Best Cheap Stocks To Invest In 2014

Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU  ) investors finally caught a break yesterday.

Shares of China's leading search engine soared 6% on Wednesday. The stock hasn't had a single-day rally this strong since last summer.

There wasn't any Baidu-specific news to trigger the run, and it's not as if the bulls have any dibs on "I told you so" bragging rights. Baidu's stock is merely recovering after hitting a two-year low last week. Even after yesterday's pop, Baidu has been absent from this year's tech rally with its own shares trading 17% lower in 2013.

Baidu's fallen out of favor since Qihoo 360 (NYSE: QIHU  ) introduced a rival search engine last year. Even though Qihoo's 13% share of China's search market has come largely at the expense of non-Baidu rivals, worrywarts fear that the presence of a legitimate competitor will slow Baidu's already decelerating revenue.

Baidu's still growing. Analysts see revenue and earnings climbing 43% and 21%, respectively, when the former dot-com darling reports its first-quarter results later this month. Thinning margins and a seasonal sequential decline in revenue are problematic, but bargain hunters will be quick to point out that Baidu is trading for just 13 times next year's projected earnings. That appears to be too cheap for a market leader that is growing considerably faster than that.

Top 5 Diversified Bank Stocks To Buy For 2015: Wendy's/Arby's Group Inc.(WEN)

The Wendy's Company operates as a quick-service hamburger company in the United States. The company, through its subsidiary, Wendy's International, Inc., operates as a franchisor of the Wendy's restaurant system. As of December 26, 2011, the Wendy's system comprised approximately 6,500 franchise and company restaurants in the United States and the United States territories, as well as in 26 other countries worldwide. The company was formerly known as Wendy's/Arby's Group, Inc. and changed its name to The Wendy's Company in July 2011. The Wendy's Company was founded in 1884 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ohio.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Patrick M. Sheridan]

  Wendy's (WEN) said customers gobbled down 50 million of the sandwiches, which were made of a soft pretzel bun. It helped boost sales at Wendy's by 3% in both the third and fourth quarters.

• [By Emily Jane Fox]

  McDonald's (MCD, Fortune 500) and Wendy's (WEN) have told CNNMoney that they provide opportunities to learn and grow. The National Restaurant Association contends that the demonstrations are a "coordinated PR campaign engineered by national labor groups," and that "relatively few restaurant workers have participated" in past demonstrations.

• [By MONEYMORNING]

  His greatest success has been with The Wendy's Co. (Nasdaq: WEN), which has enjoyed a stunning 97% gain since Peltz began engineering changes to the fast food chain in mid-2011.

• [By Nicole Seghetti]

  Competition is intensifying between Nos. 5 and No. 6�on the list, Burger King (NYSE: BKW  ) and Wendy's (NASDAQ: WEN  ) , respectively. Following McDonalds' lead, both are undergoing restaurant renovations. Wendy's reported lousy earnings in the most recent quarter, mostly due to heavy remodel spending. Burger King is following Mickey D's another way -- by copying McDonalds menu. And, also like McDonalds, Wendy's is placing particular emphasis on value-centric consumers. The company has beefed up advertising of its lower-priced items more aggressively this year. Even though CEO Emil Brolick sees the value side of the business as a challenge, Wendy's plans to further hype up its stable of $0.99 menu items.

Best Cheap Stocks To Invest In 2014: Hewlett-Packard Company(HPQ)

