Best Up And Coming Stocks To Invest In Right Now

European stocks fell for a fifth day, erasing their gains for the year, as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. cut China�� growth forecast amid concern banks in the world�� second-largest economy face a cash crunch.

Erste Group Bank AG tumbled the most in 17 months as it planned a rights offer to repay state aid. Kazakhmys Plc plunged to a four-year low as it backed a bid to take Eurasian Natural Resources Corp. private. Kabel Deutschland Holding AG rose 1.7 percent after Vodafone Group Plc offered to buy the German cable company for 7.7 billion euros ($10.1 billion).

The Stoxx Europe 600 Index declined 1.7 percent to 275.66 at the close in London. The equity benchmark has entered a so-called correction, having slumped 11 percent since May 22, when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke commented on the possibility of paring bond purchases.

��hat we��e seeing is a shift in the policy agenda of China which will take place in the next six to nine months,�� James Bevan, who oversees about 4.2 billion pounds ($6.5 billion) as chief investment officer at CCLA Investment Management Ltd. in London, told Francine Lacqua on Bloomberg Television. ��uring that period, we will have continued volatility and continued uncertainty. It will be painful as the adjustment goes through.��

5 Best Integrated Utility Stocks To Own For 2015: Lattice Inc (LTTC)

Lattice Inc., incorporated on October 31, 1994, develops and delivers secure telecommunication solutions. The Company provides products and services, such as Nexus Call Control system, wholesale services, direct services, government services, Aquifer software, SensorView software, and The OneVoice system. The Company derives its revenues from three primary resources, such as providing telecommunications services to correctional facilities and service providers who provide telecommunication services within the industry, selling or licensing the Company's technology, and providing engineering services to other technology companies and government agencies. The Company continues to wholesale call control technology and services to service providers offering communication services to inmates of correctional institutions. In September 2013, Lattice Incorporated established Lattice Communications Inc. in Canada. In November 2013, the Company purchased InnoVisit's video conferencing technology.

Nexus Call Control System (Nexus)

The Company�� Nexus Call Control system is built on the Company's BubbleLink software architecture. BubbleLink is a transaction processing platform that is used to develop and enhance a variety of customizable communications applications. This open source platform is a combination of integrated computer telephony hardware and software. The Nexus Call Control system is capable of handling thousands of call transactions per hour and provides telecom service providers with tools to manage telephone calls. The Nexus Call Control system can manage small to facilities without sacrificing features or performance. Nexus provides call control and management tools targeted at investigation and law enforcement in the inmate telephone control industry.

Nexus includes live monitoring, debit, video visitation, kiosk integration, and recording features. The Nexus system can be structured to use pre-paid collect and pre-paid debit cards that support specialized tarif! fs and call timing. With pre-paid services, Nexus provides complete control and security. Nexus call control systems are supported by an integrated array of administrative and investigative programs that provide a management solution suite. All programs interact in real-time with Nexus calls and databases via an Ethernet local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN).

Wholesale Services

The Company provides transaction based services to other service providers based on the feature set of the Nexus platform. Service providers utilize the Company's services to provide telecommunication services to facilities that require a secure call management solution. The features the Company offers vary based on the specific needs of the service provider. With the scalability of the Nexus system, the Company is able to provide services across the country without requiring a capital deployment for new facilities.

Direct Services

The Company's Nexus platform allows the Company to provide correctional facilities with a feature rich secure call control service that enables inmates to make phone calls while providing the security and investigative features required in correctional facilities. In addition to telecommunications services the Nexus based system provides capabilities to provide services, such as video visitation, kiosk management, e-mail, and other inmate services not readily available through less advanced systems. With the Nexus based platform, because it is centrally located, the Company is able to provide a suite of features to smaller facilities, enabling the Company to provide services traditionally unavailable to this section of the market.

Government Services

The Company�� government services division provides engineering services coupled with technology solutions to agencies of the federal government. The Company has developed data management applications, Internet server technology, and information systems within! federal ! agencies.. The Company's technology and services helps the Company's customers reduce development time for projects, manage the deployment of applications across the Internet to desktops around the world and implement military grade security on all systems where the applications are deployed. The Company has designed, developed and implemented advanced business management applications, integration technologies and enterprise geospatial systems.

The Company supports several operational systems in all of these categories for organizations and defense commands using Web-based technologies and the consolidation of custom and commercial off-the-shelf software to unite dissimilar applications into integrated systems. In addition, the Company provides network engineering, architectural guidance, database management, programming, and functional area analysis to its department of defense clients. The government services division derives approximately 90% of its revenues from the department of defense. The Company's contracts with the federal government consist of three contract types: time and materials, fixed price, and cost plus. In addition, the Company has a mix of prime contracts, where the contract is awarded to the Company, and subcontracts where the Company is a sub on another organization's prime contract. The Company has approximately 90% of its revenues being generated from prime contracts.

