Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) hit a new high this morning ahead of next week’s earnings.  The new value is almost at $400 billion.  The new high is $428.50 for now and the consensus price target from Thomson Reuters is now above $509.00.

Dollar Tree, Inc. (NASDAQ: DLTR) is continuing with the trade-down economy and the secular growth of the dollar store (actually sub-$10) stores.  The new high is $85.58 and the consensus price target is $86.27 from Thomson Reuters.  Dollar Tree is now worth more than $10 billion in market capitalization.

Ecolab Inc. (NYSE: ECL) is worth almost $14 billion now, and the new high today of $60.45 compares to a Thomson Reuters consensus price target of $61.56.

Read Also: Top 2012 Stock Picks From Major Gurus

McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE: MCD) gave solid same-store sales forecast and recently juiced up its dividend.  The new high is $101.87 and the market cap is nearing $104 billion.

Monster Beverage Corporation (NASDAQ: MNST) recently announced a stock split and shares hit a new high this morning but have promptly backed off by close to 2%.  The new high is $101.67 and the consensus analyst target is close to $105.00.  It is hard to imagine, but Monster now has a market value of almost $8.7 billion.

Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE) keeps doing it.  A new high of $100.75 was put in today after a prior 52-week high of $99.44.  Its market value now eclipses $46 billion.

Panera Bread Company (NASDAQ: PNRA) is up at stratosphere levels now for its healthier sandwich and destination approach.  The new high is $151.93 and the consensus price target from Thomson Reuters is $146.68.  Its market cap is now almost $4.5 billion.

Read Also: DJIA Projected 12% Gains to 13,678 in 2012

Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) has proven us very wrong on how high the valuation can go back up to.  The new high is $48.15 and the consensus price target from Thomson Reuters is just under $48.00 and the market cap is now more than $35 billion.

Advance Auto Parts Inc. (NYSE: AAP) worth over $5 billion, AutoZone, Inc. (NYSE: AZO) worth over $13 billion, and O’Reilly Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: ORLY) worth over $10 billion… These all hit record high prices in their stocks on Wednesday. With a record age car fleet in America of more than 10 years, car parts stores and suppliers sure are going to have a lot of car owners to sell parts to that are long past the warranty and insurance coverage.

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JON C. OGG

Baker Hughes Inc. (NYSE: BHI) Cut to Market Perform at BMO.
Beam Inc. (NYSE: BEAM) Started as Hold at Argus.
Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) Cut to Perform at Oppenheimer.
Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) Started as Buy at IS Group.
Ecolab Inc. (NYSE: ECL) Cut to Neutral at Citigroup.
FXCM Inc. (NYSE: FXCM) Cut to Sell at Citigroup.
Gap Inc. (NYSE: GPS) Cut to Market Perform at Wells Fargo.
General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) Started as Overweight at Barclays.
Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) Started as Buy at ISI Group.
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE: IBM) Started as Outperform at Macquarie.
Interactive Brokers Group (NASDAQ: IBKR) Raised to Outperform as Bull of the Day at Zacks.
ITT Corporation (NYSE: ITT) Started as Equal-Weight at Barclays.
Kinder Morgan Energy Partners (NYSE: KMP) Started as Neutral at JPMorgan.
Plains All American Pipeline (NYSE: PAA) Started as Overweight at JPMorgan.
TAL International Group, Inc. (NYSE: TAL) named Value stock of the day at Zacks.
Teradyne, Inc. (NYSE: TER) lowered target to $12 as Bear of the Day at Zacks.

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JON C. OGG

We would normally group these alphabetically, but not today.  We grouped these in order of size and then we used an alphabetic order when it came to the same size of a buyback announcement.  The first group is the billions of dollars.

We then grouped the stocks by size again from the under $1 billion down to $500 million, and then we grouped the buybacks of under $500 million down to $200 million.  Usually we would cut the list off at buybacks of the $100 million and higher but the list was already too big so we cut the Buyback Kings off at $200 million for August.  Lastly, we have a chart at the very end tallying it all up…. Some $28.7 billion for just the $200 million and higher in new or expanded buyback announcements.  There were literally dozens of other buybacks that were closer to the $100 million mark and many more that were less than that.

