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This post was part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst of 2007 feature. The voting has now closed and readers have chosen ExxonMobil as the most hated company of the year. Be sure to let us know in the comments if you are pleased with this result.

Trying to discuss the Most Hated Companies is not easy. There are so many to choose from that if we left the subject wide open it would fill a novel. The four companies that made our list are all substantial in size and that alone brings much criticism. These four companies and their stocks are all broadly covered by Wall Street and business journals everywhere. We at BloggingStocks have written dozens of stories about them in just the past year alone. Each time we do, we find that our readers have plenty to vent about, so here we are giving you all one more chance.

Three of the four stocks here have not paid off for shareholders, and that is bound to start the ranting and raving. All of them have created some consumer backlash, and even fury. Some people hate the management. But management hating is not the problem at the worlds largest company, Exxon Mobil, since it is up about 200% in the past five years.

Every day we hear business reports speak about consumer spending. Is it up or down? Will consumer confidence remain stable? How will the economy hold up if consumer confidence dips? A lot is riding on these numbers and it remains a symbol of our economic strength.

Among stocks we follow closely on this site Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) seems to be heavily dependent on consumer confidence based on the premium pricing and perceived value in its product line. Yes, Apple just cut prices on the iPhone by $200 but it still costs $399. While the phone seems to be a technological wonder and consumer hit, if times get tough you still can get four free phones with a family plan through the major vendors; for a multi-phone family that is a lot of money. Apple's share price was up notably on Friday, closing at $161.45. While I admire just about everything this company is doing, I think the stock price has advanced passed what I can deem reasonable unless the next 12 months can produce a 50% increase in profits from their current lofty levels. That will not be easy.

Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) would seem less susceptible to weaker consumer demand since it offers an extremely broad base of products, and offers discounts on many items all the time. It also has very deep data on consumer buying patterns and can adjust to changes relatively quickly in a way Apple cannot. Apple has to deal with design, manufacturing, and lead times that leave it much more vulnerable to a downturn in the economy. Amazon's share price was up with the overall market on Friday, closing at $93.43. Having a P/E of 127 (TTM) Amazon's valuation has long since left me behind.

Two days ago the Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDU) sank more than 140 points based partially on fears about potentially weak upcoming earnings reports from retail stores and fears that consumers were tapped out. It was an "I told you so" day for stock market bears.

Today as I write this report the DJIA is up about 160 points based largely on a positive earnings report from Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT), the world's largest retailer, suggesting maybe things are not as bad as all that. (For more on this topic, see this post by my BloggingStocks' colleague Brian White.)

To me, the important lesson is that we are in the midst of a very jittery stock market with a large number of fair weather friends (traders) ready to jump ship at a moment's notice.

This situation exemplifies the importance of thinking long term and not investing in stocks based on daily news reports and speculation. I have made this point in most of my writings and today I make it again. If you do set your sights on long-term goals and invest accordingly you will be able to rest easy when the market jumps up and down.

Investors looking long term might consider out-of-favor sectors that pay high dividends, have long histories of growth and favorable fundamental metrics. Today that would be utilities, banks, insurance, pharmaceuticals and dare I say it, even something as crushed as housing stocks. You can find some of each in my Chasing Value section linked below. One of them that would get you into all of the above and is an old favorite when the market is shaky: Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B). See: Chasing Value: Berkshire Hathaway -- the time is now.

Those of you who are new to BloggingStocks can check out my other stories and read Chasing Value or Serious Money to find more potential opportunities and verify my track record as well.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out his other posts for BloggingStocks here.

In June of 2006, after a month of writing for BloggingStocks, I wrote about our original "Great 8" stocks. Amazingly this is my 300th story - never thought that was possible. It's been fun and educational. During the last few months I started three special sections with the coaxing of Amey Stone and with the coaching of Sarah Gilbert. I decided to go back to the beginning and review the original "Great 8" again and see how my discussion points panned out.