Hewlett-Packard Company and its subsidiaries provide products, technologies, software, solutions, and services to individual consumers and small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), as well as to the government, health, and education sectors worldwide. Its Personal Systems Group segment offers commercial personal computers (PCs), consumer PCs, workstations, calculators and other related accessories, and software and services for the commercial and consumer markets. The company?s Services segment provides consulting, outsourcing, and technology services to infrastructure, applications, and business process domains. Its Imaging and Printing Group segment provides consumer and commercial printer hardware, supplies, media, and scanning devices, such as inkjet and Web solutions, laser jet and enterprise solutions, managed enterprise solutions, graphics solutions, and printer supplies. The company?s Enterprise Servers, Storage, and Networking segment offers industry standard s ervers, business critical systems, storage platforms, and networking products, including switches, routers, wireless LAN, and TippingPoint network security products. Its HP Software segment provides enterprise IT management software, information management solutions, and security intelligence/risk management solutions. The company?s HP Financial Services segment offers leasing, financing, utility programs, and asset recovery services; and financial asset management services for enterprise customers, as well as specialized financial services to SMBs, and educational and governmental entities. Hewlett-Packard Company also provides business intelligence solutions that enable businesses to standardize on consistent data management schemes, connect and share data across the enterprise, and apply analytics, as well as licenses its specific technology to third parties. The company was founded in 1939 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Matt Thalman]

  Although fellow Dow component Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ  ) received a stock rating upgrade, shares are still down 1.8%. Wells Fargo upgraded HP to "outperform" from "market perform" based on the idea that even without sales improving, HP can deliver growth in net income and free cash flow in the future.�

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  Still, the bigger question for Adobe is whether it can keep up its quality in web-content management despite rising levels of competition. Industry analyst Forrester highlighted Adobe's platform as having broad application, but it also noted the efforts that Oracle, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ  ) , and IBM (NYSE: IBM  ) have made in trying to make their digital experiences more appealing. In particular, HP has hinged its turnaround on moving away from commoditized businesses like PCs toward higher-margin software and services, hoping to use its extensive customer base to cross-sell services. Yet both IBM and Oracle have also been moving in the same direction, with IBM particularly having improved its web-content management offerings in order to broaden their appeal not just to the largest corporate customers but also to mid-sized companies as part of IBM's overall goal of building a broader customer base.

Best Cheap Stocks To Invest In 2014: Ur Energy Inc(URG)

Ur-Energy Inc., an exploration stage junior mining company, engages in the identification, acquisition, evaluation, exploration, and development of uranium mineral properties. The company has 13 projects located in Wyoming and Nebraska, the United States; and 3 exploration projects located in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, Canada. Its landholdings cover approximately 90,000 acres in the United States and approximately 140,000 acres in Canada. The company was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in Littleton, Colorado.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Bryan Murphy]

  If you listened to my bullish calls from December 27th and/or February 24th about Uranerz Energy Corp. (NYSEMKT:URZ), Uranium Resources, Inc. (NASDAQ:URRE), and Ur-Energy Inc. (NYSEMKT:URG), then congratulations - you're now up as much as 50%, depending on when you stepped into a trade, and which stock you chose. Now get out. See, as well as URZ and URG have done and are doing (URRE not so much), it looks like the short-term rally I first spotted a little more than a couple of months ago has fully run its course, and now these names are setting up a pullback.

Best Cheap Stocks To Invest In 2014: Global Payments Inc.(GPN)

Global Payments Inc. provides electronic transaction processing services for merchants, independent sales organizations (ISO), financial institutions, government agencies, and multi-national corporations located in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. It offers a comprehensive line of processing solutions for credit and debit cards; business-to-business purchasing cards; gift cards; and electronic check conversion and check guarantee, verification, and recovery, including electronic check services, as well as terminal management. The company also offers proprietary software products to establish revolving check cashing limits for the casinos? customers in the gaming industry. In addition, it sells, installs, and services automated teller machine and point of sale terminals; and provides card issuing services, including card management and card personalization. The company markets its products directly, as well as through ISOs, retail outlets, tra de associations, alliance bank relationships, and financial institutions. Global Payments Inc. has a joint venture with La Caixa Group to provide merchant acquiring services to merchants in Spain. Global Payments Inc. was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Wallace Witkowski]

  Shares of Global Payments Inc. (GPN) �advanced 4.8% to $67.50 on moderate volume after the company raised its earnings outlook for the year to a range of $4.03 to $4.10 a share. Analysts were forecasting $4.04 a share.