The $1 billion and higher alone which were announced in August were as follows: Lowe’s Companies, Inc. (NYSE: LOW); CVS Caremark Corporation (NYSE: CVS); Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ: CELG); Covidien plc (NYSE: COV); Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ: INTU); Discovery Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: DISCA); Harris Corporation (NYSE: HRS); and Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE: LMT).

And there’s plenty of work for the likes of Nalco Holding Co. (NYSE: NLC),Clean Harbors, Inc. (NYSE: CLH), and Newpark Resources, Inc. (NYSE: NR). A ruptured crude oil pipeline belonging to Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) dumped an estimated 1,000 barrels of oil into the Yellowstone River about 10 miles upstream of Billings, Montana. In China’s Bohai Bay, a well operated by ConocoPhillips Corp. (NYSE: COP) and China’s Cnooc Ltd. (NYSE: CEO) has leaked about 1,500 barrels of oil, and a well in the North Sea operated by Royal Dutch Shell plc (NYSE: RDS-A) has leaked about 1,300 barrels into the waters off the coast of Scotland.

The leaks — and there are plenty of others — have led to a slowdown in offshore drilling and, in the US, more opposition to a plan by Transcanada Corp. (NYSE: TRP) to build the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline to carry crude from the oil sands region of western Alberta to the Gulf Coast. And the new regulatory regime is not just taking hold in the US either.

The five countries surrounding the Caspian Sea and its 30 billion barrels of oil have negotiated an agreement to establish an emergency response mechanism for potential oil spills. Greenland has just published its spill response plan even though test wells off the country’s west coast have so far shown no commercial quantities of oil or gas.

The plan with the largest effect appears to come from the United Nations Environment Programme, related to pollution of drinking water in Nigeria’s Ogoniland. The UN conducted a 14-month study of the effects of 50 years of oil drilling and transportation in the region and concluded that the situation is much worse than originally believed. The clean-up effort is expected to surpass that which followed the Gulf of Mexico spill last year with officials estimating recovery could take 25-30 years.

Tighter regulations and the development by governments of detailed emergency response plans means that companies like Nalco and Clean Harbors have an opportunity to shop their expertise more widely around the world. The work would not be just clean-up, but could also involve specialized consulting.

When Clean Harbors announced its second quarter results earlier this month, the company also indicated it is shopping around for acquisitions. Nalco has also reported second quarter earnings and raised its guidance for both EPS and revenues for the full fiscal year. Nalco has also agreed to a merger with Ecolab Inc. (NYSE: ECL) that is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

Clean Harbors posted an all-time high earlier this month and the stock closed yesterday at $51.57, in a 52-week range of $29.35-$59.35. Clean Harbor shares are up nearly 70% in the past 12 months. Nalco’s shares jumped in mid-July on the merger agreement with Ecolab. Shares closed yesterday at $33.48, in a 52-week range of $21.98-$37.34.

Paul Ausick

AutoZone Inc. (NYSE: AZO) Raised to Buy at Citigroup.
Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) Raised to Buy at Gleacher & Co.
Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. (NYSE: CTB) Maintained Underperform as Bear of the Day at Zacks.
Cree Inc. (NASDAQ: CREE) Raised to Buy at Canaccord Genuity.
Ecolab Inc. (NYSE: ECL) Raised to Buy at Deutsche Bank.
Ener1, Inc. (NASDAQ: HEV) Cut to Underperform at BofA/ML.
Expedia, Inc. (NASDAQ: EXPE) Reiterated Strong Buy as Value at Zacks.
First Solar Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) Raised to Buy at Jefferies.
Kindred Healthcare (NYSE: KND) Raised to Outperform at Wells Fargo.
Monsanto Co. (NYSE: MON) Raised to Buy at BofA/ML.
Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE: MWW) Cut to Hold at Citigroup.
Mosaic Co. (NYSE: MOS) Raised to Buy at Ticonderoga.
Newmont Mining Corporation (NYSE: NEM) Raised to Buy at Stifel Nicolaus.
OpenTable, Inc. (NASDAQ: OPEN) Raised to Buy at Citigroup.
ProLogis (NYSE: PLD) Raised to Outperform at FBR.
VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) Raised to Outperform at FBR.
Western Refining, Inc. (NYSE: WNR) Raised to Outperform as Bull of the Day at Zacks.

