My latest column is up at RealMoney.

New orders for manufactured durable goods in May increased slightly to $213.6 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced last week. This was the first increase in three months, and it followed a 1.0% April decrease. Excluding transportation, new orders decreased 0.9%. Excluding defense, new orders decreased 0.6%.

Behind that bland summary, though, is usually a wealth of information that I believe could be useful for picking the best industries in which to invest. This month, the signal was clear. Get defensive. Among a sea of industries seeing declining sales and orders, one stood out for its strength: defense aircraft and parts.

Disclosure: At time of publication, William Trent has no financial position in the companies mentioned in this article.

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Nascent Wine Company, Inc. (OTCBB: NCTW), DBA Nascent Foodservice, Inc., announced today that the company has signed a letter of intent to sell the Italian food importer and distributor division, Palermo Italian Foods, LLC. The Miami, Florida-based Palermo Italian Foods is being purchased by a group of investors and the current president and director Victor Petrone of Nascent Foodservice.

Sandro Piancone, CEO of Nascent, stated, “The sale of the Palermo Italian Foods improves the company’s financial position and enables us to focus and streamline the organization on our higher margin businesses. While we continue to believe that the value of the Palermo Foods business is significant, we believe it is in the best interest of our stakeholders to focus the organization on opportunities within our core competency of food distribution in Mexico.”

Piancone went on to say that he was glad that Victor Petrone was purchasing the business after serving

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My latest column is up at RealMoney.

We can all agree that the jobs report was pretty lousy. On a year-over-year basis, the growth in employment is barely staying positive.

However, as Jim Cramer likes to point out, there’s always a bull market somewhere, and regular readers probably know I like to use the economic reports as a source of stock ideas. Until they launch an “Economy ETF” (believe me, it won’t be long before somebody tries), that means sifting through the reports to find the industries and companies that are most poised to benefit from the prevailing trends. In this morning’s jobs report, that was pretty easy. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, only five industries are showing statistically significant job growth:

Hospitals Ambulatory health care services Nursing and residential care facilities Oil and gas extraction Pipeline transportation

I’ll bet you noticed the same pattern in those industries that I did.Disclosure: At time of

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My latest column is up at RealMoney. It marks the last of a several part “wallflower” series on stocks with limited analyst coverage on Wall Street.

Standard Parking (STAN) is a leading national provider of parking facility management services. It provides on-site management services at multilevel and surface parking facilities for all major markets of the parking industry. Its properties span 2,100 locations, containing over one million parking spaces, in over 330 cities across the U.S. and Canada.

The company grows both by acquisitions and by winning new contracts. In the first quarter, Standard Parking completed the acquisition of Chicago’s GO Parking. Recent business wins include valet and self-parking services at the Trump International Hotel and Towers in Chicago and the parking operations at five facilities in Queens, New York, by the Greater Jamaica Development Corp.

Furthermore, because the company offers a wide range of services, it can often expand the business

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On Tuesday, Jim Cramer said it was “time to ring the register” and sell. But what railroad stock was he BULLISH on?

He also remains bullish on rails like Union Pacific (UNP) and CSX (CSX) although he’d still take some profits there “just as a prudence method.”

Railroads were one of the sectors I highlighted yesterday based on strong pricing evidenced by the PPI report. However, while CSX and UNP both have high price momentum, their its free cash flow and return potential score poorly based on the models I use.

More interesting in my opinion is railcar leasing company GATX (GMT), based on its strong earnings momentum and neutral scores on most other measures.

Disclosure: At the time of publication, William Trent has no financial position in the companies mentioned in this article.

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What casino-resort company did billionaire Ron Baron recommend on Tuesday?

In this video, Baron recommends Wynn Resorts (WYNN) as well as Ralph Lauren (RL).

Disclosure: At time of publication, William Trent has no financial position in the companies mentioned in this article.

Sponsor: Financial Education Everything you need to know about finance

Short Seller Trivia: In the May 1 “Market Insider” blog, which green stock did shorts want badly?

There is also interest by

My latest column is up at RealMoney.

I think Rent-A-Center (RCII) can benefit from the slowdown in consumer spending and the tightening of credit standards.

If Rent-A-Center were to receive the same price-to-book multiple as Aaron Rents, it could trade above $28 per share today. While I don’t believe that will happen overnight, over the next five years Rent-A-Center could see high-single-digit earnings per share growth and also expand its price-to-book multiple to the 1.9 level. The combination of earnings growth and valuation expansion could generate annual returns averaging 15% or more.

Here’s how the company scores on the Stock Market Beat models:

Earnings momentum: Positive Earnings quality: Positive Price momentum: Neutral Free cash flow: Positive Return potential: Positive

Disclosure: At time of publication, William Trent has no financial position in the companies mentioned in this article.

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First, AIG - the huge insurer just blew a massive tire, announcing a $8 billion writeoff - and another capital raise, which again dilutes current shareholders and means earnings PER share is going to be punished for years to come. But really it's all good - whats $8 billion among friends - and it's all priced in (oops, not so much, down 8% after hours, but maybe by tomorrow morning after CNBC announces it's a good thing it will be up). What I want you to do now is close your eyes and imagine Uncle Ben B as a short order cook. He is now ringing that bell over his head and shouting over to the other minion cooks - "got a fresh order, let's get up some more billions of US pesos pronto, print 'er up!" More paper currency ...

I began expressing concerns about Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH) a year ago. Even when earnings were stronger than expected in February, I stuck to my guns, saying “Cognizant executed so well on so many different metrics this quarter that anything less than perfection in the future is likely to disappoint.” It didn’t take long. The company’s expectations for the coming quarter are below street estimates, which is very unusual for a company whose typical guidance is for “at least (insert consensus estimate here).” Chief Executive Francisco D’Souza said the company has adopted a more cautious view for the remainder of the year “to reflect the heightened economic challenges over the past two months.” Since my November RealMoney piece, the stock has lost 6.8%, compared to ...