One of my favorite Blue Chip Growth stocks, Gilead Sciences (GILD), just broke out to a new all-time high. Since I first recommended the stock two years ago, the shares are up over 64%.

Gilead wasn't always such a big winner for us. As you can see from the chart above, the stock dropped 15% on us almost immediately. Fortunately, we held on.

The company is due to report earnings in about two or three weeks. I'm expecting another strong report. The company has beaten Wall Street's expectations for the last several quarters. Gilead continues to be a strong buy.

Here's a good article on Gamestop (GME) one of my favorite Emerging Growth stocks.

GameStop executives explained their enviable position, calling the present moment for them the outcome of the game industry reaching "a transformative stage made up of many pieces, all of which have a profound impact on our business."

The company's financials tell some of the story: for all of last year, GameStop's sales increased 33 percent, same store sales increased nearly 25 percent, and profit for the company increased 82 percent compared to the previous year. "By any barometer," one company executive said in a conference call with analysts, "[it's been] another outstanding year for GameStop."

One industry analyst, Janco Partners' Mike Hickey, forecasts growth for the company that builds even further on those enviable figures.

"Accelerating demand for next-gen hardware including the PlayStation 3 should benefit comparable store sales in the [present] period," Hickey said of the company, who added it is not just demand, but broad demand which is fueling GameStop growth.

Success for GameStop is "highly attributable to video game play attracting a mainstream audience," with the demographic expansion having much to do with "new consoles like the Wii, which pull back on the geekish complexity of typical content aimed at hardcore gamers."

But it's really the library of upcoming games that will supply GameStop with most of its revenue infusion in 2008. Hickey said today he expects that the release of Grand Theft Auto IV could net the company more than $100 million--in a single week.

At MarketWatch, Peter Brimelow highlights Blue Chip Growth:

When I last checked in with Louis Navellier's Blue Chip Growth, I found the one-time wunderkind was worried. That was unusual, and a particular problem for him because traditionally he has been one of those services that eschews market timing, remaining fully invested at all times. See Jan. 17 column

Nevertheless, Navellier weathered Wall Street's horrific first quarter well. Currently, Blue Chip Growth is the 15th-best performer over the past 12 months according to the Hulbert Financial Digest, up 9.6% vs. a 2.63% decrease for the dividend-reinvested Dow Jones Wilshire 5000.

This success has been sustained. Since the HFD began following Blue Chip Growth in 1998, the letter has achieved a 12.6% annualized gain, vs. 5.2% annualized for the total return DJ-Wilshire 5000.

Although Navellier is now enthusiastic about his stocks, he's actually quite pessimistic about the U.S. economic outlook. In his most recent issue, he wrote: "This will be one of the most difficult quarters for the overall stock market, since there is overwhelming evidence that the U.S. economy slipped into a recession due to slowing business and consumer spending ..."

In a hotline after Tuesday's 400-point rally, he added: "There's a growing feeling on Wall Street that the worst of the credit crisis may be over -- however, I respectfully disagree. I don't believe that financials are out of the woods yet. These stocks will be posting continued mortgage writedowns due to rising delinquencies, and the entire housing sector will be under water until 2009, at the earliest."

Here's the entire article.

Mosaic is rallying today on a great earnings report. Here's what David Gaffen has to say at the WSJ's MarketBeat blog:

Fertilizer stocks are bouncing Friday, boosted by strong earnings out of one of the top companies in the space, Mosaic Co., which said its quarterly net income rose more than twelvefold.

Mosaic was leading the sector, gaining 10% in trading while rivals Potash Corp. and CF Industries rose 3.8% and 6%, respectively. Few stocks outperformed Mosaic in 2007, as shares rose a ridiculous 342% on the back of rising food demand, which fueled sales of the company's fertilizer products.

Edlain Rodriguez, analyst at Goldman Sachs (who does not own the stock), said that the firm's margins in its phosphate fertilizer business (one of two primary businesses for Mosaic; the other is potash fertilizer) have been impacted by rising sulfur prices, but they add that earnings momentum should accelerate due to worldwide fertilizer demand.