Aquifer Software

The Company develops and markets the Aquifer application services platforms, a software product embedded in the applications developed for its customers. Aquifer is an out-of-the-box application framework for secure, Web-enabled, multi-platform applications. It implements application and data security that exceeds military and commercial standards. Built on Web services, Aquifer provides developers with a simplified, clear path to implement applications in a service oriented architecture (SOA). Using Aquifer, developers accelerate the creation, conversion, d! eployment,! and maintenance of next generation, Internet-ready, multi-tiered business applications.

SensorView Software (SensorView)

The Company�� SensorView is a command, control, and monitoring system that provides a secure plug and play (SPnP) backbone for the integration of numerous CBRNE, weather, navigation, video, motion, and other sensor types using a variety of standard wired and wireless interfaces. It can be used with both fixed and mobile units to provide real time monitoring and protection. SensorView software is microsoft windows and Internet browser based for ease of use with a customizable interface that is easy to learn and modify to the specific display needs of the user. SensorView can be used with or without encryption and can be exported for use by Allied Coalition partner nations.

The OneVoice System (OneVoice)

The Company�� OneVoice system, also known as the JWARN Component Interface Device (JCID) on a Chip, or JoaC, is a universal network card that allows non-standard CBRNE or other sensor types to communicate with JWARN and other standardized command and control sensor platforms. OneVoice acts as a protocol translator for legacy sensors, allowing connectivity through both the JWARN JCID interface (JJI) and the common chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRN) sensor interface (CCSI). The system can be integrated directly with a sensor, or hung externally as a dongle to provide the needed connectivity. The OneVoice network card also contains onboard RAM and Flash memory, as well as an integrated global positioning system (GPS), providing the ability to perform data fusion and computation at the node itself, which delivers added power to mesh network sensor configurations.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Peter Graham]

  Small cap stocks Timios National Corp (OTCMKTS: HOMS) and Lattice Inc (OTCMKTS: LTTC) surged 54.29% and 20.83%, respectively, while Unique Pizza & Subs Corp (OTCMKTS: UPZS) sank 27.27% last Friday. But today is a new trading week with the last two trading days for the year. So what will these three small caps do today, tomorrow and after New Years�� Here is a closer look:

Best Up And Coming Stocks To Invest In Right Now: Riverbed Technology Inc.(RVBD)

Riverbed Technology, Inc. provides solutions to the fundamental problems associated with information technology performance across wide area networks (WANs) in the United States and internationally. It primarily offers Steelhead products, which enable its customers to improve the performance of their applications and access to their data across WANs, as well as supports the riverbed services platform. The company's Steelhead product family includes the Steelhead Mobile client software application that provides mobile workers with LAN-like access to corporate files and applications; Virtual Steelhead appliance to extend the reach of WAN optimization; Cloud Steelhead, a solution that is purpose-built for public cloud computing environments; Central Management Console that provides centralized configuration, monitoring, and control for simplifying the process of deploying and managing Steelhead products distributed across a WAN; and Interceptor appliance, which allows organiz ations to scale their WAN optimization solutions. It sells Steelhead appliances to customers ranging from small office deployments to large headquarters and data center locations. The company also offers Cascade product line, which help organizations manage, secure, and optimize the availability and performance of global applications; Stingray product line, which provides virtual application delivery control; and Whitewater gateways, designed to accelerate, de-duplicate, secure, and store backup data sets in the public cloud. It serves customers in manufacturing, finance, technology, government, architecture, engineering and construction, professional services, utilities, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, media, and retail industries. The company sells its products directly through value-added resellers and distributors, service providers, and systems integrators, as well as through its sales force. Riverbed Technology, Inc. was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in San Fran cisco, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Selena Maranjian]

  Finally, Passport Capital's biggest closed stock positions included HollyFrontier�and eBay. Other closed positions of interest include Amarin (NASDAQ: AMRN  ) and Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD  ) . Amarin stock has fallen roughly in half over the past year. The company is a late-stage cardiovascular-focused biotech enterprise, with a promising (and FDA-approved) drug to lower triglycerides, fish-oil-based Vascepa. It needs a big partner for Vascepa, though, and one likely suitor recently bought a competitor instead. Meanwhile, the FDA has scheduled an October meeting about the drug, for which Amarin is seeking expanded approval.