You are invited to join our free daily email distribution list to hear more about analyst upgrades and downgrades, top day trader and active trader alerts, dividend trends, news on Buffett and other investment gurus, IPOs, secondary offerings, private equity, and more.

JON C. OGG

The new index barometers will join the NASDAQ Water Index and the NASDAQ Water Total Return Index.  Whether this is green or sensible is up to you, but there is a fair question to ask here: How many water indexes are needed?  The new indexes are as follows:  OMX Global Water Index, NASDAQ OMX Global Water Total Return Index, NASDAQ OMX US Water Index, and the NASDAQ OMX US Water Total Return Index.

What is interesting about this and only highlights our key question even more is that NASDAQ is selecting the constituents from the same universe of stock picks as the first two water index readings.  The difference is in the component weightings. The total return indexes reinvest dividend payments and the price returns effectively discount the dividends.

Potable water and its future availability remain the key topics of why your investment portfolio should chase this sector.  Again, the trick is that it is not easy.  It turns out that many “water companies” turned out to be dependent upon the creation of new housing subdivisions over the last fifteen years or that they are tied heavily to government contracts.  General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) and 3M Co. (NYSE: MMM) are two key holders of water investing, but these water operations are mixed with fluids in these conglomerates and investing in any conglomerate because of one aspect of their business just misses the point of investing.

Along with the theme of water investing for the long-term, we did create a list of Stocks to Own for the Next Decade and that included American Water Works Company, Inc. (NYSE: AWK).

What makes water difficult to invest in is that fluid and hydraulic outfits keep looking to consolidate via mergers and acquisitions.  This fresh Nalco Holding Company (NYSE: NLC) merger with Ecolab Inc. (NYSE: ECL) has the goal of adding $5.4 billion in a combination of cleaning, sanitizing and water management.

We now have ITT Corporation (NYSE: ITT) breaking itself up and one of the 3 surviving companies, its water company, will be called Xylem under the “XYL” ticker on the New York Exchange.

We recently featured some of our top water investments out to 2012 and beyond, including American Water Works Company, Inc. (NYSE: AWK), Insituform Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: INSU), Tetra Tech Inc. (NASDAQ: TTEK), and others.  This was an expanded and updated module for our Top Water Pick for 2011.

What we do expect as one possible outcome from more index launches is the creation of more exchange-traded funds which track water investing.  There are already ETF products around the Palisades Water Index and Standard & Poor’s indexes.  ETFs do not currently track the NASDAQ indexes in water per our most recent screens.

PowerShares Water Resources Portfolio (NYSE: PHO) has more than five years of history and it has well almost $1.2 billion in assets inside the ETF.  Its international equivalent that includes the U.S. but is more globally focused is the PowerShares Global Water Portfolio (NYSE: PIO) but that one is only about one-third of the size in assets and only about one-fourth as liquid when measuring shares per day.

And then come the less liquid water ETFs, no pun intended… There is also the Guggenheim S&P Global Water Index (NYSE: CGW) ETF, which carries about $250 million in assets and trades about 50,000 shares a day.  The even smaller First Trust ISE Water Index Fund (NYSE: FIW) has about $69 million in assets but trades an average of under 20,000 shares per day.

There are many more ways to invest in water, but you have probably gathered that we maintain it is not an easy sector to invest in.  Many pure-play water companies trade at significant premiums to the broader market.  Even when you go through the individual stock holdings that these water ETFs hold, you will suddenly realize that the term “Water Investing” really translates to “companies which also have water operations.”

