Best Income Stocks To Buy For 2014

Diane Bronson can smile now, but the librarian was really worry when she pulled her money out of stocks in 2008. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) The market was swooning for much of 2008, and Diane Bronson made exactly the wrong call.

At least, she thought it was a bad move. She yanked all her money from the stock market and put it in cash.

"I decided to sell in a panic," she says. "That was in January 2008 before everything went to hell."

It went against every investment instinct the former librarian had developed over the years. She was a "buy and hold" kind of investor who prided herself on patience and a long-term focus. For decades, she put her money into growth-oriented mutual funds.

But her hunch paid off.

She avoided the worst of the downturn when Lehman Brothers fell in September 2008. She later got back into the market and has since enjoyed one heck of a bull run the past five years. Her portfolio now provides a quarter of her retirement income and allowed her to retire early in 2012.

10 Best Growth Stocks To Watch For 2015: Baltic Trading Limited (BALT)

Baltic Trading Limited engages in shipping business in the dry bulk industry spot market worldwide. The company operates a fleet of dry bulk ships that transport iron ore, coal, grain, steel products, and other dry bulk cargoes. Its fleet consists of 2 Capesize vessels, 4 Supramax vessels, and 3 Handysize vessels with an aggregate carrying capacity of approximately 672,000 deadweight tons. The company charters its vessels to trading houses, including commodities traders, as well as producers and government-owned entities. Baltic Trading Limited was founded in 2009 and is based in New York, New York.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Tim Melvin]

  Baltic Trading (BALT) got slammed by 17% last week as the Baltic Dry Index continued its decline. The global recovery is going to have fits and starts and the sector will be quite volatile. Baltic Trading works in the spot market for cargo like iron ore, coal, grain, and steel products so the stock price will likely jump around with the BDI reading.

Best Income Stocks To Buy For 2014: Portfolio Recovery Associates Inc.(PRAA)

Portfolio Recovery Associates, Inc., a financial and business service company, engages in the purchase, collection, and management of portfolios of defaulted consumer receivables. It detects, collects, and processes unpaid and normal-course accounts receivables owed primarily to credit grantors, governments, and retailers. The company also acquires receivables of Visa, MasterCard, and other credit cards; private label credit cards; installment loans; lines of credit; bankrupt accounts; deficiency balances of various types; legal judgments, and trade payables from various debt owners, including banks, credit unions, consumer finance companies, telecommunication providers, retailers, utilities, insurance companies, medical groups, hospitals, auto finance companies, and other debt buyers. In addition, it provides fee-based services, including vehicle location, skip tracing, and collateral recovery services for auto lenders, governments, and law enforcement; revenue administra tion, audit, and debt discovery/recovery services for local government entities; and class action claims recovery services and related payment processing services. The company was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Rich Duprey]

  For the first time since going public in 2002, consumer debt purchasing specialist Portfolio Recovery Associates (NASDAQ: PRAA  ) announced today it is going to split its stock and will do so by a three-for-one ratio.

• [By Chris Hill]

  Our analysts explain why they're watching DreamWorks Animation (NASDAQ: DWA  ) and Portfolio Recovery Associates (NASDAQ: PRAA  ) .

Best Income Stocks To Buy For 2014: Dun & Bradstreet Corp (DNB)

The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation (D&B), incorporated on April 25, 2000, is the source of commercial information and insight on businesses, enabling customers to Decide with Confidence. As of December 31, 2012, the Company�� global commercial database contained more than 220 million business records. The database is enhanced by its DUNSRight Quality Process, which transforms commercial data into valuable insight which is the foundation of its global solutions. Customers use D&B Risk Management Solutions to mitigate credit and supplier risk, increase cash flow and drive profitability; D&B Sales & Marketing Solutions to provide data management capabilities that provide marketing solutions to increase revenue from new and existing customers, and D&B Internet Solutions to convert prospects into clients by enabling business professionals to research companies, executives and industries.

The Company operates in three segments: North America (which consists of its operations in the United States and Canada); Asia Pacific (which primarily consists of its operations in Australia, Greater China, India and Asia Pacific Worldwide Network), and Europe and other International Markets (which primarily consists of its operations in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Latin America and its European Worldwide Network). The Company conducts its business internationally through its wholly owned subsidiaries, majority-owned joint ventures, independent correspondents, strategic relationships through its D&B Worldwide Network and minority equity investments.

