A recent survey by National Retail Systems, or NRS, a privately owned third-party logistics company, reveals interesting insights into truck drivers' job preferences, including answers to key questions like what attracts them to a job and what compels them to leave one. The results could come in handy for American trucking companies that have been spending sleepless nights trying to figure out the best ways to recruit and retain drivers even as the industry battles a severe workforce shortage.�It turns out that drivers don't really care about a company's reputation as long as they get a hefty paycheck, and that a sign-on bonus fails to do what it's meant to do: attract drivers. Here are some interesting highlights from the survey.
Building a loyal team is possible
If you think truck drivers are frequent job-hoppers, you might be surprised by what the NRS found out: Out of the thousands of drivers that it surveyed, nearly 47% have either been at the same job or have changed jobs only once over the past 10 years. Yes, loyalty runs high among truck drivers.�
Top Mid Cap Stocks For 2015: ArthroCare Corporation(ARTC)
ArthroCare Corporation, a medical device company, develops, manufactures, and markets surgical products primarily based on its minimally invasive patented Coblation technology in the Americas and internationally. The company?s Sports Medicine business provides energy-based systems and fixation technologies used to treat soft tissue injuries in the shoulders, knees, and hips. It offers ArthroWands product line that features Coblation based specialized disposable energy-based surgical wands designed for single patient use to treat orthopedic conditions, including shoulder, knee, hip, foot, ankle, elbow, and wrist injuries; and Soft-Tissue Fixation products comprising a line of specialized implants and instruments, such as knotless and traditional anchors for rotator cuff and labrum repairs in shoulder; screws for ligament reconstruction in knee; a range of arthroscopic suture passers; and reusable hand-held instruments, procedural kits, and accessories. The company?s Ear N ose and Throat (ENT) business provides surgical products used to treat conditions performed by ENT healthcare professionals. It offers various products for general head, neck, and oral surgical procedures, including sinus surgery, snoring treatment, nasal turbinates reduction, and adenoid and tonsil removal. The company also provides surgical products for the treatment of spine related and other conditions. Its products include SpineWand devices used to treat soft tissue conditions in spine; Plasma Disc Decompression products for treating contained herniated discs; Cavity SpineWand that reduces the size of malignant lesions in the vertebrae of patients suffering from spinal compression fractures; and WoundWand for acute and chronic wound debridement, and wound cleansing. ArthroCare sells its products to surgeons and specialized medical professionals through sales representatives, and independent sales agents and distributors. The company was founded in 1993 and is headquarte red in Austin, Texas.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Jake L'Ecuyer]
Top Headline
Smith & Nephew PLC (NYSE: SNN) announced its plans to buy ArthroCare (NASDAQ: ARTC) for $1.7 billion in cash. Smith & Nephew will pay $48.25 per share in cash to acquire ArthroCare, representing a 6.3% premium to ArthroCare's closing price on January 31.
Hot Logistics Stocks To Invest In Right Now: Guggenheim CurrencyShares Euro Trust (FXE)
Guggenheim CurrencyShares Euro Trust, formerly CurrencyShares Euro Trust, is a grantor trust. The Trust issues shares (the Shares) in blocks of 50,000 (a Basket) in exchange for deposits of euro and distributes euro in connection with the redemption of Baskets. The investment objective of the Trust is for the Shares to reflect the price of euro plus accrued interest. The Shares are intended to offer investors an opportunity to participate in the market for the euro through an investment in securities. The Shares are bought and sold on NYSE Arca. The Shares are backed by the assets of the Trust, which does not hold or use derivative products. The Trust holds euro and, from time to time, issues Baskets in exchange for deposits of euro and distributes euro in connection with redemptions of Baskets.
The Sponsor is Rydex Specialized Products LLC. The Bank of New York Mellon serves as the Trustee. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., London Branch is the Depository. The Depository maintains two deposit accounts for the Trust, a primary deposit account which may earn interest and a secondary deposit account which does not earn interest (Deposit Accounts). The secondary deposit account is used to account for interest received and paid out on creations and redemptions of Baskets. The secondary account is also used to account for interest, if any, earned on the primary deposit account, pay Trust expenses and distribute any excess interest to Shareholders on a monthly basis.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Ben Levisohn]
The euro has dropped about 0.8% against the dollar, while the CurrencyShares Euro Trust ETF (FXE) has dropped 0.7% to $136.71 and the Currency Shares Japanese Yen Trust ETF (FXY) has fallen 1%. The ProShares UltrasShort Euro ETF (EUO) has gained 1.3% to $16.77, while the ProShares UltraShort Yen (YCS) has gained 1.9% to $66.58.
