Agreement With Firm To Install Electric Vehicle Charging Receptacles At Locations Could Prove Lucrative For Walgreens ...

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67 WALL STREET, New York - April 20, 2011 - The Wall Street Transcript has just published its Large-Cap Value and Other Investing Strategies Report offering a timely review of the sector to serious investors and industry executives. This 31 page feature contains expert industry commentary through in-depth interviews with public company CEOs, Equity Analysts and Money Managers. The full issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.

Topics covered: Large Cap Growth-Oriented Investing - Investing in Asia - Globalization of Health Care - Investing in Energy, Natural Resources & Technology

Companies include: Baker Hughes (BHI); Baxter (BAX); Bio-Rad (BIO); Bristol-Myers (BMY); CBS (CBS); CarMax (KMX); and many more.

In the following brief excerpt from the Investing Strategies Report, expert analysts discuss the outlook for the sector and for investors.

Joseph Parnes founded Technomart Investment Advisors in 1979, and he is the President of the firm, directing all research, analysis and corporate strategy. Mr. Parnes is responsible for supplying the firm's private and institutional clients with practical investment advice. Mr. Parnes has experience across a broad array of industries, with a special focus on growth companies and on short-selling strategies. He is also the Executive Editor of the Shortex Market Letter, a triweekly publication providing specific market insight and recommendations on seven long and seven short positions. Mr. Parnes has been featured regularly in Barron's, Forbes and Investor's Business Daily, and his investment predictions have been showcased in a broad array of media, including Bloomberg TV, CNBC and First Business News. Mr. Parnes earned a B.S. in engineering from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and a Ph.D. in economics from the Societe Francaise des etudes Parapsi Cologiques in Paris, France.

TWST: You mentioned with growth companies you like biotech and other health care-related companies. Would you give us a few examples of names you like?

Mr. Parnes: In the medical field, Bio-Rad (BIO). In genomics, a company called Myriad Genetics (MYGN). It's been hit hard because of some patent-law actions that have been taken against it, but it's only one of their many patents and is being appealed. Plus the company has a significant amount of cash, perhaps close to $500 million. I feel strongly there is a possibility it is going to be taken over. An oil technology company called Core Lab (CLB), and of course a tech favorite, Google (GOOG). Other examples are Oracle (ORCL) and Teva Pharmaceutical (TEVA). The drug chain company Walgreens (WAG) is also a favorite. I believe that Walgreen, having signed up a company to allow some of its stores to be equipped with the receptacles for charging the electric cars of the future, could be lucrative.

TWST: Are you bullish or hot on any other sectors right now? And then, are you bearish or cold, or especially cautious about any sectors right now?

Mr. Parnes: I think Ford would be a bullish example. They have brilliant management who foresaw the fall of the automobile industry, who managed to raise money and were able to weather the bankruptcy patterns that crippled GM (GM) and others. Ford has managed to maintain a series of smaller cars that are green, including hybrids or electric. Even if the oil prices continue to rise, they are better prepared to handle it. Toyota's (TM) struggle can also be a plus for Ford. They have managed to bring their debt from nearly $15 billion last April to $2 billion today. By doing this they have been able to upgrade their investment-grade rating. CarMax (KMX) is also on the radar as it has penetrated the market as well. In terms of colds, we really don't intend to sell short with the idea just to be short. Rather, we try to use it as a hedge against the market. We try to sell short companies that we feel the growth rate has stalled or will not be what it was before, or that the average investor has pushed the stock up excessively and it's overpriced. One of them would be Cree (CREE). Another company that we think has gone excessively beyond its pattern is Intuitive Surgical (ISRG). The stock is heavily favored and has shown tremendous pluses from its da Vinci architecture into hospitals. But in terms of patterns of the accumulations and money flow, we feel strongly that it has overexpanded, and the growth rate cannot be sustained at this time.

TWST: Do you try to be ahead of that?

Mr. Parnes: It's difficult to be ahead of it, but we try. We use technicals as a tool, because there are corrections and retractions on each one of these stocks that I mentioned, which sometimes go beyond certain percentage points. For example, there are a lot of traders that maintain if a stock drops 8% or 10%, it should be exited. We don't value that to be a good judgment because each stock or each equity has its own deviation and its own retraction. And sometimes there may be a percentage of volatility so high on those particular stocks that the slide or retraction could be much more severe, yet on the rebound it will be fast aided by short covering that they will make new highs. So it is very important to treat each one separately and to follow that procedure that I just talked about.