Risk Management Solutions

The Company provides traditional, value-added and supply management solutions. The Company�� Traditional Risk Management Solutions, which primarily includes its core DNBi product line, as well as reports from its database which are used primarily for making decisions about new credit applications, constituted 74% of its Risk Management Solutions revenue and 47% of its total revenue for the ye! ar ended December 31, 2012. Its Value-Added Risk Management Solutions, which constituted 20% of its Risk Management Solutions revenue and 12% of its total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2012, generally support automated decision-making and portfolio management through the use of scoring and integrated software solutions. The Company�� Supply Management Solutions, which can help companies understand the financial risk of their supply chain, constituted 6% of its Risk Management Solutions revenue and 4% of its total revenue in 2012. Risk Management Solutions accounted for 63% of its total revenue in 2012.

Effective January 1, 2013, the Company began managing and reporting its North America Risk Management Solutions business as DNBi subscription plans, Non-DNBi subscription plans, and projects and other risk management solutions.

The Company�� principal Risk Management Solutions are DNBi, various business information reports, eRAM, and D&B Direct. DNBi is the Company�� interactive, customizable online application that offers customers a subscription based real time access to its complete and up-to-date global DUNSRight information, comprehensive monitoring and portfolio analysis. It is also focused on helping more customers protect their business from risk through additions of DNBi products: DNBi Corporate, offering flexible pricing options allowing credit departments of all sizes to get data and options they need and Portfolio Risk Manager for DNBi, a module which allows DNBi users to create strategic one -click analytic reports to see risk and opportunity across their customer base. Various business information reports include Business Information Report, its Comprehensive Report, and its International Report that are consumed in a transactional manner across multiple platforms, such as DNB.com. eRAM is an enterprise solution for large global and domestic customers for automated decisioning and portfolio analytics. D&B Direct is a software application programming inter! face (API! ) that enables data integration inside enterprise applications, such as ERP, and enables master data management.

Sales & Marketing Solutions

The Company�� Sales & Marketing Solutions is a customer solution set, which accounted 29% of its total revenue in 2012. Within this customer solution set, it offers traditional and value-added solutions. Its Traditional Sales & Marketing Solutions generally consist of its marketing lists and labels used by the Company�� customers in direct mail and marketing activities, its education business and its electronic licensing solutions. These solutions constituted 30% of its Sales & Marketing Solutions revenue and 9% of its total revenue in 2012. Effective January 1, 2013, The Company began managing and reporting its Internet Solutions business as part of its Traditional Sales & Marketing Solutions set. Its Value-Added Sales & Marketing Solutions generally include decision-making and customer information management solutions, including data management solutions like Optimizer (its solution to cleanse, identify and enrich its customers' client portfolios) and products introduced as part of its Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) Strategy, which integrates the Company�� data directly into the applications and platforms that its customers use every day. The Value-Added Sales & Marketing Solutions constituted 70% of Sales & Marketing Solutions revenue and 20% of its total revenue in 2012

Internet Solutions

The Company�� Internet Solutions business provides organized and easy-to-use products that address the online sales and marketing needs of professionals and businesses, including information on companies, industries and executives. Internet Solutions, primarily representing the results of its Hoover's business, accounted for 7% of its total revenue in 2012. Effective January 1, 2013, the Company began managing and reporting its Internet Solutions business as part of its Traditional Sales & Marketing Solutions set.

T! he Company competes with Equifax, Inc., Experian Information Solutions, Inc., infoGROUP, Graydon, and Sinotrust.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Geoff Gannon] ly doesn�� need working capital even when it grows say 3% a year or so. And some companies always need a ton of working capital like Lakeland (LAKE) or ADDvantage (AEY). How you feel about how those companies use working capital has a lot to do with whether or not you like those stocks long-term.

  Then there are companies that have increased working capital very, very fast over the last decade or so ��but they��e also increased sales at a startling clip.

  That�� Carbo.

  Let�� look at where the difference between EBITDA and operating cash flow is coming from.

