Top 5 Clean Energy Stocks To Watch For 2014

RENO, Nev. (AP) -- Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL  ) said it will pay for construction of an 18-megawatt photovoltaic solar plant in northern�Nevada�to provide power for a data center the technology giant plans east of Reno.

The Fort Churchill Solar Array, to be built in Yerington, was included in a filing Monday by NV Energy (NYSE: NVE  ) with the Public Utilities Commission.

Apple announced plans last year to build the data center. The solar generating plant would be located in Lyon County, south of that facility. The solar plant proposal must be approved by state regulators, a process that could take several months.

In a statement, Apple said the solar project would provide renewable energy for the data center and add clean energy to the power grid.

"All of Apple's data centers use 100 percent renewable energy and we are on track to meet that goal in our new Reno data center using the latest in high-efficiency concentrating solar panels," the company said.

Top 10 High Dividend Companies To Buy For 2015: Orbitz Worldwide Inc.(OWW)

Orbitz Worldwide, Inc. operates as an online travel company worldwide. It enables leisure and business travelers to search for and book a range of travel products and services. The company offers various products and services comprising air travel, hotels, vacation packages, car rentals, cruises, travel insurance, as well as destination services, such as ground transportation, event tickets, and tours. Its brand portfolio includes Orbitz, CheapTickets, The Away Network, and Orbitz for Business in the United States; ebookers in Europe; and HotelClub and RatesToGo internationally. Orbitz Worldwide, Inc. also licenses its technology and business services to third parties, such as airlines and hotel partners and provides them various private label solutions, including building and hosting of custom Websites and supplying content feeds to partners' Websites. The company was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Orbitz Worldwide, Inc. is a subsidiary of Trav elport Limited.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Sue Chang , Saumya Vaishampayan]

  Online travel sites TripAdvisor Inc. (TRIP) �slid 5.6%, Priceline.com Inc. (PCLN) �declined 5.1% and Orbitz Worldwide Inc. (OWW) lost 5.6%. An overview of summer activity on Internet-based travel agencies indicated mixed performance for the different sites, Barron�� reported on Tuesday, citing RBC Capital Market�� Mark Mahaney.

• [By Rick Aristotle Munarriz]

  Shutterstock/Andrey Burmakin Folks are turning to the Internet more and more in planning business trips and personal getaways -- and investors are cashing in on the trend. Shares of Orbitz Worldwide (OWW) soared 18 percent last week after posting better than expected quarterly results. Revenue climbing 4 percent and profitability clocking in at 5 cents a share may not seem very impressive, but analysts were settling for the volatile travel portal to merely break even on flattish revenue growth. Strength in its hotel bookings were more than enough to offset weakness in airline reservations. Orbitz Worldwide's larger and faster-growing peers priceline.com (PCLN) and Expedia (EXPE) went along for the ride, climbing 7 percent and 4 percent respectively. They both went on to hit new all-time highs. Seeing an industry laggard start to grow profitably again -- and Orbitz Worldwide is calling for modest continued growth into 2014 -- was enough to get the market behind the popular providers of lodging, air travel, car rental, cruise and vacation package reservations. This isn't just a one-week phenomenon. Priceline and Expedia shares have soared 174 percent and 171 percent since the end of 2011. Orbitz Worldwide has also more than doubled in that time, and it's up a whopping 223 percent since the start of 2013. The Ins and Outs of Inn Outings Orbitz Worldwide's report would have been better if it wasn't held back by an 11 percent decline in airline ticket sales. Priceline and Expedia are growing their airfare sales, but modestly, compared to their hotel reservations. This isn't a surprise. Airlines have done a good job of marketing directly to passengers. There are a lot of people on frequent flyer programs, so they often head directly to an air carrier's website when it's time to book a trip. Pricing is also pretty competitive between airlines. There may not be a lot of carriers offering the desired route, but they are quick to respond to what rivals are doing. Th

• [By Hibah Yousuf]

  While Priceline shares are not cheap, they're not terribly overvalued either for being the leader in online travel. Shares are trading around 21 times 2014 earnings estimates. That makes it more expensive than rival Expedia (EXPE), but the stock is trading at a discount compared to Orbitz (OWW) and TripAdvisor (TRIP).