In the past year the Federal Reserve Board has sat on the fence leaving interest rates untouched, however, their hemming and hawing has moved the market at times as fear and greed and speculation had the usual effect of jiggling the market from time to time. Housing starts have fallen steadly to scary levels in some parts of the country. The Iraq war is still on the front pages as the death toll increases and President Bush's influence evaporates.

In last year's report I said "there are no bargains yet, but there are some very interesting developments in the fundamentals" - - so what now?

Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) was the big winner to the upside in the past year followed by Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG). Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) aided by the influence of Carl Icahn, major stock buy-backs and changes in AOL and the cable business, has also performed well. The following were the four things that seemed noteworthy at the time. All of them were relevant to what happend.

1. TWX has a very low price-to-book ratio.
2. GE has powerful products to sell -- literally: aircraft and standby power engines, water resource management and equipment. Plus it has a strong dividend.
3. WMT had a very low price-to-sales ratio before and it is still extremely low at .64. While the stock price is going nowhere and has not for years they seem to be creating more shareholder equity. They are a huge company so the prospects are that they move up slowly over time but are not goin to be exciting to watch -- unless they are building one next door to you house.
4. GOOG has an extraordinary return on invested capital (ROIC).

Here's my take on all eight stocks:

I don't know. Maybe Enron has the dubious distinction of being the biggest shell game ever. But just try and find the little red ball under the shell with Amazon. It's easy ... yeah, right. Lots of sleight of hand here, folks. There is no ball under any of the shells, is there? Could it be in the hand of Jeff Bezos? With Over 1 Million Pre-orders For 'Harry Potter', Amazon Won't Make a Profit.

It's no secret that I have been very negative on Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) for years. In that time some folks have made money, plenty have lost money, and those who have sold recently after the huge run-up, maybe a few traders, have made a lot of money.

Still The CEO urged shareholders to be patient following several years of heavy investment in technology, new product categories and new locations such as China that depressed earnings and ate into margins. "We are very focused on the long term, but we also believe that the long term has to eventually come," he said. Bezos noted that in the past, periods of intense investment started to pay off in five to seven years.

Every week there is plenty to write about that I find amusing or ironic in the business world or stock market, on and off our site. I missed the last couple of weeks not for lack of material but time. This week I must start with something old that just won't go away, Amazon.com (AMZN) which closed Friday at a share price of $73.24.

This week I posted the story Amazon - everyone gets it but me where I highlighted various Amazon stock metrics that made no sense whatsoever and pleaded with someone, anyone to explain them to me. Alas, not a soul chose to respond. And since I freely admitted "not getting it" I did not leave room for those that really have no explanation but like to tell me what an idiot I am. A decade old this company has a book value of less than 2 cents on the dollar and eeks out a profit margin of 1.77%. Yes, it's profits increased in the last quarter by 115% to everyone's surprise, however, a 1000% increase if somehow directly translated into Amazon's a book value would still leave it under 20 cents on the dollar - that's hysterical to me.

Since nobody volunteered any information to help me solve the riddle I did some homework myself and a friend at a major investment house gave me a hint that lead to Who owns Amazon.com - really? and a reminder that it is not the public pushing this stock to silly valuations. It may be insiders and major shareholders playing "a game of chicken" with investors shorting the stock, of which there are many. I think after the battle is over this stock is going back down.

In Fortune magazine, May 28, 2007 issue I came across Amazon's 7-year Itch where they actually make some comments similar to mine. After all this time and all the efficiencies of the Internet in relation to Amazon's business model, it is making a smaller profit margin than the brick and mortar retailers like Wal-Mart (WMT) and over the last seven years an investor would have made 3.1% on their money.

So this is no joke I would like to learn and so would other intrigued investors if someone has any answers.

Enjoy the day.

Those of you who are new to BloggingStocks can check out my other stories and read Chasing Value or Serious Money to find more potential opportunities and verify my track record as well.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out his other posts for BloggingStocks here.

Two days ago I posted Amazon - everyone gets it but me wondering who the heck was driving the Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) share price up to such ridiculous levels. Then I spoke with a fund manager at a large investment company and he reminded me that Amazon shares were very tightly held by a few entities. So I looked it up on AOL Money & Finance and found the following.