Mosaic expressed similar thoughts in the earnings release, noting that world grain and oilseed production rose to a record 2.5 billion tons in 2007, and even that wasn't enough to keep up with demand, as stocks fell by 39 million tons.

Despite concern about commodity prices, Goldman analysts say "with strong demand in the international markets, more discipline from global producers, solid ag commodity prices and extremely tight inventories, global [fertilizer] prices should continue moving higher."

Heck, Mosaic even managed to make a bit of money in an area that's bedeviled many an investment bank of late -- derivatives. The firm earned $40 million, or six cents a share, on unrealized gains related to marks on derivatives.

One of the major themes of investing nowadays is the rally in commodity prices. It's not just oil and gold that are rising, prices for nearly every good have increased.

Most consumers feel the effects every time they go to the pump, but there are other effects as well. The New York Times reports that thieves stole part of the lead roof from an 800-year-old British church.

For centuries, people have stolen religious artifacts in Europe, including chunks of religious buildings, but Britain is in the midst of an accelerating crime wave that some experts call the most concerted assault on churches since the Reformation.

Instead of doctrinal differences, the motivation is the near record price that lead -- the stuff many old church roofs are made of -- is fetching on commodity markets.

"The local parish church has become a victim of international demand for metals," said Chris Pitt, a spokesman for Ecclesiastical, a company that specializes in insuring religious buildings and other heritage sites in Britain.

Earnings season begins in just a few days for my Blue Chip Growth stocks. Subscribers can see the entire calendar of earnings here.

We recently had some final earnings reports from companies whose quarter ended in February. The clear standout was Mosaic (MOS) which is this week's Stock of the Week.

Mosaic is one of the world's largest makers of phosphate and potash crop nutrients. With the continued high price of corn, soybeans, wheat and other commodities that are in short supply, agricultural stocks like Mosaic are continuing to profit. However, belonging to a continuously growing sector isn't the only factor that boosted Mosaic's earnings. Even though the company is located in Minnesota, more than two-thirds of their business comes from outside of the United States. Though the U.S. economy has caught the flu, most other countries are experiencing nothing more than an occasional sniffle. And that's nothing to sneeze about (if you catch my drift).

At my Stock of the Week section of NavellierGrowth.com, I've included a section where I can hear your thoughts on each week's choice. So let me hear what you have to say!

Today, corporate stock buybacks are at a 30-year high. You might ask why. Well, Price/Earnings ratios are now approaching an 18-year low, so obviously, many executives believe that their stocks are great buys.

But the real compelling reason is that corporate America is trying to take advantage of the 15% federal taxation on dividends before the tax rate is increased as some presidential candidates favor. As a result, there's a rush for companies to buy back their stock and boost management's ownership so they can capture more dividends distributions and take full advantage of the lower rate. In fact, the more stock that a company owns, the more management tries to pay itself via dividends instead of salaries.

In 2007, the stock market lost approximately $1 trillion in stock float due to aggressive stock buybacks as well as mergers and acquisitions. This was the fourth year in a row that the amount of stock outstanding shrank. Ever since the dividend tax relief was enacted in mid-2003, the number of companies buying their stock back has soared.

Let's hope that the political rhetoric continues, since it's accelerating corporate buybacks and encouraging cash rich companies to boost their dividends.

Excluding the troubled financial sector, corporate America is in pretty good shape on a cash flow basis. If you divide money market assets by the value of the Wilshire 5000, the amount of cash in reserve is over 26%. The highest level that I've ever seen was almost 29% in early 2003. That was after the stock market suffered from severe stock mutual funds outflows for almost three years. In other words, there's plenty of cash ready to jump into the stock market when investors are ready.

First-quarter earnings season is off to a great start for us. After yesterday's close, our very first Emerging Growth stock reported earnings. Exponent (EXPO) earned 40 cents a share, seven cents better than Wall Street's consensus estimate.