Top 5 Clean Energy Stocks To Watch For 2014: Vanguard Short-Term Bond ETF (BSV)

Vanguard Short-Term Bond ETF (the Fund) seeks to track the performance of a market-weighted bond index with a short-term, dollar-weighted average maturity. The Fund employs a passive management or indexing strategy designed to track the performance of the Barclays Capital U.S. 1-5 Year Government/Credit Bond Index (the Index). The Index includes all medium and larger issues of the United States Government, investment-grade corporate, and investment-grade international dollar-denominated bonds that have maturities of between 1 and 5 years and are publicly issued. The Fund invests by sampling the Index, meaning that it holds a range of securities that, in the aggregate, approximates the full Index in terms of key risk factors and other characteristics. All of the Fund�� investments will be selected through the sampling process, and at least 80% of its assets will be invested in bonds held in the Index. The Fund�� investment advisor is The Vanguard Group, Inc. Advisors' Opinion:

• [By GURUFOCUS]

  In addition to individual stocks several funds pay a monthly dividend. Below is a sampling of these:
  Monthly Bond Funds- iShares Barclays 1-3 Year Credit Bond (CSJ) | Yield: 1.29%
  - Vanguard Short-Term Bond ETF (BSV) | Yield: 1.25%
  - Vanguard Intermediate-Term Bond ETF (BIV) | Yield: 2.96%
  - Vanguard Long-Term Bond ETF (BLV) | Yield: 4.42%

Top 5 Clean Energy Stocks To Watch For 2014: Nintendo Co Ltd (NTDOY)

Nintendo Co., Ltd. is a Japan-based company mainly engaged in the leisure machine business. The Company operates in two business segments. The Leisure Machine segment is engaged in the development, manufacturing and sale of portable and console game machines as well as game software. The Others segment is engaged in the manufacture and sale of poker cards and karuta (Japanese-style playing cards), the sale of Pokemon (a Japanese animation character) goods, the management of intellectual property rights and the provision of electronic registration services of home use console machines, among others.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Rick Aristotle Munarriz]

  Peter Barreras/Invision/AP Like a curmudgeon yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn, Nintendo (NTDOY) just doesn't get the new generation. The Japanese gaming icon has been struggling to succeed among the latest generation of gaming consoles, and it may not be long before the Wii U is discontinued. Nintendo disappointed investors over the weekend by warning that it is now likely to sell just 2.8 million Wii U systems for its fiscal year ending in March. It had earlier projected to clear 9 million units. That's pretty bad. Keep in mind that Microsoft (MSFT) and Sony (SNE) each sold more Xbox One and PS4 systems than that last year ... and those platforms weren't even out until mid-November. Nintendo also warned that it will post another operating loss for the year. This is the company's third year in a row where it winds up in the red. It was previously forecast to post a profit. Wii Will Rock U Nintendo seemed to be in the driver's seat when it introduced the Wii U 14 months ago. Getting a year's head start on the competition should've been huge, but Nintendo had a soft 2012 holiday shopping season -- and things only got worse after that. Its lack of compelling games and stiff selling price seemed to be the two biggest knocks on the system that tried to raise the bar with a touchscreen controller that doubles as a second screen to enhance gameplay. Nintendo addressed both issues. It slashed the price of its Wii U just weeks before the more expensive Xbox One and PS4 consoles hit the market. It put out new games in 2013 featuring its more popular proprietary characters. It wasn't enough. The Wii U is less powerful than the Xbox One and PS4, but that wasn't a problem before. The original Wii wasn't much of a match for the Xbox 360 or PS3 based solely on the tech specs, but that didn't matter after consumers flocked to the Wii's revolutionary motion-based controller. It didn't matter that the Wii's graphics weren't as mind blowing as the stuff b

• [By Daniel James]

  Gaming for the masses
  In what might be a game-changer for Sony (NYSE: SNE  ) , Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT  ) and Nintendo (NASDAQOTH: NTDOY  ) , the Chinese government has for the first time in 13 years approved the sale of videogame consoles, provided that these companies set up a base of operations in the new free trade zone and manufacture the products in China. Yet entering China's gaming market, typically dominated by free-to-play games, may prove to be a daunting challenge for these companies. Adapting to a free-to-play model, while complicated, may prove to be a crucial measure.