  Cash flow from others as shown on GuruFocus�� 10-year financials page for Carbo ��I��l use this as a proxy for working capital changes ��was positive in only two years. And not by much. Usually, it�� been negative. Over the 10 years, that single line has added up to a negative $173 million. Wow.

  Okay. Then there�� the difference between free cash flow and owner earnings. Owner earnings as you��l remember is Warren Buffett�� calculation of what a business could pay out to owners in cash at the end of the year ��if it stopped growing. But didn�� shrink. More on that later. For now, let�� look at the difference between Carbo�� depreciation and Carbo�� spending on property, plant and equipment.

  Over the last 10 years, cap-ex has been: $546 million (or $425 million if you allow cap-ex to provide cash flow in certain years, this is a weird issue I don�� want to touch right now)

  And over the last 10 years, depreciation has been: $201.52 million

  That�� a big gap. We��e got some combination of Carbo underreporting economic depreciation by anywhere from $225 million to $350 million or so ��or we��e got Carbo investing something like $225 million to $350 million in growth.

  Which is it?

  Let�� check the growth angle first.

  Over the last 10 years, Carbo has grown total sales by just under 18% a year. Now, I happen to

• [By Geoff Gannon] nflation plus population growth: CEC Entertainment (CEC)

  路 Nominal GDP Growth: Village Supermarket (VLGEA)

  Over the last 10 years ��population growth, inflation, and real output per person growth has been so low it�� hard to tell the difference between companies growing at the rate of inflation, along with the population, or along with the economy.

  You have to squint really hard to see any difference in the revenue growth records of DNB, Chuck E. Cheese, and Village.

  This will not be true in all countries and at all times.

  A literally no growth company like Earthlink is actually shrinking. It just happens to look like it�� staying perfectly flat because inflation is hiding the company�� real decay rate. In real terms, the company has been shrinking by about 3% a year for the last 10 years. So, Earthlink is not a no growth company. It�� shrinking.

  That�� a bad sign. And, frankly, I don�� know how to value Earthlink. You would need to evaluate it as a turnaround or something ��not as a business that�� simplly stuck in place. I don�� know how to do that.

  So, Earhtlink goes into the ��oo hard��pile.

  Dun & Bradstreet and CEC Entertainment are actual no growth businesses. This is hidden by their constant share buy backs. So, if you look at their earnings per share growth they look kind of like Peter Lynch�� idea of a ��low growth��company or even a ��talwart�� They aren��. They��e no growth businesses.

  The same is pretty much true with Village Supermarket. Although this is complicated. The nature of their business ��high volume, low cost groceries ��means they can appear to be a no growth business when they are actually just keeping prices down and increasing volume. You would need to check their sales numbers more carefully. Grocery stores often discuss inflation in their annual reports. Village Supermarket always does this.

  (The annual report is Exhibit 13 of the

• [By Geoff Gannon]

  So, if you think Dun & Bradstreet (DNB) has a very reliable business, than DNB at 12 times earnings or 9 times enterprise value divided by EBITDA ��or whatever ��is a lot more attractive than some other businesses trading at the same multiples. It's like the difference between a safe bond yielding 6% and a very risky bond yielding 6%. They both offer the same return ��in theory. Yeah, they pay the same amount this year. But, they do not both offer the same reliability.

• [By Seth Jayson]

  Calling all cash flows
  When you are trying to buy the market's best stocks, it's worth checking up on your companies' free cash flow once a quarter or so, to see whether it bears any relationship to the net income in the headlines. That's what we do with this series. Today, we're checking in on Dun & Bradstreet (NYSE: DNB  ) , whose recent revenue and earnings are plotted below.

Best Income Stocks To Buy For 2014: MedCAREERS Group Inc (MCGI)

MedCareers Group, Inc., incorporated on December 30, 2004, focus is to develop and build value through its wholly owned subsidiary Nurses Lounge (www.nurseslounge.com), an online professional network and communication source for nurses and organizations connected to the nursing community. On August 10, 2010, MedCareers acquired the workabroad.com Website from Steve Elisberg (Workabroad.com Website).

