Lindsay Lohan To Pose For Playboy Rumor: LiLo Stock Index Up Over 70%

You have to admit, Lindsay Lohan, the famous and occasionally notorious actress and singer, has a knack for getting her name in the news, whether intentionally or not. According to a recent article at OMG!, a source has said that Lohan has signed a contract with Playboy to pose nude for a spread in the magazine. She is reportedly being paid somewhere between $750,000 and $1,000,000.

What is nice about all the publicity that celebrities get is the ability to promote products and services for various companies that they are affiliated with. This includes motion picture distributors of movies that they appear in, products that they promote on television commercials, and even products that you see then use or drive. A perfect example is the Apple (AAPL) iPhone that Lindsay Lohan has been seen using.

When you look at all these companies, a Celebrity Stock Index™ can be compiled and compared to the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the S&P 500. Stockerblog.com has developed numerous Celebrity Stock Indexes, including Gisele Bunchen, Heidi Klum, and Angelina Jolie. At WallStreetNewsNetwork.com, you can also find free downloadable lists of stocks in celebrity indices including The Beatles and Charlie Sheen.

So lets take a look at Lohan and see what companies she is affiliated with. First, you can no longer invest in Playboy as Hugh Hefner took the company private several months ago.

Lohan starred in The Parent Trap, Freaky Friday, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Herbie: Fully Loaded, and the TV show on ABC, Ugly Betty, all distributed by Disney (DIS). She received numerous awards including
Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a Feature Film Leading Young Actress, MTV Movie Award for Breakthrough Female Performance, Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Breakout Star. The Disney stock pays a yield of 1.1% and trades at 12 times forward earnings.

She also received several awards for her starring role in Mean Girls, a Paramount Pictures release. Paramount is owned by Viacom (VIA). The stock yields 1.9% and trades at 12.2 times forward earnings.

Lohan also appeared in a couple of movies for News Corporation's (NWS) 20th Century Fox, Just My Luck and Machete. News Corp. pays a yield of 1.1% and has a forward price to earnings ratio of 10.

Lohan has been seen numerous times wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses, produced by Luxottica Group S.p.A. (LUX) and recorded some albums on the Casablanca Records label, which is owned by Vivendi SA (VIV). These include Speak and A Little More Personal.

What is amazing is that is you track all these stocks as an index and compare it to the Dow Jones Industrial Average starting January of 2010, you will discover that the LiLo Index substantially outperforms the Dow. As a matter of fact, the LiLo Index was up 71.8% versus only 16.3% for the Dow during the same time frame. Of course, a lot of the growth of the LiLo was due to Apple more than doubling, but even if you back out Apple, Lindsay Lohan is still up 27.4%. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, you should check out the chart.

There are a few other companies which are part of the Lindsay Lohan Stock Index which can be found at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com. To see a free list of all the stocks in the Lindsay Lohan Stock Index, along with financials and the connection to Lohan, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

Disclosure: Author owns AAPL and DIS. No celebrity endorsement is expressed or implied. No investment recommendations are expressed or implied.

By Stockerblog.com

Charlie Sheen Stock Index Graph

The above chart shows how the Charlie Sheen Stock Index has performed over the last three years. As you can see, except for a drop at the beginning of 2009, the Index has outperformed the Dow Jones Industrial Average. As a matter of fact, the Sheen Index is up 6.2% so far this year versus 4.3% for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Since the beginning of 2010, the Sheen Index was up 21.1% versus 15.0% for the Dow, and from the beginning of 2009, Sheen was up an incredible 65.0% versus only 34.7% for the Dow.

The blue line represents Charlie Sheen and the red line represents the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Even during the couple weeks after the February 24 radio broadcast of the Charlie Sheen interview hosted by Alex Jones, the Charlie Sheen Stock Index rose 2.0% versus only 0.8% for the Dow.

Check out the previous article on the Charlie Sheet Stock Index, which describes in detail all the stocks and the connection with Sheen, including such stocks as CBS (CBS), Time Warner (TWX), and News Corporation (NWS) (NWSA). You can also find a free downloadable list of the Sheen stocks at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

Assumptions: This is a price-weighted index, similar to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It includes dividends. Both indexes were converted to a starting baseline of 100.

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above at the time the article was written. No celebrity endorsement is expressed or implied. No investment recommendations are expressed or implied.

By Stockerblog.com

Do Investors Have Their Heads in the Clouds?

A year ago when I wrote my book The Green Light on Green Stocks: A Quick Guide to Green Investing and Making Money in Alternative Energy Stocks, I started touting cloud computing as a green industry, not to mention a way of providing money saving services to many corporations. Cloud computing as a growing industry is finally being recognized. Look at Salesforce.com (CRM), which is up 633% since it started trading in 2004. Last week, Isilon (ISLN) shares jumped 28.5% in one day, after EMC announced it would take over the company at $33.85 a share.

So what is cloud computing? It is having your programs and data stored remotely, 'in the clouds,' instead of on individual computers. As long as you have Internet connection, you can have a fairly dumb computer ans still utilize cloud computing. So where are these so-called clouds? They are basically, in very simple terms, the servers of companies that provide this service, and those servers can be located anywhere.

Do you have Yahoo (YHOO) mail, Google (GOOG) gmail, or hotmail? Then you are using cloud computing in a small way. You don't have the email servers in your office or home, you use the Yahoo or Google servers. As a matter of fact, many public universities are turning over their student email services to Google, giving students a type of gmail account. It saves them money on servers and saves on staffing for support.

These same benefits apply to the private sector, especially when you extend it to data storage and computer software. You don't need a technician to come out an install new software to each employees' station. You don't need a bunch of network administrators monitoring the company's servers. You don't need to periodically upgrade computers. You don't need to own a bunch of servers. You cut down on the costs and issues relating to the disposal of old computers and servers. You don't need to deal with data security, as that is the job of the cloud computing company. The benefits of clouds are extensive, and there are over 25 stocks in the cloud industry to choose from, according to the Cloud Computer Stock list at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com, including companies involved in server farms and outsourced storage systems.

Salesforce.com is a provider of customer-relationship management services that has promoted 'the end of software'. Salesforce has customers of all sizes, including Corporate Express division of Staples (SPLS), Daiwa Securities (DSECY.PK), Expedia (EXPE), Dow Jones Newswires subsidiary of News Corp. (NWS-A), SunTrust Banks (STI), and Kaiser Permanente. Salesforce trades at a lofty 76 times forward earnings, debt in the amount of $476 million, with over $742 million in cash. The company just reported a quarterly sales increase of 30% year over year, with a one cent drop in earnings per share.

VMware (VMW) is another major cloud and virtualization player. Its product VMware vSphere is a cloud computing data center platform. It sports a forward PE ratio of 45. The company has $450 million in debt with $2.9 billion in cash. The company reported that latest earnings increased an incredible 121.4% in earnings on a 45.8% increase in revenues.

Citrix Systems, Inc. (CTXS) provides on demand applications and online services, including GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, GoToTraining, GoToAssist, and GoToMyPC. This debt free company has $902 million in cash and carries a forward PE of 29. The latest quarterly earnings were up 64.3% on a revenue increase of 17.8%.

To access a free Excel spreadsheet database of numerous companies involved in cloud computing in some way, that can be downloaded, sorted, and updated, go to wsnn.com.

Disclosure: Author owns YHOO.

By Stockerblog.com