• Jeff Bezos still holds 24% of the stock
• Legg Mason Capital Management, Inc. holds 20.25%
• T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. holds 7.5%
• TCW Asset Management Company holds 5.5%
• ClearBridge Advisors 5.25%.

You can see that the top five shareholders control 62.5% of the stock. Looking further I found that the top ten shareholders own about 75% of the outstanding shares. This does not account for other insiders besides Bezos who hold 3% to 5% of the shares. If 15% to 18% of the shares are sold short that does not leave much play in the market and it allows for the potential manipulation of the shares.

This will conclude the whittling process of the 30 Dow Jones Industrials with the last six below. Although the Dow has done very well in the last six months there still appears to be plenty of value here from everything I am able to surmise.

So far I have whittled the Dow down to six stocks: Alcoa Aluminum (NYSE: AA), American International Group (NYSE: AIG), Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT), The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS), Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) and The Home Depot (NYSE: HD). You can link to the previous posts, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 or Part 5 for your own review and comments.

Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) is a tough one for me to review because there are a lot of mixed signals in the data and the market about Pfizer concerning its pipeline of products. Most notably it has a P/S of 4.14 (TTM) which would place it outside of my consideration by a factor of two under most situations. This is a result of declining sales, but the decline has not hurt earnings in a big way, so the P/E has been coming down as a result. The P/E is about average for the DOW but historically low for Pfizer. If the "pipeline" is truly bare then this trend will continue. However, the stock is supported by a 4.2% yield, almost no long-term debt, and trailing margins that are HUGE at about 40%. Back to the less than appealing issues: PFE has a price-to-cash-flow ratio of almost 15, too high for me. In the long run Pfizer may be a great hold. If you are looking for a solid dividend payer with resistance to much downside risk it would be great for your Roth IRA, but here and now, it might be a short term value trap. In the absence of an acquisition or great new drug where is the upside?

Chuck Prince at Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) has been under increasing pressure to 'do something' to increase shareholder value after years of no price appreciation in the value of the company despite many attempts including the buying and selling of many companies, reorganizations, expansions, contractions and numerous meetings with major shareholders to express his ideas and get theirs - and still nothing. Some have suggested breaking up the company which is currently the largest financial institution / bank in the United States, but that does not seem to be in the cards. Now to be fair other ultra-large cap stocks (Citi is $254 billion) have made little progress in growing share value over the last few years and some have gone down; General Electric (NYSE: GE), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT) and 3M Co. (NYSE: MMM) to name a few.

• Melly Alazraki reported on Wednesday that Investors awaited Citigroup Inc.'s restructuring announcement today. The originally expected 15,000 jobs, was yesterday reported to have increased to 26,000. Well, the Citi released its plan and it contains 17,000 job cuts, or 5% of its workforce as the company seeks to lower annual expenses by $4.6 billion in the next three years. However, the 26,000 jobs reported yesterday said "fired or reassigned," and indeed Citi announced that "more than 9,500 jobs will be moved to lower-cost locations."

Every big company has some "dead weight." However, where did they discover these people they say they no longer need, hiding under desks? Sleeping in the closets? Not the executive washroom prey tell?! How did all these "dead beats" hide for so long? What will the costs to the company be in the short run? Most importantly, firing lots of people is not necessarily any more of a strategy than proposing a troop surge in Iraq. They both can have an impact but I'm not sure it equates with being a strategy. The strategy should be to sell or spinoff any enterprise that is under performing immediately and expand those that are performing well, even if it means you do not remain the largest bank. No magic there -- it's the Jack Welch formula, it works, try it!

Furthermore, here is the leadership question; has Citigroup been operating inefficiently for years with too many unnecessary people and just now come to that realization? - not good, or have they decided that they will struggle along with less people and offer less in services internally and to their customers? - also not good! So I think I have to pay homage to my dad again, who often reminds me that "the fish stinks from the head" -- It's time to go Chuck!

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out my other posts for BloggingStocks here.