• [By Laura Brodbeck]

  Thursday

  Earnings Expected From: Global Payents Inc. (NYSE: GPN), Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: MU), Synnex Corporation (NYSE: SNX) Economic Releases Expected: �US services PMI, Canadian imports and exports, US trade balance, eurozone services PMI, ECB interest rate decision, British services PMI

  Friday

• [By Monica Gerson]

  Global Payments (NYSE: GPN) is expected to post its Q1 earnings at $0.95 per share on revenue of $623.79 million.

  Synergetics USA (NASDAQ: SURG) is projected to post its Q4 earnings at $0.06 per share on revenue of $17.01 million.

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  Global Payments�(GPN) has gained 6.8% to $54.12 in pre-open trading after the payment processing company reported a profit of $1 a share, beating analyst forecasts of 95 cents. It also said it would buy back stock.

Best Cheap Stocks To Invest In 2014: Capstone Turbine Corporation(CPST)

Capstone Turbine Corporation develops, manufactures, markets, and services turbine generator sets and related parts for use in stationary distributed power generation applications. Its stationary distributed power generation applications include cogeneration combined heat and power (CHP), integrated (CHP), resource recovery, and secure power, as well as combined cooling, heat, and power; and its products are used as battery charging generators for hybrid electric vehicle applications. The company primarily offers microturbine units, subassemblies, and components. It also provides various accessories, including rotary gas compressors with digital controls, heat recovery modules for CHP applications, dual mode controllers that allow automatic transition between grid connect and stand-alone modes, batteries with digital controls for stand-alone/dual-mode operations, power servers for multipacked installations, and protocol converters for Internet access, as well as frames, ex haust ducting, and installation hardware. Further, it remanufactures microturbine engines; and provides after-market parts and services, scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, and factory and on-site training services. The company?s microturbines can be fueled by various sources, including natural gas, propane, sour gas, landfill or digester gas, kerosene, diesel, and biodiesel. It primarily sells its products directly to end users, as well as through distributors in North America, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Russian Federation, and South America. Capstone Turbine Corporation was founded in 1988 and is based in Chatsworth, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Selena Maranjian]

  Fisher reduced its stake in lots of companies, including Capstone Turbine (NASDAQ: CPST  ) and Nokia (NYSE: NOK  ) . Capstone is a smallish company, making low-emission microturbines used in power generation. Its top line has been growing by double digits over the past few years, and it's poised to profit from huge interest in shale oil, but it remains in the red. Still, it has recently announced a bunch of promising deals and some think the many folks short the stock will end up burned.

• [By Rick Munarriz]

  Capstone Turbine (NASDAQ: CPST  ) -- $1.30
  Things are finally starting to happen for the microturbine maker. Revenue is growing at a healthy clip, and analysts see Capstone finally turning a quarterly profit later this year.

• [By Monica Gerson]

  Capstone Turbine (NASDAQ: CPST) soared 14.29% to $2.24 in the pre-market trading after surging 7.10% on Monday.

  Ballard Power Systems (NASDAQ: BLDP) shares jumped 10.17% to $7.58 in pre-market trading after jumping 30.30% on Monday.

• [By Tyler Crowe]

  But to focus simply on renewables for distributed power would do some other parts of the industry a disservice, because companies such as Capstone Turbine (NASDAQ: CPST  ) are proving that localized generation of natural gas can be just as efficient as a big centralized utility plant. This one-two punch of renewable power as the primary energy source with localized natural gas generation as a backup for when solar or wind can't generate power could be a big threat to the utilities sector.