- [By Richard Cox]
Elsewhere, similar market reactions could were seen after last week's monetary policy meeting at the European Central Bank [ECB]. The ECB also did little to signal changes to its own stimulus programs, which was not a total surprise, given the fact that the bank reduced interest rates by 25 basis points to new all-time lows at 0.75% at last month's meeting. The main potential for surprise, however, came from the possibility that the central bank would announce the implementation of negative interest rates (the rate paid to commercial banks when holding money). Since this would have been a bearish outcome for the EUR/USD, markets have since bought the Euro, pushing the CurrencyShares Euro Trust ETF (FXE) higher.
Hot Logistics Stocks To Invest In Right Now: MoneyGram International Inc (MGI)
MoneyGram International, Inc. (MoneyGram) incorporated on December 18, 2003, is a global payment services company. The Company�� products include global money transfers, bill payment solutions and financial paper products. MoneyGram conducts its business through its wholly owned subsidiary MoneyGram Payment Systems, Inc. (MPSI). The Company operates in two segments: Global Funds Transfer and Financial Paper Products. The Company�� global money transfer and bill payment services are its primary revenue drivers. The Company offers its money transfer services on the Internet via its MoneyGram Online service in the United States, United Kingdom and through agent Websites in Italy, Saudi Arabia and Japan. It also offers money transfer services via mobile phone, kiosks, ATM, receive cards and direct-to-bank account products in various markets worldwide. Effective July 8, 2013, MoneyGram International Inc acquired Latino Services, an Atlanta-based provider of money transfer services.
Global Funds Transfer
The Company�� Global Funds Transfer segment provides money transfer and bill payment services to consumers, who are often unbanked or underbanked. Unbanked consumers are those consumers who do not have a traditional relationship with a financial institution. Other consumers who use its services are convenience users and emergency users who may have a checking account with a financial institution, but prefer to use the Company�� services on the basis of convenience or to make emergency payments. MoneyGram offers services to consumers through third-party agents, including retail chains, independent retailers and financial institutions.
The Company provides Global Funds Transfer products and services utilizing a range of point-of-sale platforms. Its platforms include AgentConnect, which is integrated into an agent�� point-of-sale system, and DeltaWorks and Delta T3, which are separate software and stand-alone device platforms. Through its FormFree service, cust! omers may contact its call center and a representative will collect transaction information over the telephone, entering it directly into its central data processing system.
The Company offers money transfers to consumers in a choice of local currency, United States dollars or euros, in certain countries. MoneyGram�� bill payment services allow consumers to make urgent bill payments, pay routine bills, or load and reload prepaid debit cards. These industries include the credit card, mortgage, auto finance, telecommunications, corrections, satellite, property management, prepaid card and collections industries.
Financial Paper Products
The Company�� Financial Paper Products segment provides money orders to consumers through its retail and financial institution agent locations in the United States and Puerto Rico, and provides official check services for financial institutions in the United States. It sells money orders under the MoneyGram brand and on a private label or co-branded basis with certain of its retail and financial institution agents in the United States. During the year ended December 31, 2012, MoneyGram issued money orders through its network of 54,000 agent and financial institution locations in the United States and Puerto Rico. The Company generates revenue from its official check outsourcing services by charging per item and other fees, as well as from the investment of funds underlying outstanding official checks. As of December 31, 2012, the Company also provided official check outsourcing services at approximately 7,300 branch locations of more than 1,200 financial institutions.
The Company competes with The Western Union Company.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Ben Levisohn]
It’s not easy to operate in a business where competition is fierce and pricing power is nonexistent. Just ask Moneygram International (MGI), whose shares are in freefall this morning after it was downgraded by Piper Jaffray.
- [By John Udovich]
Small cap money transfer stock Euronet Worldwide, Inc (NASDAQ: EEFT) and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc (NYSE: WMT) have announced an exclusive money transfer service called "Walmart-2-Walmart,��meaning its time to take a closer look at the stock along with the performance of peers like Moneygram International Inc (NASDAQ: MGI), Xoom Corp (NASDAQ: XOOM) and The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU) which fell 17.68%, 4.32% and 4.98%, respectively.
- [By Lisa Levin]
Moneygram International (NASDAQ: MGI) shares tumbled 12.29% to touch a new 52-week low of $12.99. JMP Securities downgraded Moneygram from Market Outperform to Market Perform.
- [By Jake L'Ecuyer]
Equities Trading DOWN
Shares of Moneygram International (NASDAQ: MGI) were down 17.01 percent to $14.92 following announcement of new money-transfer service from Wal-Mart.