• [By Ant贸nio Costa]

  Riverbed Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: RVBD) The Golden Cross�EMA50/200�is about to occur .Good indicator of next phase. I see the stock price on verge of breaking up out of compression. The Golden Cross is the strongest bullish technical indicator. On watch.

• [By Hilary Kramer]

  In its fiscal fourth-quarter report last week, the company delivered good results in a period where many networking peers, such as Citrix (CTXS) (which has signed on with Cisco as the latter exited the ADC market) and Riverbed (RVBD) posted poor or just so-so results.

Best Up And Coming Stocks To Invest In Right Now: SG Spirit Gold Inc (SG&A)

SG Spirit Gold Inc. (SG Spirit Gold) is an exploration-stage company. As of December 31, 2011, SG Spirit Gold is focused on the acquisition and subsequent development of the Buchans Property and Bobby's Pond property located in Central Newfoundland. As of December 31, 2011, the Company has 100% interest in approximately 46,000 hectares of mineral tenure in southern BC. PJX Resources Inc. The Buchans area properties contain 512 claims totaling 13,433 hectares, including the former producing Buchans Mine - one of Canada's base metal mines, which produced 16.2 million tons between 1928 and 1984, grading 14.51% zinc, 1.33% copper, 7.56% lead, 126 gram/ton silver and 1.37 gram/ton gold. The Daniel's Pond is located within the Tulks North property, in the same mineral belt as Messina Minerals' Boomerang deposit. Bobby's Pond is located 20 kilometers west by road from Teck's Duck Pond mine. It has several properties within the Hughes Range of the western Rocky Mountains. Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Magic Diligence]

  Kraft inserts the valuation effects of its pension plans directly into its income statement, embedded within the cost of sales and selling, general and administrative (SG&A) line items. This has a significant effect on operating earnings and earnings per share, effects which most screeners do not (and can not) take into account.

Best Up And Coming Stocks To Invest In Right Now: Fair Isaac Corp (FICO)

Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO), incorporated on May 15, 1987, provides products and services that enable businesses to automate, improve and connect decisions to enhance business performance. The Company operates in three segments: Applications, which include pre-configured Decision Management applications designed for a specific type of business problem or process; Scores, which includes the Company's business-to-business scoring solutions and services, its myFICO solutions for consumers, and associated professional services, and Tools segment, which include software tools that clients can use to create their own custom Decision Management applications, as well as associated professional services. In May 2012, the Company acquired Entiera Inc. In September 2012, it acquired Adeptra Ltd. On April 1, 2013, FICO acquired Infoglide Software Corp.

Applications

The Company develops industry-tailored Decision Management applications, categorized as Applications, which apply analytics, data management and Decision Management software to specific business challenges and processes. These include credit offer prescreening, insurance claims management and others. The Company's Applications primarily serve clients in the banking, insurance, healthcare, and retail sectors. The chief offerings for marketing are the Company's FICO Analytic Offer Manager and FICO Customer Dialogue Manager. These solutions offer a suite of products, capabilities and services designed to integrate the technology and analytic services needed to perform context-sensitive customer acquisition, cross-selling and retention programs and deliver mathematically optimized offers.

The Company provides solutions that enable banks, credit unions, finance companies, installment lenders and other companies to automates and improve the processing of requests for credit or service. The Company provides customer management solutions for banking, where it�� account and customer management product is the FICO TRIAD! Customer Manager. The Company markets and sells TRIAD end-user software licenses, maintenance, consulting services, and strategy designs and evaluation. The Company's fraud management products improve the Company's clients' profitability by predicting the likelihood that a given transaction or customer account is experiencing fraud.

The Company's solutions are designed to detect and prevent a range of fraud and risk types across multiple industries, including credit and debit payment card fraud; e-payment fraud; deposit account fraud; technical fraud and bad debt; healthcare fraud; Medicaid and Medicare fraud, and property and casualty insurance claims fraud, including workers' compensation fraud. FICO fraud solutions protect financial institutions, insurance companies and government agencies from losses and damaged customer relationships caused by fraud and related criminal behavior.

FICO Fraud Predictor with Merchant Profiles is used in conjunction with Falcon Fraud Manager on payment card monitoring for credit and debit to improve fraud detection rates through the inclusion of merchant profiles. In addition to the Falcon products, the Company offers FICO Card Alert Service. Card Alert Service is a solution for fighting ATM debit fraud. The Card Alert Service identifies counterfeit payment cards and reports them to issuers. The Company offers FICO Economic Impact Service, which uses time series modeling of the macro economy to allow lenders to forecast future credit risk performance based on their views of the economy. Adeptra's software as a service (SaaS) platform enables financial services institutions and other businesses to take advantage of the explosion in mobile communication in order to manage risk, fight fraud and improve the customer experience, all in real time.