I hope nobody reading this was so desperate to obtain the new Sony (NYSE:SNE / ADR) PlayStation 3 (PS3) that they were camped out overnight at their local Best Buy (BBY:NYSE) or Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (WMT:NYSE). I was driving home with my 13 year old son (the "Warcraft King") from an evening school activity when we noticed the phenomena. We both did a double-take... not the homeless -- no U2 concert coming to town -- it was not a parade route -- American Idol try-outs?... Then the light bulb came on: they were gamesters camping out in line waiting for Best Buy to open! They were waiting for the PS3.

They just have to have the new Sony PS3. Some are willing to pay 500% of the manufacturer's suggested retail price (msrp) on eBay. I guess if they can't get one immediately their life will come to an end, their children or grandchildren will hate them, the fellas will not come over to watch (and play PS3) football on Sunday, the mail won't get delivered and life as we know it will come to a complete standstill.

I guess I'm a mean dad; no Xbox, no PS3, no Gameboys, or Wii for my kids. When they finish their homework they can play computer games on the same PC that they they did their homework on. They play games from DVDs and on-line. I myself stick to chess, poker and fantasy basketball when time permits and I can un-glue the kids from one of the terminals. We have two Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) notebooks and two PC's. Our house is making the switch from PCs to Macs so Apple should continue to gain market share next year if we are a micro indicator of what might be a macro shift.

Ninety days have passed since I posted Scary market -- any safe stocks? and Still scary market -- more SAFE HAVENS.

When I wrote these original posts the market was on shaky ground with higher fuel prices, interest rate uncertainty, housing market questions, common summer market doldrums, and concerns about upcoming earnings reports, consumer spending, and inflation. Well, we made it through this valley of worry with fuel prices declining, interest rates stabilizing, employment and consumer confidence robust, and reported earnings primarily to the upside. The stock market has been riding this wave upward with the DJIA hitting news highs.

I revisited the stock suggestions I made in these posts after thirty days and decided to continue to track them. I believe in some level of accountability if one is blabbing (or blogging) about a subject, and especially since I have been writing for the Blogging Stocks site. All of the stocks have moved up in the last sixty days, but since my original posts in July, the share prices of six have moved up and two have gone down. I have not changed my mind about any of these companies or their stocks during this period.

We considered buying some more United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE:UPS) and did not; we added to our position in the Southern Company (NYSE:SO) instead, which has done well, and Huaneng Power International, Inc. (NYSE:HNP) which has done even better; see: GOOG is OK but HNP could be better!

They are listed in the order I mentioned them in my earlier posts.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.B) closed Tuesday at $3,560 up from $2,995.

Washington Mutual, Inc. (NYSE:WM) closed Tuesday at $43.00 down from $45.50.

Amazon is following a questionable path with CEO Jeff Bezos playing the Piper and investors heading toward the cliff.

For years I have been down on Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) the stock, even though I buy things on the site perhaps once a month -- 80 percent of it books. I have never been able to accept its valuation. I like the service but can't rationalize the stock price.

It currently has a TTM (trailing twelve month) P/E (price to earnings) of 55.82, based on yesterday's close of $38.15 . Perhaps it should change its name to "Amazing.com" (which actually exists) based on its ability to convince investors that the stock is worth anything near this price.

For comparison, the P/E of Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is 60.55, eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) is 43.09, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO)
is 33.29, Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)is 35.75, Hansen Natural Corp. (NASDAQ: HANS) is 35.82 and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) is 19.21.

In correspondence with Amey Stone, (one of our beloved editors) almost two years ago, during a very shaky market, I did some rare speculating.

I preface this article by acknowledging that such exercises are usually pointless and not something I engage in very often. My deep value investing style is focused on companies and not markets, facts and verifiable high probability theories. Often I am the contrarian as in Me and my Merck: Should I keep it? Sometimes I am the curmudgeon (hopefully lovable curmudgeon) and I have scoffed at analysts (Analyzing the Analysts - It's all a joke right?) and prognosticators whose primary business is skimming fees from the top of your investment stash.

