About 50 years ago, when I first started investing, I was an avid reader of Forbes magazine. It brought an insight to the companies I was researching that I could never get from S&P data sheets and other sources. Forbes wrote about new products, competition and all that stuff, but it wrote mostly about a company's management, especially CEOs. It was amazing to me how a single person, usually the CEO, could make or break a company.

So it was no accident that this week's cover story in Barron's magazine, World's Best CEOs, captured my attention. And it was no surprise that Alan Mulally's picture was on the cover along with Larry Ellison and Reed Hastings. Reed who? Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix. Boy, there's one I missed. I was quite familiar with Alan Mulally for the remarkable job he has done at Ford and, of course, Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, who has been doing a great job for over 20 years. But I had never heard of Reed Hastings. I guess it's because I, like many other investors, had given Netflix up for dead a long time ago. Barron's says otherwise and our VectorVest analysis agrees. NFLX has a "B" rating with a VST of 1.44. Not bad.

Among the other selections were Warren Buffett, John Chambers, Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon, Mark Hurd, and, of course, Steve Jobs. Boy, wouldn't you like to own some stocks in the companies they run? You bet, and it would be exactly what I have done many times...read about CEOs who are doing great jobs, check the numbers; then buy their stock if everything lined up. I used to pretend I was hiring these CEOs to work for me. Well, it's really not that far from the truth.

Nowadays, it's a lot easier to analyze a company's performance because of VectorVest. As a matter of fact, I simply put the 23 stocks traded here in the U.S. into a WatchList and called it "Barron's Best CEOs - 2010." Boy, you would love to own this group of stocks. (Seven of the 30 CEOs featured in the Barron's article run companies traded on foreign exchanges.) The group of 23 stocks has an average RV of 1.35, average RS of 1.24, average RT of 1.15 and an average VST of 1.26. Fourteen are rated, "B," zero "S" and nine "H." Quick test showed that this group of stocks has gone up an average of 106.56% since March 10, 2009, with 22 winners and one loser. The biggest winner was Mr. Mulally's Ford with a gain of 579.46%. The lone loser was Exxon Mobil with a loss of 0.61%. How much evidence do you need, to know that it pays to Hire the Best CEOs.

P.S. The names of the seven foreign CEOs and their companies are as follows:
Bart Becht - Reckitt Benckiser - RB.L - UK
Patrick Kron - Alstom - ALO.PA - EU
Terry Leahy - Tesco - TSCO.L - UK
Peter Sands - Standard Chartered - STAN.L - UK
Ma Huanteng - Tenent - 0700.HK on Hong Kong Exchange
Bruce Rockowitz - Li & Fung - 0494.HK on Hong Kong Exchange
Wang Chuan-fu - BYD - 1211.HK on Hong Kong Exchange
We cover the UK and EU stocks in our related products and will soon be covering the Hong Kong Exchange traded stocks.

BUYING THE DIPS FOR EXPLOSIVE PROFITS.
The Price of the VectorVest Composite hit a rally high of $24.45 per share on January 19, 2010; then it started to go down. It bottomed at $22.48 per share on February 8th and subsequently signaled a Green light on February 12th. It was time to go bottom fishing. So join Ms. Laura Shipley, Product Support Representative, at the VectorVest University to see this week's powerful, but prudent bottom fishing "Strategy of the Week" presentation: "Buying the Dips for Explosive Profits."