JON C. OGG

The combined entity is expected to have annual revenues of roughly $11 billion.  The deal also values Nalco at $38.80 per share, which is a 34% premium to yesterday’s closing price of Nalco.  Nalco’s shareholders get to choose a cash-out or a stay-in as Ecolab is giving shareholders the option to either receive 0.7005 shares of Ecolab common stock per Nalco share, or they can choose to receive $38.80 in cash.  The overall mix of consideration paid to Nalco shareholders will be approximately 30% cash and 70% stock.

Ecolab noted that it will issue about 68.9 million shares of Ecolab stock and that it will pay out about $1.6 billion in cash.  As part of the deal, there is also the assumption of about $2.7 billion in debt, making the enterprise value of the deal come to about $8.1 billion.

In the announcement, Nalco also announces record preliminary second quarter sales estimates and it raised guidance for 2011.  The transaction has been approved by both boards of directors.

As of the close, Nalco was valued at $4 billion with its $28.87 share price and the 52-week range was $21.98 to $32.62.  This buyout represents all-time highs.  Ecolab shares closed at $55.39 with a market cap of $12.85 billion and its 52-week trading range is $46.05 to $57.19.

JON C. OGG

S&P reported that the Dividend Aristocrats posted an annualized dividend yield of 2.9% in 2009, compared with a yield of 2.01% for the S&P 500 Index. But MarketWatch notes that the Dividend Aristocrats gained an average of just $0.02 from late Monday to Wednesday’s close. That’s a gain of just 0.004%, compared with a gain of 0.4% in the S&P 500.

The proposed tax bill agreed to by President Obama and Republican legislators on Monday extends the 15% tax rate on dividends, but apparently that wasn’t enough to light a fire under the Aristocrats.

The performance of individual companies gets part of the blame for the weak showing. The other part of the blame goes to the temporary nature of the tax deal. In two years, the dividend tax rate could change again. Uncertainty is the bane of a dividend investor’s life.

Yet with all the cash available on corporate balance sheets, and no good place to spend it, the outlook for dividend hikes is promising. US consumers are not spending enough to convince companies to invest in new capacity or new hiring. Until that changes, dividend hikes and even special dividends are far more enticing to shareholders than stock buybacks.

MarketWatch notes that both US Bancorp (NYSE: USB) and Bank of New York Mellon (NYSE: BK) are among the financial sector stocks that could increase dividends in 2011. US Bancorp got bumped from the Dividend Aristocrats for 2010, as did General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) and Pfizer, Inc. (NYSE: PFE).

Perhaps a larger problem for the Aristocrats than either uncertainty or weak performance by some companies is that as stocks move up, dividend investing looks pretty pokey and old-fashioned. There’s a lot more to be gained that a paltry 2.9%, and the risk is not too great as long as Uncle Sam keeps pumping out new dollars.

Paul Ausick

Aflac (AFL) Cut to Hold from Buy at Citigroup.
Campbell Soup (CPB) Raised to Sector Perform at RBC.
Ecolab (ECL) Cut to Neutral at JPMorgan.
Isis Pharmaceuticals (ISIS) Started as Buy at Cantor Fitzgerald.
MGM Mirage (MGM) Cut to Neutral at BofA/Merrill.
Noble Corporation (NE) Raised to Overweight at Morgan Stanley.
Norfolk Southern (NSC) Cut to Neutral at BofA/Merrill.
Perry Ellis (PERY) Cut to Neutral at SunTrust.
Teradyne (TER) Started as Underweight at Morgan Stanley.
Western Digital (WDC) Cut to Neutral at Baird.

Jon C. Ogg
July 27, 2009

• AmerisourceBergen (ABC) Raised to Outperform at Oppenheimer.
• Dollar Tree (DLTR) Raised to Neutral at Goldman Sachs.
• Ecolab (ECL) Raised to Outperform at Baird.
• Motorola (MOT) Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan.
• Prosperity Bancshares (PRSP) Raised to Buy at SunTrust.

Jon C. Ogg
January 15, 2009