The Company competes with Acxiom, Epsilon, Equifax, Experian, Harte-Hanks, InfoUSA, KnowledgeBase, Merkle, TargetBase, CGI, NICE Systems, BAE, SAS, ACI Worldwide, Emdeon, Ingenix, ViPS, MedSt! at, Veris! k Analytics and IBM.

Scores

The Company develops credit scores based on third-party data. The Company's FICO Scores are used in most United States credit decisions, by the banks and credit card organizations, as well as by mortgage and auto loan originators. These scores provide a consistent and objective measure of an individual's credit risk. Credit grantors use the FICO Scores to prescreen candidates for solicitation, to evaluate applicants for new credit and to review existing accounts. The FICO Scores are calculated based on scoring models and implemented on third-party data. The version of the FICO Score for United States and Canadian lenders is the FICO 8 Score. The Company's other solutions include The FICO Credit Capacity Index and The FICO Economic Impact Index.

The Company competes with Experian and Experian-Scorex (U.S. partner), TransUnion and TransUnion International, Equifax, VantageScore, CRIF, LexisNexis and ChoicePoint.

Tools

The Company provides software products that businesses use to build their own tailored Decision Management applications. In contrast to its packaged Applications developed for specific industry applications, the Company�� Tools support the addition of Decision Management capabilities to virtually any application or operational system. These tools are sold as licensed software, and can be used by themselves or together to advance a client�� Decision Management initiatives. The Company uses these tools as common software components for its own Decision Management applications. The principal products offered are software tools include Rules Management, Predictive Modeling and Optimization.

The Company competes with IBM, SAS, Pegasystems and Angoss.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Geoff Gannon]

  But there are some companies like Fair Isaac (FICO) where it�� different. FICO can actually grow earnings faster than assets. As a result, you are probably getting something like a 3% annual kicker beyond ROA * Assets/Market Cap when you invest in Fair Isaac. They throw in a little ��ree��growth.

• [By Bloomberg]

  Alamy More U.S. banks may soon give free FICO credit scores to millions of card customers along with their monthly bills as Discover Financial Services (DFS) extends the offering to all of its cardholders. FICO (FICO), formerly known as Fair Isaac Corp., is negotiating with some of the largest credit-card issuers, Anthony Sprauve, the San Jose, California-based firm's senior consumer-credit specialist, said in a phone interview, declining to identify the banks. Discover, which began providing the scores to some clients in November, will now furnish them to all consumer cardholders, the lender said in an e-mailed statement. 'Jammed Space' on Statements "It really does come down to the technology-implementation challenges," Sprauve said. "You're talking about millions of customers, a tremendous amount of data, and how do you squeeze more data in an already jammed space" on monthly statements, he said. FICO scores are used in lending decisions, such as for issuing credit cards or setting interest rates on home loans, and are the most widely used credit-scoring formula in the U.S. They previously were available at a cost or through online trial subscriptions.

• [By Rich Smith]

  Alamy You've probably heard by now that in some vague way, your credit rating has something to do with the premiums your auto insurance company charges you for coverage. But if you're like me, you've probably never quite understood the details of how this work. Fortunately, the good folks at InsuranceQuotes.com -- a subsidiary of Bankrate (RATE) -- recently published a report that draws back the curtain on this little-understood quirk of the insurance industry. Blame it on FICO Used to be, the rate you paid for insuring your car was tied primarily to demographic and personal factors that were clearly connected to the risk that you'd damage your car and ask the insurance company to pay for it: things like your age, sex, marital status, and driving history. It won't surprise anyone that younger, unmarried men are more likely to be risky drivers than soccer moms, and should therefore pay higher premiums. But about 20 years ago, the folks at Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) found a correlation between low credit scores and a higher risk of filing an insurance claim. That's not causation, of course -- having bad credit doesn't somehow cause you to crash your car. But according to FICO, "people who choose to effectively manage their finances are also less likely to have future insurance losses." Conversely, there is a "statistical correlation between a person's credit score and the likelihood that he or she will file an auto insurance claim in the future." Suddenly, FICO had a new way to hawk its credit histories to insurance companies -- and insurance companies had a new excuse to raise your rates. News Flash: Everybody Does It Ever since, insurance companies have used this finding to tweak the rates they charge you for insurance. Today, says InsuranceQuotes, "about 97 percent of U.S. insurance companies" do it. But how do they do it, exactly?

