An IPO conference at the NYSE on Friday kept me from sending you a market recap last week… Today, I wanted to make up for that by going over a number of our open positions – and answering the common questions of whether now’s still a good time to buy shares.

Applied Materials Breaks Support
I’d held off recommending shares of Applied Materials (NYSE:AMAT) for a while, hoping to find a more attractive entry point. While it looked like that time had come on June 23, when the Rhino Stock Report took an official position in the semiconductor company, shares broke through support following a nasty week of European debt news and a bearish turn on solar stocks…

Shares look like they’re continuing their descent – but not for much longer. If you haven’t entered this stock already, I’d recommend buying shares on the first signs of strength. If you’re a big fan of Applied Materials, consider doubling down.

Becton, Dickinson’s a Buy
Becton, Dickinson (NYSE:BDX) hasn’t been a particularly strong performer this year, falling more or less in line with major market indexes like the S&P 500. But I’m still bullish on this stock and Main Street is catching on – a recent Barron’s profile on the company suggests that a 40% upside is in place.

If you haven’t picked up shares of Becton yet, now would make for a good time to do so.

Berkshire Hathaway Boasts 31% Outperformance
We’re up more than 20% on Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.B) as of this writing – a position that’s outperforming the broad market by around 31% as of this writing. If you bought back in January when I recommended the stock, continue to hold onto it. We got into shares of Warren Buffett’s company at a significant discount thanks to the market’s mispricing of Berkshire’s split… if you missed it, I’d recommend investing elsewhere for now.

NRG Steps Up Acquisitions
Our wholesale power generation play has been on a shopping spree, buying up key subsidiaries at discount prices. That’s a strategically significant phenomenon because it suggests that NRG Energy (NYSE:NRG) is well on its way to rounding out its energy offerings this year. With headwinds turning to tailwinds for alternative energy, NRG is a smart stock to be in right now. If you haven’t bought shares, consider buying at current levels.

Sell Off Your Bear Market Hedge
I wrote to you back in January 2009 about the ProShares UltraShort S&P 500 ETF (NYSE:SDS) as a potential hedge against a “W-Shaped” market recovery. I qualified that article by saying that SDS should only be held in the very short term because of tracking errors inherent to leveraged ETFs… but I never issued an official sell alert on the fund.

That’s in part because I talked about SDS without knowing how exactly to treat an investment where I specifically said. “This isn’t a Rhino Stock.”

But I think that the fund’s performance in the Rhino Stock Report portfolio is causing confusion, so I’m officially selling it today and putting it in a “Special Situations” portfolio on our Members Only website.

Hold Onto The Big Gainers For Now
The rest of the stocks recommended in the Rhino Stock Report before 2010 should be pretty sizable gains for you right now. As such, I’m recommending that you continue to hold them, but don’t recommend initiating positions if you haven’t already. With gains like 55% in J.M. Smucker (NYSE:SJM) as of this writing, they’re not the values they once were – but they should still provide performance for us during the rest of 2010.

Have a good fourth of July weekend. I’ll be back next week with a more traditional market update.

Cheers,
Jonas

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