Money and Markets: Free Investment Email Newsletter » Nilus Mattive

Top Stock Picks ‘09: PTEN

Adam Shafer — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:24:36 +0000

This post is part of a special annual report — Top Stock Picks ‘09 — in which TheStockAdvisors.com asked 75 leading newsletter advisors to select their favorite investment for the new year.

As the name implies, Dividend Superstars focuses on quality income-generating ideas. Here, Nilus Mattive looks to Patterson-UTI (NASDAQ: PTEN) as his top “contrarian” idea for 2009.

“For the Dividend Superstars Annual Forecast Issue, I screened for companies that had zero debt, single-digit P/Es, recent dividend hikes, payout ratios under 25%, a dividend coverage ratio exceeding 2.

“While it was a tall order, one company jumped to the top of my list: Patterson-UTI. As one of the biggest land-based drillers in North America, the company is highly correlated to demand and prices for that commodity.

“Recently, that hasn’t been a good thing, especially because the slowing economy and tight credit has made companies less inclined to drill. The shares have gotten, well, drilled!

“But everything is cyclical. And Patterson-UTI has the financial wherewithal to weather the storm. It also has plenty of money to dole out to shareholders.

“To be sure, this stock is a contrarian play. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see it rebound quickly at any hint in rising energy prices or renewed drilling activity. And the yield is very attractive. Together, that gives the stock superior total return potential for 2009.”

Steven Halpern’s TheStockAdvisors.com offers a daily look at the latest market commentary and favorite stock picks and investment ideas from the nation’s leading financial newsletter advisors.

Nilus Mattive’s Factoids

Kilani — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 08:28:06 +0000

A lot of people ask about Nilus’ name. Officially, it’s Nilus Lawrence Mattive III. His great-grandfather chose “Nilus” because it was the name of a missionary he befriended. It was the name of the Greco-Roman god of the Nile, as well as a few Saints. Nilus’ family name was originally Mattivi, and it can be traced back to Trentino in the Italian Alps.
Whenever Nilus isn’t searching for great dividends, he’s off searching for waves. In fact, he’s surfed everywhere from Peru to South Africa!
Throughout his childhood, Nilus took guitar lessons from an old jazz musician. He still tries to work on his chops regularly, and enjoys playing with the other guys at the office. (There are a lot of guitar players at Weiss!)
Nilus was a member of MENSA for a year … then he decided that paying annual dues for a laminated identification card probably wasn’t a sign of his intelligence.
Before he moved into Manhattan, Nilus lived in Hoboken, NJ. His apartment building was Frank Sinatra’s boyhood home. Disha, Nilus’ future wife, lived in the same building … the two met at the mailbox.
Nilus loves talking about food and wine, and he’s a passionate cook. He’s not quite as passionate about doing the dishes, though.
One summer, Nilus and his dad drove across the country in a Volkswagen bus going to rock concerts.
Nilus enjoys creative writing, both poetry and prose, and a few of his short stories have appeared in literary journals. Like a trillion other people, he plans on writing a novel someday.
Although he was in the running for valedictorian of his high school class, Nilus was almost banned from graduating on stage because of a series of pranks.
Since moving to Florida, Nilus has taken up tennis and rekindled his hatred for golf.

Nilus Mattive’s Page

Adam Shafer — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:38:54 +0000

Nilus Mattive has been obsessed with dividend-paying stocks since the sixth grade.

He’s not sure exactly what inspired him — it could have been the movie Wall Street or the popular T.V. show character Alex P. Keaton (played by Michael J. Fox) — but one day Nilus came home from school and said he wanted to buy five shares of IBM with his savings. Although the family had never owned stock before, his parents were happy to help him set up an account.

Nilus continued investing all the way through college, where he triple-majored in philosophy, theology, and English. “Everyone kept telling me philosophers end up flipping burgers … so I figured I better become a really good investor,” Nilus jokes. “And as a side note, Bill Miller, the only fund manager to beat the S&P 500 15 years in a row, studied philosophy!”

Upon graduation, Nilus moved to New York City and began working for Jono Steinberg’s Individual Investor Group, where he wrote a regular investment column. Later, Nilus spent five years at Standard & Poor’s editing the company’s flagship investment newsletter, The Outlook. During that time, Nilus also penned his first finance book, The Standard & Poor’s Guide for the New Investor. It was published by McGraw-Hill in 2003, and translated into Chinese a year later.

These days, Nilus loves telling investors about dividend-paying stocks in his monthly newsletter, Dividend Superstars. He also edits nearly every issue of Weiss Research’s free daily investment e-letter, Money and Markets.

Nilus and his wife Disha live in Jupiter, Florida. Their first daughter, Vela, was born on June 12, 2007. They also have an adopted doberman named Rocks.

Nilus Mattive

Kilani — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:46:11 +0000

Name: Nilus Mattive
Title: Financial Analyst

Nilus Mattive’s Page » | Nilus Mattive’s Blog »

Nilus Mattive, a financial analyst at Weiss Research, is the editor of Dividend Superstars, a monthly publication and is also the editor of the company’s daily e-letter, Money and Markets. Formerly a senior editor of Standard & Poor’s The Outlook, the oldest continuously published investment newsletter in the country, he has written for a number of investment websites, including BusinessWeek and Individual Investor. Mr. Mattive is the author of The Standard & Poor’s Guide for the New Investor (McGraw-Hill, 2004) and has appeared on the popular investment radio show, Traders Nation, to discuss his views on personal finance.

Mr. Mattive graduated cum laude from the University of Scranton.

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