Among what I thought at the time were my verifiable high probability theories was that oil money, real estate money and Chinese money (from our sad trade deficit) was going to recirculate back into the stock market. Oil prices were just starting to move up, real estate was booming, and the Chinese were piling up billions of dollars of our treasury notes. Furthermore I thought the Chinese would not just be satisfied moving some of their debt instruments (bonds) into equities (stocks) but actually start shopping for U.S. companies. This came to pass in their acquisition of IBM's Think Pad (R) division by Levano, and their failed attempt to acquire Unocal, and they are still on the look-out for other opportunities.

So in early 2005 I made the case to Amey that we were going to see the Dow hit 11,000 by the end of the year and that we would hit 12,000 by the end of this year. Well of course the Dow Jones Industrial Average did hit 11,000 as anticpated climbing from about 10,000 mid year in '05 and I believe it will soon reach 12,000, maybe even by the end of the year, which was on my list of "speculations".

It's only a question of time. It's only another 3% +/- in a year of mixed results.

By the way, Warren Buffett comments about the trade deficit in a story about our loss of integrity in Warren Buffett, America's greatest storyteller.

So having just about hit all my targets from my notes to Amey of two years ago I started thinking about where we go from here. I think we are in for more of the same and for the same reasons. Plus a few new insights, if I may be so bold.

Having addressed some controversial issues like eBay and the real estate market through a series of posts, one of BloggingStocks most avid (and astute) readers asked me to tackle another tough issue -- Immigration reform.

He directed me to the following September 15 2006 article, "Immigration Raid Makes a Ghost Town." The story points out :

"Last month, the federal government reported that Georgia had the fastest-growing illegal immigrant population in the country. The number more than doubled from an estimated 220,000 in 2000 to 470,000 last year. This year, state lawmakers passed some of the nation's toughest measures targeting illegal immigrants, and Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue last week vowed a statewide crackdown on document fraud."

The article is clearly slanted toward the plight of the people that were hauled away, creating the "ghost town," and is slanted against the government. In this case I may have been swayed by similar feelings, as was our reader. However, I am not one to appreciate the political polarization we create among ourselves and I do not feel this article is balanced in its reporting.

Even in the paragraph I have quoted I would not mention the political affiliation of the Governor. Some might say it is normal to do so, but I say it adds nothing to the story and only fuels the wrong fire. This story will take volumes and I do not know how much energy I have to cover it, but if you do not have your own soap box, I am more than happy to share mine. Perhaps we can thrash out what this all means.

One of the first things that I noted in the article was the use of the term illegal "immigrants" as opposed to illegal "aliens," which by itself is an indication of where one's sympathies may lie.

Contrarian (noun), pronounced con.trar.i.an. : A person who takes a contrary position or attitude; specifically : an investor who buys shares of stock when most others are selling and sells when others are buying.

Turning things inside out, and upside down is basic to contrarian and value investing. In this article I will share my WOW Principal of investing.

WOW Principal origin: Observing how my wife manages our family I have been in awe. It's true: "a mother's work is never done." To express my amazement, I have exclaimed WOW often. MOM upside down spells WOW! There are many times that Mom's world is upside down, juggling three kids and an ever increasing number of commitments with spectacular efficiency. She is also an architect and my partner in our architecture practice. In my bio, I referred to my relationship with my wife as my best investment, and since we met many years ago, I have been collecting dividends.

So, it is with my wife in mind that the WOW Principal of investing came to be. It is a perfect fit with my investing style. Simply stated: If, after thorough analysis of an investment, you are not in awe of your findings (company data, news, trends and surprises) and you do cannot exclaim WOW! (double WOW is even better!), then it is not a worthy investment.

If however, the investment does reach WOW status, you are in business. I do not invest unless I think there is an amazing opportunity and any risk is understandable and acceptable. Good is not good enough, it must be a great opportunity, and the case must be very convincing.

When things are upside down or people's perspective is jaded, there may be a deep value opportunity and my interest is peaked. At the point of discovery is a moment that begins when I say "hmm," and stroke my beard. Then I spend time with my investigation and analysis. But I do not fork over any cash until I find the WOW factor(s). If you find yourself scratching your head and saying huh? instead of "Wow," move on!