• [By Leo Sun]

  Nintendo (NASDAQOTH: NTDOY  ) President Satoru Iwata is locked in a battle with senior managers regarding his refusal to publish smartphone games, according to Japanese news site Business Journal.

• [By Leo Sun]

  Sales of Nintendo's (NASDAQOTH: NTDOY  ) Wii U have slightly accelerated since September, hitting lifetime sales of 5.05 million units, according to the latest sales data from VGchartz.

Top 5 Clean Energy Stocks To Watch For 2014: Control4 Corp (CTRL)

Control4 Corporation, incorporated on March 27, 2003, is a provider of automation and control solutions for the connected home. The Company provides its consumers with the ability to integrate music, video, lighting, temperature, security, communications and other functionalities into a unified home automation solution. The Company's solution functions as the operating system of the home, making connected devices work together to control, automate and personalize the homes of its consumers. Control4 Home Operating System (C4 OS) is one of the product line of the Company. It embeds its C4 OS in a range of products, including controller appliances, interfaces and connected devices that interact with various music, video, lighting, temperature, security, communications and other devices. The Company offers its 4Sight subscription service, which allows consumers to control and monitor their homes remotely from their smartphone, tablet or laptop, and allows its dealers to perform remote diagnostic services. The Company's 4Sight allows consumer to remotely unlock the front door to let in a repairman, to turn on the air conditioning on the way home, and to monitor the home security cameras from a smartphone. In addition, its 4Store application marketplace offers a range of third-party applications for use with the Company's products. The Company's solution provides consumers with access to over 6,400 third-party devices.

Software Platform

At the center of the Control4 product line is the Control4 Home Operating System, and the associated application software and software development kits (SDKs). The high-level software components include Director, Navigator, Composer Professional Edition, Composer Home Edition and Composer Media Edition, DriverWorks SDK, and Navigator SDK and Application SDK. Director is a real-time, extensible home operating system kernel that is responsible for monitoring and receiving events from numerous devices and services, processing those events according ! to consumer personalized settings, and then dispatching commands to the appropriate devices to perform predefined actions. Navigator displays intuitive and rich graphical user interfaces on televisions, in-wall and table-top touch panels, smartphones and tablets, as well as list-based devices, such as a remote controls with LCD text-displays. Composer Professional Edition is a software application that enables trained and certified Control4 dealers and installers to design, configure and personalize a Control4 home automation system for consumers. Composer Home Edition and Media Edition enable consumers to view and configure their Control4 managed devices. These drag-and-drop programs provide the ability to manage digital media and create and modify simple programs and policies (such as changing lighting scenes, modifying custom buttons and controlling behaviors among devices based on schedules or times of the day). DriverWorks SDK is a software development kit that enables dealers, programmers and device manufacturers to independently develop and test custom two-way interface drivers to support the integration of a new device or device model into its system, or to customize and enhance an existing driver. Navigator SDK and Application SDK are software development kits that enable third-party dealers and programmers to customize and deliver new application functionality within Navigator user interfaces on Control4 interface devices through the development of applications.

Products with Embedded Software and Services

The Company's controller appliances run its Director software to monitor, process and automate events, statuses and actions for numerous devices and services, creating a connected home experience. It offers the HC-800, a whole home controller appliance, and the HC-250, a single-room controller appliance. It also licenses its Director software on the new Sony ES 5800 and 2800 receivers, transforming them into controller appliances with home theater audio and video ! capabilit! ies. The Company offers touch panels, handheld remote controls and keypads as interface devices. It also develops and delivers software applications for Apple iOS and Android smartphones and tablets that enable these personal devices to become control interfaces to Control4 connected homes, both on-premise and remotely. The Company offers network-enabled 4x4 and 8x8 zone audio amplifiers, and a 16x16 audio matrix switch for versatile multi-room and whole-home audio distribution. It also offers an integrated digital media player for integration of local digital audio and video, as well as Wi-Fi and Ethernet amplified speaker points for streaming digital audio to speakers in areas without an audio receiver.

