Are you looking for Stock Picks? We all know you can find "stock picks" all over the web, from your neighbor, and as the old saying goes from your barber.

Barron's publishes stock picks as well. If you look back at the 2007-2008 picks it becomes clear that throwing a dart at a list of stocks in the WSJ would have done just about as good during this time period. Regardless, placing the past year aside, you can get some good trading ideas from Barron's when the market is in an uptrend.

I recently read an article in Barron's regarding Suncor (SU) the Canadian Oil Sands company. I found the article to be insightful and I learned things about the company (grow and acquisitions) that made it seem like a buy. I bought the stock and made a few bucks on it and it has continued to rally along with oil. This lead me to purchase PXE (ETF) and other folks at MTR also picked up this ETF and made some gains.

Barron’s Stock Picks & Pans

This feature tracks the performance of stocks Barron's has written about during 2009 -- both favorably and critically. For stocks featured in Barron's print magazine, prices are measured from the Friday before publication date to their current price. For stocks featured on Barrons.com, prices are measured from the trading day of publication date to their current price. This list includes U.S. stocks only, including ADRs, but not foreign stocks.

The stock market seems to be at a crossroads. Technically it is a mixed bag leaning to downside action.

S&P 500 Chart Below

• Z-Score shows the S&P 500 index is riding the fence. +2 would be overbought, -2 oversold. Sitting at 0 shows the price action has had little movement.
• RSI sitting over 50 still shows strength 
• Arron Indicator crossed below the 70 mark which indicates a market down trend
• Volume is flat reflecting the market middle ground as Z-Score

We have stop loss orders on long positions and purchase some short ETFs (more on that).

There was no improvement in the MTR Economic Model (MTR-EM) with the data released for April 2009. Year over year wages and employment have not improved. We expect to see a further deterioration in year over year real-wages (green line) due to gas prices extending over $2.60 a gallon in most areas.  This will lead to a drop in consumer spending and typically impacts stock prices to the downside.

We have made some cash trading in and out of oil ETFs (PXE and OLO) long and (DDG) short. Oil supplies are at a high level and it seems the current price per barrel is under pressure unless some of the "green shoots" (do you hate that term as much as me?) starts to spout some fruit or vegetables.

We closed out half of our PXE holdings and purchased the short ETF DDG. We may be early looking for a downturn in crude but it seems it has move too far too fast. The excess oil supply seems to support some downward movement for crude in the short term. Unless, yes, those Green Shoots again...

ProShares Short Oil and Gas ETF (DDG) is reaching a -2 level on the Z-Score. This is nearing a level that supports crude prices will retract.  We purchased shares in DDG today with a tight stop to see if we get a bounce to the upside on this short ETF if crude pulls back.

Berkshire filed their 13F on 5/14/2009 disclosing stock holdings as of quarter end March 2009.

We maintain a watchlist of Buffett's holding on this site for our members and it was updated to reflect the stock holdings in the recent 13F.

Click the Stock Charts menu item on the top of this page and then click the Buffett's Holdings drop down list as shown below.

Attached to this post are Berkshire's 13F and all the stocks in that report in an Excel spread sheet.

Buffett 13F Report(10.70 kb)

Buffett Holdings Excel Spread Sheet(15.50 kb)