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  What we do know
  Credit-reporting agencies aren't entirely opaque about what goes into their credit score calculations. For instance, Fair Isaac (NYSE: FICO  ) , the company behind the popular FICO score, offers a detailed explanation of what goes into every person's score. A strong payment history without delinquencies or late payments carries the most weight, making up 35% of the FICO score, while 30% comes from how the amounts you owe compare to the total credit you have available to you. Smaller percentages of the score come from other areas, including the length of your credit history, the amount of new credit you've taken out recently, and how wide a mix of different types of credit you have outstanding.

Best Up And Coming Stocks To Invest In Right Now: Sirona Dental Systems Inc (SIRO)

Sirona Dental Systems, Inc. (Sirona), incorporated on April 25, 1997, and its subsidiaries is a manufacturer of dental equipment, and is focused on developing, manufacturing and marketing solutions for dentists around the world. The Company operates in four segments: Dental CAD/CAM Systems, Imaging Systems, Treatment Centers and Instruments. The Company markets its products globally to dental practices, clinics and laboratories through an international network of distributors. The dental distributors supply both dental equipment and consumables, and have regular contact with the ultimate end-users. In addition, the Company also distributes its products through its own sales and services infrastructure.

Dental CAD / CAM Systems

Dental CAD/CAM Systems address the dental restorations, which includes several types of restorations, such as inlays, onlays, veneers, crowns, bridges, copings and bridge frameworks made from ceramic, metal or composite blocks. Sirona's CEramic REConstruction (CEREC) system is an in-office application that enables dentists to produce high quality restorations from ceramic material and insert them into the patient's mouth during a single appointment. The CEREC system consists of an imaging unit and a milling unit. The imaging unit scans the damaged area, captures the image of the tooth or teeth requiring restoration and proposes the specifications for the restoration. The milling unit then mills the ceramic restoration to the required specifications based upon the captured image and the dentist's design specifications.

Sirona offers a service contract on its CEREC product, which includes software updates and upgrades and maintenance on software-related hardware. In addition to CEREC, Sirona also offers CAD/CAM products for dental laboratories, including the inLab restoration fabrication system and the extra-oral inEos scanner. These products are designed to improve efficiency and reduce costs for the dental lab. The inLab system scans the ! models received from the dentists and then mills ceramic or composite block restorations, such as crown copings and bridge frameworks to the specifications of the captured image.

Imaging Systems

Imaging Systems comprise a broad range of systems for diagnostic imaging in the dental practice. Sirona has developed a comprehensive range of imaging systems for two dimensional (2D) or three dimensional (3D), panoramic and intra-oral applications. Intra-oral x-ray systems use image-capture sensor devices, which are inserted into the mouth behind the diagnostic area, and take images of one or two teeth. Panoramic x-ray systems produce images of the entire jaw structure by means of an x-ray tube and an image capture device, which rotates around the head.

Treatment Centers

Treatment Centers consists of a range of products from basic dentist chairs to chair-based units with integrated diagnostic, hygiene and ergonomic functionalities, as well as specialist centers used in preventative treatment and for training purposes. Sirona offers specifically configured products to meet the preferences of dentists within each region in which it operates. Sirona's treatment center configurations and system integration are designed to enhance productivity by creating a seamless workflow within the dental practice.

Instruments

Sirona offers a range of instruments, including handheld and power-operated handpieces for cavity preparation, endodontics, periodontology and prophylaxis, which are regularly updated and improved. The instruments are supplemented by multi-function tips, supply and suction hoses, as well as care and hygiene systems for instrument preparation. Sirona's instruments are often sold as packages in combination with treatment centers.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Ben Levisohn]

  Shares of Align have surged 24% to $57 at 12:37 p.m. Sirona Dental Systems (SIRO) has risen 0.8% to $69.61, Dentsply International (XRAY) is up 0.1% at $45.44, Integra Lifesciences (IART) has� gained 0.4% to $44.23 and Danaher (DHR) has fallen 0.3% to $72.13.

• [By John Udovich]

  Yesterday, small cap dental stock BIOLASE Inc (NASDAQ: BIOL) surged 17.69% after announcing it had received a license from the Health Canada-Medical Device Bureau to sell its EPIC dental soft-tissue diode laser systems throughout Canada, meaning its worth taking a closer look at the stock along with the performance of mid cap dental stocks like Sirona Dental Systems, Inc (NASDAQ: SIRO), DENTSPLY International Inc (NASDAQ: XRAY) and Align Technology, Inc (NASDAQ: ALGN).

• [By Todd Campbell]

  Dentists may find that patients are more willing to spend on restorative procedures now that the job market is recovering and consumer sentiment is heading higher. That offers new opportunities for providers of dentistry equipment, such as Sirona Dental Systems (NASDAQ: SIRO  ) , a company that was spun out of Siemens in 1997 and brought public in 2006.