The stock gapped up at today's open, and it's been rallying ever since. Exponent is also one of my Top 10 stocks for April. We already have a 22% gain in just six weeks.

In the first half of April, the 30 stocks in my Global Growth service gained an average 8.72% compared with just 0.42% for the S&P 500. One of my Top 3 stocks since the beginning of the year, Russia's Mechel OAO (MTL), gained 23% in the first half of April. The biggest winner for the month is China's JA Solar Holdings (JASO) which is up 29.8%, followed by Brazil's Petroleo Brasileo (PBR) at 20.8%, and China's Baidu.com (BIDU) at 20.3%.

Attention Quantum Growth investors. There's no need to panic. Banco Bradesco (BBD) isn't down 30% today. The stock split 3-for-2.

If you owned 100 shares, you now have 150. My buy-below and stop-loss prices drop to and $20.85 and $16.93. Bradesco is actually doing very well this morning.

All 27 Quantum Growth stocks rallied today. Our average gain was 3.70% compared with 2.27% for the S&P 500.

I'm convinced that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates for the last time at their next meeting on April 29-30. I expect that the Fed will bit the bullet one more time--after a heated debate--and cut rates by 0.5%. This is simply because market rates are still at the shockingly low levels, and the Fed never fights market rates.

The Fed's corundum is that the more they cut rates, the more they weaken the dollar and accelerate commodity inflation. Of the world's commodities, 88% are traded in dollars. The net result is stagflation, just like we had back in the 1970s. In fact, the two dissenting Fed members at the last meeting, Charles Plosser and Richard Fisher, warned that the public was beginning to think that rising prices were permanent.

The Fed Funds rate is currently at 2.25%/ I think it with would be a BIG mistake if the Fed lowered the rate below 1.75%. After 9/11, Greenspan went all the way down to 1% and held it there too long, and that helped bring about the housing bubble.

The energy news from Russia is not so encouraging. Rumors are emerging from Russia that its crude oil output may have peaked. This news is another reason why crude oil prices soared last week. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Russian oil output fell last quarter, for the first time in a decade. The IEA reported that Russia's crude oil production averaged about 10 million barrels a day last quarter, a 1% drop compared to the first quarter of 2007.

Declining production from one of the world's largest oil exporters puts further pressures on an already strained oil market and adds to the potential for higher prices for the global economy. Global production constraints, combined with surging demand in emerging markets, rising oil-field expenses and political instability in Africa, the Middle East and Venezuela is anticipated to keep crude oil prices high, especially during the summer months, when gasoline demand is high.

Oil industry observers and Russian officials generally blame the country's production slowdown on a combination of weather and tight electricity supplies in some parts of the country. A longer-term concern is the aging of the Siberian fields that once dominated Russian production growth. Some Western analysts deny the decline and point to optimistic data and forecasts. Citigroup said in a report last month that it expects Russian oil volumes to increase by 1.5 million barrels a day between now and 2012, largely due to new projects in eastern Siberia. However, the Citigroup report also cautioned that "Russian oil production growth is no longer to be taken for granted."

The IEA predicts Russian oil production will rise again later this year. However, the IEA estimates an annual increase of only 0.8% over 2007, compared with an average increase of 2.5% in the past three years and much faster growth in previous years. Russia's energy ministry says it expects a rise of 1.8%. However, earlier this month, Yuri Trutnev, Russia's natural-resources minister, said on state television that the country's full-year 2008 production may be lower than in 2007. Leonid Fedun, the 52-year-old vice-president of Lukoil -Russia's largest independent oil company - recently said that he believed last year's Russian oil production of about 10 million barrels per day was the highest he would see "in his lifetime." Fedun compared Russia with the North Sea and Mexico, where oil production is declining dramatically and said that in the oil-rich region of western Siberia, "the period of intense oil production is over."

