Sometimes after a financial setback investors decide that they would be better off if a “professional” takes care of their investments. They reason that buying and selling shares is complicated and that one has to have his eyes on our Bloomberg monitor 24/7. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Although fund managers will do their utmost best to increase your return, an individual investor has one major advantage over most Wall Street pros: the option to invest in small cap stocks. Most funds are simply too big to invest in companies with a market cap of less than $100 million.

Building a well-balanced portfolio of smaller companies can be very rewarding. In fact, both Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch, two of the world’s most successful fund managers in history, achieved their highest returns when their funds were small enough to buy small cap stocks. And while they continued to be successful as their funds grew, they never reached the returns from the early days.

Our Track Record lists our recommendations since 2003 and is proof that [click to continue…]

We’ve had SPAR Group (SGRP – $1.47), which provides a broad array of services that help companies improve their sales, operating efficiency and profits at retail locations, on our radar for many years. The reason why we’re recommending it today is because there’s a new wind blowing through the Company since current CEO Jill Blanchard took over the helm late 2013.

SPAR implemented a strategic plan, which focuses on five corporate objectives: growth, customer value, employee development, productivity & efficiency and earnings per share.

To do so, it expanded its national and international business development and sales activities. It advanced its role with customers from being a merchandising vendor to being a retail partner, which allowed it to renew contracts with expanded service offerings and in new territories.

SPAR is also focusing more on [click to continue…]

EnWave Corp (TSXV:ENW – $1.30 CAD & OTC:NWVCF – $1.05 USD), which commercializes a new dehydration standard for the food and pharmaceutical markets, was recommended by the popular investment newsletter “The Quiet Investor”.

John Gay, the publisher of the subscription based newsletter, stated: “It seems that EnWave has done much of the heavy lifting in order to get this Company and its revolutionary product into the market. The concept has been validated not only by scientific experiments and peer reviewed papers, but also by actual trials by a number of companies, and finally by orders for dryers that have been successfully employed on a diverse range of products.”

“There are nine dryers in operation at the beginning of this year, and the possibility of an additional nine or ten could be in operation by the end of the year. Breakeven can be around [click to continue…]

Cheddar and Gouda Moon Cheese snacks will soon be available at 3,500 locations of a major coffee chain in the United States. The dried cheese snacks, manufactured by NutraDried LLP, a 51% owned subsidiary of EnWave Corp (TSXV:ENW – $1.21 CAD & OTC:NWVCF – $1.00 USD), will be part of a sixteen week long program that begins in June 2015.

The standard 2oz cheese packs will be promoted in-store during the first nine weeks of the program, while the following seven weeks will be used to collect sales data and to determine whether the product can sell without extra promotion. Based on this trial period, the coffee chain will decide if it’s justified to continue distributing the product. And if sales go well, it may even expand distribution to more stores.

Clearly, this is an excellent deal for NutraDried, and as such also for EnWave. If, for example, only 2 packs of Moon Cheese are sold per day in each store, the 16-week trial period would generate [click to continue…]

Since our previous update on MCW Energy Group (TSXV: MCW – $1.03 CAD & OTCQB: MCWEF – $0.80 USD), the Company went through a significant transition. A few weeks ago, it entered into an agreement to sell its mature, extremely-low-margin fuel distribution business, MCW Fuels.

Instead, the Company is going to concentrate on its oil sands extraction technology as the potential for significant profits is substantially higher in this business.

MCW Is Moving Towards 250 bbl/day Production And an Industry Low Production Cost of $28.00 bbl

MCW’s intention is to develop its oil sands operations by processing purchased native oil sands ore from Asphalt Ridge, Utah, using its patent-pending closed loop, continuous flow, and environmentally safe extraction technology.

MCW’s initial extraction plant was officially unveiled on October 1st, 2014 in Vernal, Utah, where the plant’s extraction capabilities were successfully demonstrated to a large group of investors, government officials and media. During the months of October and November, oil production at the site was [click to continue…]

For our first interview of 2015, we sat down with two representatives of EnWave Corporation (ENW – $1.06), a Company that has the potential to change the $400 billion dehydration market forever. We invited Mr. John Budreski, the Executive Chairman and Mr. Brent Charleton, the Senior Vice President Corporate Affairs to give us an in-depth look into the Company.

Investors find out what makes EnWave’s proprietary technology superior and they get a thorough description about the Company’s business model.

Plenty of valuable information is given about the process from the initial contact with a potential client all the way to the signing of a commercial agreement. In addition, Mr. Budreski provides details about EnWave’s impressive list of national and international clients.

The Executive Chairman shares his thoughts on last year’s financials and reveals details about EnWave’s cash flow objectives for 2015. [click to continue…]