The Nurses Lounge is a professional network for nursing professionals providing relevant content and information and professional networking. Nurses can subscribe to Lounges created by nursing schools, nurse associations, employers, specialties and more to receive email updates of relevant news, events and other info. Professional networking is a place for nurses to connect with colleagues and network on a professional level.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Peter Graham]

  While small cap green or renewable energy type of stocks have been the flavor of the month for many stock promoters (and sometimes still are), small cap health care stocks like PPJ Enterprise (OTCMKTS: PPJE), Plantation Development Corp (OTCMKTS: BRMA) and MedCAREERS Group Inc (OTCMKTS: MCGI) have also started to get some notice lately ��perhaps because Obamacare has been topping the news lately. However, are these small cap health care stocks a better bet for investors or for their promoters? Here is a quick reality check and a checkup:

• [By Peter Graham]

  Last Friday, small cap stocks MedCAREERS Group Inc (OTCMKTS: MCGI), USmart Mobile Device Inc (OTCMKTS: UMDI) and Drinks Americas Holdings, Ltd (OTCMKTS: DKAM) were all over the place with the first two sinking 54% and 48.05%, respectively, while the last one rose 10.81%. It should be mentioned that all three small cap stocks have been the subject of paid promotions albeit none of these stocks have been over promoted. So where can investors and traders expect these stocks to head this week? Here is a quick look at what you might expect:

  MedCAREERS Group Inc (OTCMKTS: MCGI) Gets Additional Commitments to Join Its Subsidiary

  Small cap MedCAREERS Group aims to develop and build value through its wholly-owned subsidiary Nurses Lounge, Inc., an online professional network and communication source for nurses that offers a 21st century solution to recruitment and information that cannot be accomplished on a static nursing school or association website. On Friday, MedCAREERS Group sank 54% to $0.0575 for a market cap of $3.03 million plus MCGI is up 161.4% since the start of the year and down 93.9% over the past five years according to Google Finance.

Best Income Stocks To Buy For 2014: H&Q Life Sciences Investors (HQL)

H&Q Life Sciences Investors (the Fund) is a diversified, closed-end management investment company. The Fund's investment objective is long-term capital appreciation through investment in life science companies (including biotechnology, pharmaceutical, diagnostics, managed healthcare and medical equipment, hospitals, healthcare information technology and services, devices and supplies) agriculture and environmental management. The Fund invests primarily in securities of public and private companies.

The Fund may invest in venture capital and other restricted securities if these securities would comprise 40% or less of net assets. The Fund may purchase and sell (or write) put or call options on any security in which it is permitted to invest. It may purchase and sell (write) options on stock indices (index options). H&Q Life Sciences Investors��investment advisor is Hambrecht & Quist Capital Management, LLC.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Harry Domash, Publisher, DividendDetective and Winning Investing]

  Harry Domash: Yeah, in fact, H&Q Life Sciences, ticker (HQL), is actually a closed-end fund, but it invests entirely in biotech and pharmaceutical companies, and if you look around the world, the investing stocks right now—besides the social media stocks—that's really the one area that has had a lot of recent growth and we expect that to continue.

  I think the closed-end fund, and we'll get into that maybe a little bit later, but closed-end funds are a good way to cover it, when you're talking about a sector like that.

  Johnson & Johnson is an interesting case, because, as you know, Johnson & Johnson is a big company that invests, and that owns a lot of different companies itself in the medical field.

  You know, it owns hundreds of operating companies and it's primarily in the pharmaceuticals, and medical devices, and in consumer products, but Johnson & Johnson was a mismanaged company for a while and they were really underperforming their peers.

  In fact, some of their factories were closed, their pharmaceutical production factories were forcibly closed by the government because they didn't meet standards, but they were taken over by a new CEO a few years ago, two or three years ago, and now things are improving, so Johnson & Johnson is kind of coming from down and out to being a leading company again.

  They've got a lot of products, cancer-type products, and things on the pipeline and it just seems like things are going very well so we have hopes that Johnson & Johnson has reported the last two quarters are the first ones that have really been decent, they really showed growth, and then we expect that to accelerate so we're pretty hot on Johnson & Johnson now.