Best Cheap Stocks To Invest In 2014: Express-1 Expedited Solutions Inc.(XPO)

XPO Logistics, Inc. provides third-party logistics services using a network of relationships with ground, sea, and air carriers in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. It operates in three segments: Express-1, Concert Group Logistics, and Bounce Logistics. The Express-1 segment offers ground expedited surface transportation services for freight. It operates a fleet ranging from cargo vans to semi tractor trailer units. The Concert Group Logistics segment provides domestic and international freight forwarding services through a network of independently owned stations. Its domestic freight forwarding services include air charter, expedites, and time sensitive services, as well as cost sensitive services comprising deferred delivery, less than truckload, and full truck load services; and international freight forwarding services consist of on-board courier and air charters, time sensitive services, less-than-container and full-container-loads, and vessel charters. This segm ent also offers documentation on international shipments, customs clearance and banking, trade show shipment management, time definite and customized product distributions, reverse logistics and on site asset recovery projects, installation coordination, freight optimization, and diversity compliance support services. The Bounce Logistics segment provides premium freight brokerage services for truckload shipments. The company serves approximately 4,000 retail, commercial, manufacturing, and industrial customers through 6 U.S. operations centers and 22 agent locations. It offers its services to the automotive manufacturing, automotive components and supplies, commercial printing, durable goods manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, food and consumer products, and high tech sectors. The company was formerly known as Express-1 Expedited Solutions, Inc. and changed its name to XPO Logistics, Inc. in September 2011. XPO Logistics, Inc. was founded in 1989 and is based in Buchanan, Michi gan.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Vera Yuan]

  We initiated a new position in Aircastle Ltd. (AYR), an aircraft leasing company with a flexible business model and a rational capital allocation philosophy. We took advantage of an opportunity to purchase shares in the heavily capitalized Georgia bank State Bank Financial Corp. (STBZ) as the depressed stock price reflected investors��lack of patience with a slower than expected pace of capital deployment. We like State Bank�� management team led by Georgia banker Joe Evans. This management team has experience successfully building and selling other Georgia banks. We also received shares of transportation infrastructure company XPO Logistics, Inc. (XPO) as a result of its acquisition of holding Pacer International, Inc.

• [By Travis Hoium]

  What: Shares of XPO Logistics (NYSE: XPO  ) jumped 13% today after announcing an acquisition.

  So what: The company will pay $365 million for logistics provider 3PD, consisting of $357 million in cash an $8 million in XPO restricted stock. Is will use its own cash and borrow $195 million from Credit Suisse Group for the remainder of the purchase. �

• [By Jake L'Ecuyer]

  XPO Logistics (NYSE: XPO) shot up 7.06 percent to $30.01 after the company announced its plans to acquire Pacer International (NASDAQ: PACR) in a deal valued at $335 million.

Best Cheap Stocks To Invest In 2014: S&P GSCI(GD)

General Dynamics Corporation, an aerospace and defense company, provides business aviation; combat vehicles, weapons systems, and munitions; military and commercial shipbuilding; and communications and information technology products and services worldwide. Its Aerospace group designs, manufactures, and outfits various large and mid-cabin business-jet aircraft; provides maintenance, repair work, fixed-based operations, and aircraft management services; and performs aircraft completions for aircraft. The company?s Combat Systems group offers tracked and wheeled military vehicles, weapons systems, and munitions. Its product lines include wheeled combat and tactical vehicles; battle tanks and infantry vehicles; munitions and propellant; rockets and gun systems; and axle and drivetrain components and aftermarket parts. This group also manufactures and supplies engineered axles, suspensions, and brakes for heavy-load vehicles for military and commercial customers. The company Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Rich Smith]

  The Department of Defense awarded General Dynamics' (NYSE: GD  ) National Steel and Shipbuilding Company subsidiary, or NASSCO, a "not-to-exceed" $11.2 million contract modification Monday, hiring NASSCO to draw up detailed designs for Afloat Forward Staging Base, or AFSB, modifications to the U.S. Mobile Landing Platform vessels MLP 3 and MLP 4.