Hot Logistics Stocks To Invest In Right Now: Global X China Materials ETF (CHIM)
Global X China Materials ETF (the Fund) seeks to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the S-BOX China Materials Index (the Underlying Index). The Underlying Index is a free float adjusted, liquidity tested and market capitalization-weighted index that is designed to measure performance of the investable universe of companies in the Materials sector of the Chinese economy, as defined by Structured Solutions AG. Global X Management Company, LLC serves as the investment adviser to the Fund. Advisors' Opinion:- [By pamatlarge]
Investors looking to short a particular sector can choose from several Global X long ETFs. The Global X China Consumer ETF (CHIQ) concentrates its investments in consumer cyclical goods and consumer defense goods. The Global X China Energy ETF (CHIE) primarily holds stocks in coal, oil and utility companies. The Global X China Financials ETF (CHIX) only invests in financial services companies and real estate companies. The Global X China Industrials ETF (CHII) holds stocks in industrial companies and basic materials companies. The Global X China Materials ETF (CHIM) invests in basic materials stocks. The Global X China Technology ETF (CHIB) holds technology stocks as the core of its investments. All of these ETFs are particularly sensitive to sector downturns and general economic contractions.
Hot Logistics Stocks To Invest In Right Now: Workday Inc (WDAY)
Workday, Inc., incorporated in March 2005, is a provider of enterprise cloud-based applications for human capital management (HCM), payroll, financial management, time tracking, procurement and employee expense management. It is focused on the consumer Internet experience and cloud delivery model. Its applications are designed for global enterprises to manage complex and dynamic operating environments. The Company provides its customers the applications to manage critical business functions for their financial and human capital resources. In February 2014, Workday Inc acquired Identified Inc, a provider of online recruitment analytics services.
Multi-Tenant Architecture
The Company�� architecture enables customers to share the same version of its applications while securely partitioning their respective application data. Because customers utilize its information technology (IT) resources and operational infrastructure, this framework reduces the costs of implementation, upgrades, and support.
Object-Oriented Technology Framework
The Company�� applications use objects to represent real-world entities such as employees, benefits, budgets, charts of accounts, and organizations.
In-Memory Data Management
The Company�� use of in-memory processing brings data physically closer to the central processing units and into main memory, eliminating the need to run a disk-seek operation each time a data look-up is performed. This allows for the delivery of embedded business intelligence to facilitate actionable analytics and reporting.
Consumer User Interface (UI)
The Company has built a UI platform that allows it to embrace new UI technologies without needing to rewrite the underlying application logic. It supports all browsers, run natively on Apple�� iOS with applications specifically designed for the iPad and iPhone, and support other mobile platforms such as Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian thro! ugh its HTML5 client.
Configurable Processes
The Company offers a set of tools for configuring, managing, monitoring, and optimizing the business processes that organizations rely on to manage their business. It includes over 270 pre-defined business process definitions to help deployments and provide a starting point for additional configuration.
Web Services-based Integration Platform
By offering an enterprise-class, embedded Web services integration platform and toolset at no additional cost, it relieves customers of many of the burdens associated with legacy systems integration and greatly reduce the risk of implementation failures or delays. In addition to open, standards-based Web services application programming interfaces, it provides a growing portfolio of pre-built, packaged integrations and connectors called Integration Cloud Connect.
Security and Audit
The Company endeavors to adhere to the security standards. It voluntarily obtain third party examinations relating to security and data privacy. It delivers configurable, user-level access control policies as well as a comprehensive, always-on auditing service that captures and documents changes to both data elements and business processes.
The Company competes with Oracle Corporation (Oracle), SAP AG (SAP), Ceridian and NetSuite, Inc.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By MONEYMORNING.COM]
Whitman recently announced the firm will invest roughly $1 billion in that growth field. And in mid-June, HP announced it will align with industry leader Workday Inc. (NYSE: WDAY) to deliver human resources apps via the cloud.
- [By Matt Jarzemsky]
Salesforce is up 33% year-to-date. Workday Inc.(WDAY) has rallied 38% and expense-accounting software provider Concur Technologies(CNQR) is up 44%, to name a few.
- [By Rob DeFrancesco]
Steve Halpern: Very good. Now you follow the full spectrum of high-tech companies, but today we're going to focus on a group of firms that have reported strong fourth quarter earnings and have also issued strong earnings guidance, so let's begin with one of the companies you like. It's called Workday (WDAY).