  Steve Halpern: One particularly interesting portfolio that you maintain that I haven't seen anywhere else is based on closed-end funds that pay monthly dividends&mdash

• [By Nate Pile]

  This recommended fund��ambrecht & Quist Life Sciences Fund (HQL)��as also our top pick last year, and the fund rose 44% in 2013.

  In addition to rising in value, the fund has a dividend policy of paying out 2% of its net asset value of each quarter.

Best Income Stocks To Buy For 2014: Marketo Inc (MKTO)

Marketo, Inc. (Marketo), incorporated on December 17, 2009, provides cloud-based marketing software platform that enables organizations to engage in modern relationship marketing. The Company�� software platform is designed to enable the execution, management and analytical measurement of marketing activities, helping organizations to acquire new customers. The Company�� platform includes marketing automation, social marketing, sales insight and revenue analytics. Its customer base includes 2,000 customers across a range of industries, including business services, consumer, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, media, technology and telecommunications. The Company provides its solutions on a subscription basis. Effective December 19, 2013, Marketo Inc acquired Insightera Ltd.

The Company designs, builds and markets a suite of integrated applications to address the needs of modern marketing professionals. The Company�� customers use these applications individually and in combination to streamline and automate marketing processes; develop, retain and extend customer relationships, and measure the positive impact on revenue of marketing programs. Its platform and suite of applications is hosted and delivered over the Web using a cloud-based, or software as a service (SaaS) model, and is built using a multi-tenant architecture. The Company markets and sells its enterprise applications as: Marketo lead management, which includes the core Marketo platform, plus all of the marketing automation capabilities available on the platform; Marketo social marketing, which enables social media campaigns, such as referrals, sweepstakes, and other customer engagement campaigns, and also includes features to add social marketing extensions to traditional marketing campaigns; Marketo sales insight, which provides insights to salespeople about their customers and prospects, and Marketo revenue cycle analytics, which is a suite of analytic tools, analyzers, and ad hoc reporting capabilities taki! ng advantage of its time-series analytics engine.

The Company has built a suite of applications that run on its platform. The applications include marketing automation, social marketing, sales insight and revenue analytics. Marketing automation provides a set of capabilities for marketers to create, automate, and track personalized multi-channel marketing campaigns and relationship-marketing workflows. It includes functionality for marketers to finely segment their prospect and customer database based on collected demographic and behavioral data; generate custom Web pages without programming; send batch and individual personalized marketing messages over email, short message service (SMS) text, and other channels; streamline the entire process of running online (e.g., webinar) and offline (e.g., trade show) marketing events, and to execute multi-step lead nurturing and relationship-marketing campaigns that can run over days, weeks, or months.

Social marketing enables marketers to run social media marketing campaigns, as well as to an increase traditional marketing campaigns with a social marketing aspect in order to amplify marketing messages across social networks. Its solution lets marketers add intelligent social sharing buttons to existing Web content and videos; publish new Facebook pages with the touch of a button; build social engagement applications, such as polls, sweepstakes, and referral offers to engage their audience and promote social cross-posting, and increase existing customer and prospect information with social profiles and sharing behavior.

Sold on a per-seat basis, the Company offers sales insight application to customers utilizing Microsoft dynamics customer relationship management (CRM) or salesforce.com as their CRM system. Revenue Analytics provides a range of ways to help companies understand the correlation between marketing programs and revenue outcomes, and includes: a library of operational reports detailing e-mail and landing page per! formance,! Web activity, and lead performance; intuitive analyzers that show the influence of marketing on individual customer outcomes; analytics that compute and illustrate the impact, effectiveness and return on investment of marketing programs individually and in aggregate, and an ad-hoc report builder for completely customized reports and dashboards.

The Company competes with Act-On, Eloqua, Aprimo, HubSpot, SAS Institute, Unica, ExactTarget, Responsys, Silverpop, Oracle Corporation and SAP AG.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Evan Niu, CFA]

  What: Shares of Marketo (NASDAQ: MKTO  ) have dropped like a rock today, down by as much as 12% following an analyst downgrade.

  So what: UBS dropped its rating on the marketing software maker from "neutral" to "sell," while keeping its $22 price target unchanged. The firm is concerned about Marketo's valuation, since shares have nearly doubled in less than two months since going public at $13.