Russia's production slowdown highlights a troubling reality, namely that despite soaring oil prices in the past five years, crude oil output from nations outside the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has remained essentially flat since 2005. As a result, the normal link between high crude oil prices and increasing oil production has been disrupted. Now, we rely on new finds (as in Brazil), but these huge new discoveries will take several years to come online.

On this weekend's hotline, I rated McDonald's (MCD) as my top buy for the week. The company reported strong first-quarter earnings this morning. For the first three months of the year, MCD earned 81 cents a share. That's a big jump over the 62 cents a share it made last year.

This really surprised Wall Street which was expecting just 70 cents per share. The major reason for the good quarter was the weak dollar and strong global sales. In fact, the company's U.S. business is barely growing at all.

Many of our oil stocks are looking good today as oil closes in on $120 a barrel.

Even if the economy has an anemic recovery, corporate earnings are poised to surge in the second half of 2008. Third quarter earnings should rise by 30% and fourth-quarter earnings should rise by an amazing 70%. This will be the strongest earnings growth for the S&P 500 in decades.

I know what you are thinking, "How can earnings surge so dramatically when it's not yet clear how strong the recovery will be?" Well, it's not that difficult to explain. The reason is because the massive write-downs due to the credit crisis started in the third quarter peaked with the fourth quarter. As a result, the year-over-year earnings comparisons will be very favorable even if the economy still isn't growing strongly.

There are five major factors working to help the future earnings environment:

• The current trough in corporate earnings
• We're near the end of the Fed's interest rate cuts
• There's a near record amount of cash on the sidelines
• Corporate buy backs are relentless
• The market typically rallies heading into a presidential election

Even the "sell in May and go away" crowd doesn't seem to be worried about the stock market. The reason is that this phenomenon often doesn't apply in a presidential election year.

The catalyst for selling in May and going away is often caused by big gains early in the year. Traders then sit on their gains until the end of the year, so they can collect a big year-end bonus. So the stronger the start to the year, the bigger problem that sell in May and go away can be for investors. Since this year got off to a bad start and we're in an election year, I'm not worried about investors selling in May and going away this year.

Julia Alexandria looks at Exelon (EXC), one of our Blue Chip Growth stocks.

The company had a great quarter. EPS came in at $1.16, nine cents ahead of Wall Street's estimates. Mac sales jumped 51%.

Buoyed by unusually strong Macintosh sales, the company grew notably faster than the rest of the computer market worldwide in the first three months of the year. Revenue increased 43 percent from the same period a year ago, the company reported. Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive, characterized the quarter as the strongest in Apple's history.

He attributed the growth to higher traffic in the company's 181 stores in the United States. The company reported that it had 33.7 million visitors to its stores in the United States, up 57 percent from the same quarter a year ago. Mr. Jobs said that belied the gloom that was being expressed about the American economy.

"We're not economists, so we don't have any more insight than everyone else, but there were sure a lot of people in our stores last quarter," Mr. Jobs said in an interview.

Despite new products like the iPhone, variations of the iPod and the Apple TV set-top box, this was a Macintosh quarter. Apple shipped 2.3 million Mac computers in the quarter, 51 percent more than in the quarter a year ago. Revenue on those computers increased 54 percent.

But it also said it sold 10.6 million iPods during the quarter, flat with the year-ago quarter. Analysts said iPod sales were within their expectations and that it was a sign that the product category was maturing,

"The big question was, would Apple really feel the pinch from a weakening U.S. consumer? And the somewhat unequivocal answer was, no, not yet," said A. M. Saggonaghi Jr., a senior analyst at Bernstein Research.

Two months ago, I identified 10 Financial Stocks to Sell in my free weekly eletter, "What's Working on Wall Street Now." This week has been horrible for one of the stocks that I highlighted. On Monday, National City (NCC) posted a first-quarter loss of $171 million. The bank cut its dividend from 21 cents to just a penny a share. They also said that they raised $7 billion to secure their capital base. Since I said to dump the shares, National City is down 62%.