TWST: What criteria do you use in analyzing each individual equity?

Mr. Parnes: On a technical basis we value the movement of the stocks on the two main averages that we follow, that being the 50-day moving average and the 200-day moving average. On the upside we like to maintain or select an equity that is fluctuating above its 50- and 200-day moving averages. We follow that pattern of fluctuations to make sure there is a systematic advance going on for, let's say, a few months to a year, and other factors such as volume and relative strength. And these are the objectives that we follow on each particular equity.

The Wall Street Transcript is a unique service for investors and industry researchers - providing fresh commentary and insight through verbatim interviews with CEOs and research analysts. This 31 page special issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online .

The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse the views of any interviewees nor does it make stock recommendations.

For Information on subscribing to The Wall Street Transcript, please call 800/246-7673

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Researchers prove car electronics can be hacked

Last Updated: March 17. 2011 1:00AM

With a modest amount of expertise, computer hackers could gain remote access to someone's car — just as they do to people's personal computers — and take over the vehicle's basic functions, including control of its engine, according to a report by computer scientists from the University of California-San Diego and the University of Washington.

Although no such takeovers have been reported in the real world, the scientists were able to do exactly this in an experiment conducted on a car they bought for the purpose of trying to hack it. Their report, delivered recently to the National Academy of Sciences' Transportation Research Board, described how such unauthorized intrusions could theoretically take place.

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Because many of today's cars contain cellular connections and Bluetooth wireless technology, it is possible for a hacker, working from a remote location, to take control of various features — like the car locks and brakes — as well as to track the vehicle's location, eavesdrop on its cabin and steal vehicle data, the researchers said. They described potential compromises of car security and safety.

"This report explores how hard it is to compromise a car's computers without having any direct physical access to the car," said Stefan Savage of the University of California-San Diego, who is one of the leaders of the research effort.

Given that the researchers were able to do it, they are now trying to pinpoint just how hard it might be for others, he said.

In the experiment, the research teams bought a car they described as a representative example of a moderately priced sedan. They declined to identify the brand.

"In the case of every major manufacturer, if they do not have this capacity in their mainstream products, they're about to," said Tadayoshi Kohno, an assistant professor in the department of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington.

For example, services like General Motors Co.'s OnStar system, Toyota Motor Corp.'s Safety Connect, Lexus' Enform, Ford Motor Co.'s Sync, BMW's Assist and Mercedes-Benz's Mbrace all use a cellular connection embedded in the vehicle to provide a variety of automated and call center support services to a driver.

These subscription services make it possible to track a car's location, unlock doors remotely and control other functions.

In their remote experiment, the researchers were able to undermine the security protecting the cellular phone in the vehicle they bought and then insert malicious software. This allowed them to send commands to the car's electronic control unit — the nerve center of a vehicle's electronics system — which in turn made it possible to override various vehicle controls.

"These cellular channels offer many advantages for attackers," the report said. "They can be accessed over arbitrary distance (due to the wide coverage of cellular data infrastructure) in a largely anonymous fashion, typically have relatively high bandwidth, are two-way channels (supporting interactive control and data exfiltration), and are individually addressable."

The researchers declined to speculate about the worst situations, such as interfering with a vehicle's control system to make it crash.

However, they noted that their research showed how a next-generation car thief might operate. Instead of using today's "smash and grab" tactics, the thief might be able to simply dial up a parked car, unlock its doors and turn on the engine, then arrive on the scene and drive off.

In addition to the cellular telephone vulnerability, the report details similar weaknesses in other systems that allow remote access, including short range wireless networks like Bluetooth, network ports used for car maintenance and even internal CD players.

The researchers noted that their report was about potential vulnerabilities and said there was no evidence that the safety loopholes they discovered had been used by criminals.

They also said they believed that the automotive industry was treating the threats responsibly and working to improve the security of modern automobiles.

"Everyone has taken this extremely seriously," Savage said.

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