The Company offers a suite of lighting products that provide personalized control and energy management. Its suite of wireless light switches and dimmers can replace devices in an existing home or be installed in new homes. It offers in-wall wireless switches and dimmers for 120V, 240V and 277V electrical loads, which meet the requirements of North America and many international markets. The also plan to offer panelized systems, where all of the lighting control will be done on a remote panel. Its new Control4 lighting products will have the ability to measure how much energy each load is using and provide suggestions to the consumer on how to conserve energy and reduce costs. The Company offers devices that provide energy savings, convenience and efficiency for temperature control. Its wireless multi-stage thermostat is completely programmable with up to six set points per day and, using its 4Sight subscription service, is remotely accessible and controllable. The Company provides a set of products and software services created by the Company, as well as distribute certified third-party products, including deadbolts, door and window sensors, motion sensors, garage access systems and water leak detection systems, from its security partners, such as Baldwin, Card Access, Kwikset and Yale. ! The Compa! ny offers full motion video and hi-fidelity audio intercom capability through its in-wall and tabletop touchscreens, as well as its exterior weather-resistant door stations. 4Sight is a subscription service that enables 24x7 home monitoring and control from virtually anywhere, remote home programming and support, and instant email alerts based on home events so that homeowners are always in-the-know.

The Company offers a subscription service called 4Sight that enables remote access to the connected home without exposing the installer or consumer to the complexities of communicating around firewalls and private Internet Protocol addresses. This service facilitates connections between remote client devices and its systems through a cloud-based service. Using 4Sight, consumers can remotely monitor and control their Control4 systems as if they were at their homes.

The Company competes with AMX, Crestron, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung, Savant, Logitech, Lutron, Nest, Roku, Sonos and Universal Remote Control, ADT, Comcast, Verizon and Vivint.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Jason Moser]

  In this edition of The Motley Fool's "Ask a Fool" series,�Motley Fool�analysts Jason Moser and Brendan Mathews take a question from a reader who asks, "Is there any specific reason why�Control4 (NASDAQ: CTRL  ) is pretty volatile? Seems like it's up or down over 5% everyday!"

• [By Rick Aristotle Munarriz]

  Alamy You can never know in advance all the news that will move the market in a given week, but some things you can see coming. From food giants to tech bellwethers, here are some of the things that will help shape the week that lies ahead on Wall Street. Monday -- Organic Growth: The market for organic foods has never been hotter, and Annie's (BNNY) is there to cash in on consumers craving more natural edibles. It makes organic pastas, crackers, frozen pizzas, and other food products. Annie's reports after the market closes on Monday. It should be another quarter of healthy growth. Analysts see revenue and earnings growing by roughly 20 percent for the quarter that ended in December. The one thing that investors will need to watch out for is that Annie's has missed Wall Street's profit targets in the previous two quarters. Tuesday -- In Control: One of last month's big winners was Control4 (CTRL). Shares of the home automation specialist soared 29 percent in January, bucking the market, which took a bit of a tumble. And you don't have to look too hard to spot the catalyst behind its rally. Google's (GOOG) acquisition of smart thermostat maker Nest drew attention to Control4 as another play on automated home technology. The thinking here is that if Google is buying into the niche of Web-fueled home automation, other dot-com giants may consider acquiring Control4 to establish a presence in this new battlefield. Control4 reports on Tuesday. It's unlikely to admit that it's receiving buyout interest on the heels of Google's move, but you know it's going to be asked. Wednesday -- The Cisco kid: It may seem hard to believe, but there was a time when Cisco (CSCO) was this country's most valuable company. Just before the dot-com bubble popped, the leading provider of routers, switches, and other networking gear commanded the market's largest market cap. Then again, at the time we thought that anything Web-related was worth a whole lot of money, and Cisco was the co

• [By Jon C. Ogg]

  Control4�Corp. (NASDAQ: CTRL) was started as Buy at Canaccord Genuity on a likely late Tuesday call. This one was started as Buy at BofA/Merrill Lynch on Tuesday as the broker quiet period ended.