Jim:      I want to answer a few tweets, but first we've got a real backlog of homework, so it's time for some housekeeping. Back on March 23rd, Ted from Texas asked about the Howard Hughes Corporation, symbol HHC. And it stumped me entirely. It's a real estate company spun off from General Growth Properties a couple of years ago. It develops and operates both master plan communities and mixed-use properties with assets in 18 states. HHC owns some interesting properties, including the South Street Seaport in Manhattan but, ultimately, it's extremely expensive. 166x the one earnings estimate we have for next year. Nothing written about these guys, and it doesn't pay a dividend. I'd much rather play real estate through a real estate investment trust with a decent yield, like Federal Realty or Tanger Factory Outlet Centers.

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Jim:      Then, on March 28th, Chris from California asked me about Vocus. This is a microcap stocks with a tiny market cap of about a quarter of a billion dollars. I wanted to do more homework before I rendered an opinion. Vocus turns out to be a highly-speculative provider of cloud-based marketing and public relations software that helps small businesses influence customers across the web, and social networks, and through the media. Now, Vocus recently bought a social and email marketing firm called iContact, for $169 million. But that's a huge deal for such a small company. I'm a little worried about the integration risk going forward. This one's too speculative for me, especially in an environment where small businesses aren't in great shape. Take a look at ET if you like that one.

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Jim:      And on April 4th, Bill from Hawaii wanted to know what to do with Ubiquiti Networks. This one stunned me, I've got to tell you. It makes powerful wireless hardware and, right now, they're working on a way to use their technology to provide cost-effective internet access to underserved rural areas, and we know there's a lot of those. Believe it or not, only about about a quarter of the world's population has internet access. And even in developed countries, large portions of the population still has little or no access to broadband. Get this. The stock's run up 129% since its IPO. We most certainly missed this one, okay. It sells for 27x next year's earnings estimates. Given that management is projecting about a 25% revenue growth for the next several years, there might be some opportunity here. But you know what? I've got to have it cool off a bit before I get behind it. But it is interesting.

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Q:         Jim,
Better to own CSX or NATURAL GAS ? Is it okay to own both?

Jim:      Now you're talking about CSX, the railroad company and Nordic American Tankers, NATURAL GAS . And the answer is, it's okay to own both, because they are not that alike. Nordic American Tankers, I think it's going to report a pretty good quarter, and they've got a lot of day rates going up for their tankers. The dividend seems safe to me. CSX, run by the excellent Michael Ward, reports next week. They have a little too much coal for me, and coal is in a perma-bear market, I'm afraid, because of our prices in natural gas.

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Q:         What's your take on Western Digital, merger and cloud computing make them a good play, no?

Jim:      Alright, get this. Western Digital, there was a really good note this morning saying that, it turns out that the earnings are going to be better than expected. It's a very inexpensive stock. So why don't I like it? It's not proprietary. I think you should own an Intel before I would own a Western Digital.

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