Hot Logistics Stocks To Invest In Right Now: BMC Software Inc. (BMC)
BMC Software, Inc. develops software that provides system and service management solutions for enterprises in the United States and internationally. The company operates in two segments, Enterprise Service Management and Mainframe Service Management. The Enterprise Service Management segment offers service assurance solutions that manage availability and performance management, event management, service impact management, and capacity management; service automation solutions managing provisioning, configuration change, and compliance automation for servers, networks, applications, and databases; service support solutions, which manages service desk, incident management, service request management, problem management, asset management, service level management, change and release management, and identity management; and BMC Atrium that provides shared technologies that unify information and processes from disparate management tools, and assigns priorities to business servic es. It also offers consulting, implementation, integration, IT process design and re-engineering, and educational services related to its software products. The Mainframe Service Management segment provides mainframe data and performance management solutions that ensure the availability and reliability of the business critical data, applications, and systems; and enterprise workload automation solutions comprising CONTROL-M product line, a set of features enabling data centers to automate their complex workloads and critical business processes. The company serves manufacturers, telecommunication companies, educational institutions, retailers, distributors, hospitals, and other industries, as well as channel partners, including resellers, distributors and systems integrators directly. BMC Software, Inc. was founded in 1980 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Rob DeFrancesco]
Rob DeFrancesco: ServiceNow is disrupting the IT management space. They're cloud-based. They're going against legacy vendors like BMC (BMC). And ServiceNow, that's another strong revenue grower, up 50% expected for this year, 38% for next year.
- [By Tim Brugger]
The next best growth by any of the top five ITOM vendors last year? BMC Software (NASDAQ: BMC ) was up a paltry 0�.9% year over year. Even IBM, the undisputed king of ITOM, grew a mere 0.8% in 2012. Granted, IBM's $3.28 billion in ITOM revenue in 2012 handily beats Microsoft's $1.48 billion, as does BMC's $1.92 billion, but the trend is clear: Microsoft is leveraging its enterprise and cloud computing customers better than its ITOM competitors.
- [By Holly LaFon] increased his stake in BMC software Inc. by 736,755 shares in the fourth quarter at about $36 per share, bringing his total holding to 822,460 shares. He opened the position in the third quarter of 2011 with 85,705 shares at $43.85, though he had traded the stock numerous times before. That quarter, the stock had a 30% downturn.
BMC Software makes software that helps IT organizations manage their business services and applications across distributed, mainframe, virtual and the increasingly popular cloud environments. It has the industry�� broadest choice of IT management solutions, that help clients cut costs, reduce risk and achieve their objectives.
BMC has been partnering with firms to increase its effectiveness in cloud-based services and software-as-a-service in recent years. In December it announced it would support Cisco Network Services Manager across its cloud management product line. It also has a strategic alliance with Cisco for more than 25 cloud customers and works with them often when they unveil new products.
The same quarter, BMC also announced its second-generation service solutions that will help IT professionals avoid many of the risks associates with implementing a cloud and enhance the rewards through workshops, architecture and roadmaps.
"Our strategy for success and market leadership is proven, as evidenced by large enterprises standardizing on BMC's universal management platform, the strong demand for our cloud management and Software-as-a-Service solutions, the ongoing expansion of our strategic alliances and the number of multi-product wins across both our businesses," said Bob Beauchamp, BMC's chairman and chief executive officer, in the company�� third-quarter earnings release.
Financially, BMC has a history of strong earnings, revenue and cash flow growth. Revenue has increased each of the last 10 years to a record $2 billion in fiscal 2011, and cash flow reached $743 in 2011, compared to $613 in 20
Hot Logistics Stocks To Invest In Right Now: Questar Corporation(STR)
Questar Corporation operates as an integrated natural gas holding company. The company develops and produces natural gas and crude oil from its properties located in the Rocky Mountain region, primarily in the Pinedale, Moxa Arch, Vermillion, and Uinta producing areas. It also provides interstate natural gas-transportation and underground-storage services in Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado; and wellhead automation and measurement services for Rockies oil and gas producers. The company owns and operates approximately 2,568 miles of interstate pipeline with total firm-capacity commitments of 4,983 Mdth per day transporting natural gas from Rocky Mountain producing areas to other pipeline systems, distribution systems, and other utility systems; the Overthrust Pipeline in southwestern Wyoming and the eastern segment of Southern Trails Pipeline, a 487-mile line that extends from the Blanco hub in the San Juan Basin to just inside the California state line near the Arizona border; the White River Hub facilities that connect with 6 interstate-pipeline systems and a processing plant near Meeker, Colorado; the Clay Basin storage facility, an underground-storage reservoir in the Rocky Mountain region; and gathering lines and processing facilities, which provide gas-processing services for third parties near Price, Utah. In addition, it distributes natural gas as a public utility in Utah, southwestern Wyoming, and a small portion of southeastern Idaho. Questar Corporation was founded in 1922 and is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Advisors' Opinion:- [By Aimee Duffy]
Customer diversification and fee-based revenue are tough to beat. Let's look at some of QEP's top customers:
Anadarko Petroleum EOG Resources (NYSE: EOG ) Questar (NYSE: STR ) Ultra Resources, a subsidiary of Ultra Petroleum (NYSE: UPL )EOG Resources accounted for 11% of the midstream unit's revenue in 2012, while Questar accounted for 12%. Ultra is one of the two-largest shippers on QEP's Green River 60-mile crude oil pipeline (the other is Chevron).
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