Due to widespread anticipation that the Fed will cut key interest rates for maybe the last time at its FOMC meeting this week, the U.S. dollar is trying to rally a bit. Wall Street is now expecting the Fed to cut the Fed Funds rate by 0.25%, from 2.25% to 2%, despite the fact that the 1-month and 3-month Treasury bills are yielding only 0.80% and 1.34%, respectively. Frankly, since this is the Fed's last chance to avoid an official recession (two negative quarters of GDP), I would throw caution to the wind, cut the Fed Funds rate 0.5% to 1.75%, boldly declare that this is likely the last rate cut and then tell businesses and consumers to start spending money! The U.S. dollar might firm up if they would just declare that they are likely finished cutting rates for this cycle.

Increasingly, there are now rumblings that the Fed may not cut rates at all, despite falling market rates, due to fears that the Fed does not want to weaken the U.S. dollar further. At the last FOMC meeting on March 18, Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher and Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser argued that the Fed was moving too fast in cutting rates and voted against the subsequent 0.75% cut in the Fed Funds Rate. In fact, there have been dissenting votes at every FOMC meeting since they voted the first cut last September. Rich Yamarone, the director of economic research at Argus Research, said, "There is no reason why the Fed should be cutting rates now" and added, "the Fed is on dangerously thin ice." Yamarone also said that the Fed is "basically telling everyone 'we are abandoning any defense of the dollar.'"

As a result of these conflicting views, this week's FOMC meeting is filled with uncertainty. The Fed always has to walk a fine line, so we will carefully watch their statement after this week's FOMC meeting. Their statement may even have a bigger impact than their actual interest rate decision, which will most likely come with some dissenting votes, no matter what the Fed does.

Flowserve's (FLS) latest earnings were simply stunning. The company flattened Wall Street's expectations. FLS' first-quarter earnings rose 159.3% to $1.53 per share compared with 59 cents per share last year. The Street was looking for 94 cents per share. Sales rose 23.6% to $993.3 million.

I was pleased to see Flowserve's gross margins increase to 34.8%. Even better, Flowserve raised its 2008 EPS guidance well above analysts' forecasts to between $5.90 and $6.20. The company's previous EPS guidance was between $5.10 and $5.40.

The Fed cut by 25 points bringing the Fed Funds rate down to 2%. Once again, there were two dissenting votes. Here's the statement:

The Federal Open Market Committee decided today to lower its target for the federal funds rate 25 basis points to 2 percent.

Recent information indicates that economic activity remains weak. Household and business spending has been subdued and labor markets have softened further. Financial markets remain under considerable stress, and tight credit conditions and the deepening housing contraction are likely to weigh on economic growth over the next few quarters.

Although readings on core inflation have improved somewhat, energy and other commodity prices have increased, and some indicators of inflation expectations have risen in recent months. The Committee expects inflation to moderate in coming quarters, reflecting a projected leveling-out of energy and other commodity prices and an easing of pressures on resource utilization. Still, uncertainty about the inflation outlook remains high. It will be necessary to continue to monitor inflation developments carefully.

The substantial easing of monetary policy to date, combined with ongoing measures to foster market liquidity, should help to promote moderate growth over time and to mitigate risks to economic activity. The Committee will continue to monitor economic and financial developments and will act as needed to promote sustainable economic growth and price stability.

Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman; Timothy F. Geithner, Vice Chairman; Donald L. Kohn; Randall S. Kroszner; Frederic S. Mishkin; Sandra Pianalto; Gary H. Stern; and Kevin M. Warsh. Voting against were Richard W. Fisher and Charles I. Plosser, who preferred no change in the target for the federal funds rate at this meeting.

In a related action, the Board of Governors unanimously approved a 25-basis-point decrease in the discount rate to 2-1/4 percent. In taking this action, the Board approved the requests submitted by the Boards of Directors of the Federal Reserve Banks of New York, Cleveland, Atlanta, and San Francisco.

This is probably their last rate cut which is very good news for us. All investors should be fully invested now.