell 13% yesterday as it scrambles to make sense of its Donlin Gold project in Alaska, the biggest known undeveloped gold deposit anywhere. The joint venture with Barrick has essentially been in limbo since NovaGold's partner said last year it no longer made economic sense to pursue it.

• [By Holly LaFon] ref="http://www.gurufocus.com/StockBuy.php?GuruName=John+Paulson">John Paulson bough 20, 181,818 shares of NovaGold in the first quarter of 2010 at an average of $6 per share; he added 26,200 shares in the third quarter at an average of $9 per share, and 2,746,800 in the fourth quarter at an average of $9 per share. According to GuruFocus Real Time Picks, in February he increased this holding 30.49% and now owns 29,954,818 shares or 10.8% of the company.

  NovaGold Resources is a gold and copper company engaged in the exploration and development of mineral properties in Alaska and Western Canada. NovaGold has a market cap of $2.26 billion; its shares were traded at around $7.68 with and P/S ratio of 5622. NovaGold had an annual average earnings growth of 31.1% over the past 10 years.

  It is not a surprise that Paulson would increase his gold holdings. He said in his 2011 investor letter that ��y gold fund will top all others.��He added:

• [By Holly LaFon]

  He increased his holdings in gold companies in the fourth quarter accordingly. Gold stocks he found attractive in the fourth quarter are: Novagold Resources (NG), Randgold Resources (GOLD), Iamgold Corp. (IAG), Barrick Gold Corp. (ABX), Agnico Eagle (AEM) and International Tower Hill (THM).

• [By Monica Gerson]

  NovaGold Resources (NYSE: NG) is expected to post a Q3 loss at $0.03 per share.

  Premier Exhibitions (NASDAQ: PRXI) is projected to post its Q2 earnings.