• [By Roberto Pedone]

  Marketo (MKTO) provides a cloud-based marketing software platform that enables organizations to engage in modern relationship marketing. This stock closed up 2.7% at $35.36 in Monday's trading session.

  Monday's Volume: 649,000
  
  Three-Month Average Volume: 261,206
  
  Volume % Change: 167%

  From a technical perspective, MKTO spiked notably higher here right above some near-term support levels at $34 to $33.31 with above-average volume. This stock has been trending sideways inside of a consolidation pattern for the last month and change, with shares moving between $33.31 on the downside and $39.80 on the upside. This move on Monday is starting to push shares of MKTO within range of triggering a big breakout trade above the upper-end of its recent sideways trading chart pattern. That breakout will hit if MKTO manages to take out some key near-term overhead resistance levels at $37.35 to $37.61 and then once it takes out its all-time high at $39.80 with high volume.

  Traders should now look for long-biased trades in MKTO as long as it's trending above support at $34 or at $33.31 and then once it sustains a move or close above those breakout levels with volume that's near or above 261,206 shares. If that breakout hits soon, then MKTO will set up to enter new all-time-high territory, which is bullish technical price action. Some possible upside targets off that move are $45 to $50.

Best Income Stocks To Buy For 2014: Delaware Investments Dividend & Income Fund Inc. (DDF)

Delaware Investments Dividend and Income Fund, Inc. is a close-ended balanced mutual fund launched by Delaware Management Holdings, Inc. It is managed by Delaware Management Business Trust. The fund invests in the public equity and fixed income markets of the United States. It seeks to invest 65 percent of its corpus in stocks and 35% in fixed income securities. The fund primarily invests in value stocks of large cap companies. It also invests in convertible securities, preferred stocks, other equity-related securities, and real estate investment trusts. For the fixed income component of the fund�s portfolio the fund invests in high yield corporate bonds rated BB or lower in terms of quality. It benchmarks the performance of its portfolio against the S&P 500 Index. Delaware Investments Dividend and Income Fund, Inc. was formed on March 25, 1993 and is domiciled in the United States.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Dividends4Life]

  According to a Gabelli Funds report, managed distribution policies offer several advantages, including:1. Lower difference between the fund�� market price and its NAV per share.2. Provides support during periods when the stock market is in a decline.3. Provides a measurable performance target for the investment adviser.Below are several high-yield funds from CEFA that have a managed distribution policy (yields as of December 16):Aberdeen Australia Eqty (IAF)- Distribution Yield: 10.4%- Income Yield: 3.46%Bexil Advisers LLC� (DNI)- Distribution Yield: 11.1%- Income Yield: 3.56%BlackRock En Capital&Inc (CII)- Distribution Yield: 8.78%- Income Yield: 2.34%Cornerstone Strat Value (CLM)- Distribution Yield: 18.77%- Income Yield: 1.83%Cornerstone Total Return (CRF)- Distribution Yield: 19.10%- Income Yield: 0.85%Delaware Inv Div & Inc (DDF)- Distribution Yield: 6.70%- Income Yield: 5.26%Gabelli Equity Trust (GAB)- Distribution Yield: 7.58%- Income Yield: 1.54%Gabelli Utility Trust (GUT)- Distribution Yield: 9.45%- Income Yield: 2.84%MFS Special Value Trust (MFV)- Distribution Yield: 9.60%- Income Yield: 5.73%Nuveen Tx-Adv TR Strat (JTA)- Distribution Yield: 6.70%- Income Yield: 3.12%TCW Strategic Income (TSI)- Distribution Yield: 10.54%- Income Yield: 7.88%Zweig Total Return (ZTR)- Distribution Yield: 7.27%- Income Yield: 1.95%As noted in the Gabelli report, a managed distribution policy may create confusion regarding the true current yield since the reported yield includes the return of capital portion. You can see the disparity above between the income yield and the distribution (reported) yield.If you are looking for a sustainable and growing dividend, you may want to consider some blue-chip dividend stocks such as these with a Free Cash Flow Payout less than 50%, 50+ years of consecutive dividend increases and a 2%+ yield:3M Co. (MMM) is a diversified global company provides enhanced product functionality in electronics, health care, industrial, consumer