Schaeffer's S&P 500 Index Hot Stocks Features Whole Foods Market, Agilent Technologies, Dillard's, Amazon.com, and Weatherford International

Business Wire, August 14, 2006

CINCINNATI -- Among the stocks featured in the August 14 edition of Schaeffer's S&P 500 Index Hot Stocks are Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ:WFMI), Agilent Technologies (NYSE:A), Dillard's (NYSE:DDS), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), and Weatherford International (NYSE:WFT). Schaeffer's S&P 500 Index Hot Stocks is just one of the many free market commentaries written every day at www.SchaeffersResearch.com - the home of Bernie Schaeffer and Schaeffer's Investment Research. For additional information about this report or to have it delivered to you free via email every day click on the following link. http://www.schaeffersresearch.com/redirect.aspx?CODE=PRSHS13M&PAGE=1 .

Schaeffer's S&P 500 Index Hot Stocks for Monday, August 14, 2006:

A daily feature available on SchaeffersResearch.com is the "SPX Hot Stocks" column. Each afternoon, we will provide a list of the day's top-20 performing stocks in the S&P 500 Index (SPX - 1,271.42) as well as the bottom-20 names. Featured along with this table will be news that is moving some of the securities, including a look at Whole Foods Market.

NOTE: Stocks trading under $5 per share have been eliminated from this listing of the top-20 and bottom-20 performing stocks.

A daily feature available on SchaeffersResearch.com is the "SPX Hot Stocks" column. Each afternoon, we will provide a list of the day's top-20 performing stocks in the S&P 500 Index (SPX - 1,272.97) as well as the bottom-20 names. Featured along with this table will be news that is moving some of the securities, including a look at Whole Foods Markets, Agilent Technologies, Dillard's, and Amazon.com.

NOTE: Stocks trading under $5 per share have been eliminated from this listing of the top-20 and bottom-20 performing stocks.

The SPX has added 0.49 percent on the session, with 425 of its 500 components in positive territory. One of the factors driving today's gains is a drop in crude futures following a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Lebanon. In addition, BP (BP) announced that it will keep Alaska pipeline production at 200,000 barrels per day while it makes repairs. The pipeline normally produces 400,000 barrels of crude a day.

Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ:WFMI) leads the way into the SPX winner's enclosure today, up more than seven percent at last check after Winslow Green Growth Fund said it sees an entry point for buyers, and predicted that the stock will double in three to five years. What's more, J.P. Morgan upgraded the stock to "neutral" from "underweight." The brokerage made a comment that I find intriguing. It considers that the company's addressable market might extend further into the $480 billion traditional-food-retail market than where WFMI currently stands.

Next in line for applause today is Agilent Technologies (NYSE:A), up more than five percent at last check, though the latest news to hit the wires came as long ago as last Wednesday, and the most recent press release out of the company came on August 3. The chart for A goes back only as far as November 1999, but the company's history goes back to 1939, when Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard began to make test and measurement equipment in that famous Silicon Valley garage, and sold some of their first boxes to an animator by the name of Walt Disney. A was spun off from HPQ in 1999, but much of the traditional strength of the parent company rests in the offspring, and canny investors might like to keep A on their watch list. I don't see it as a buy right now, but I think we might be approaching a good entry point not too far down the road, and I'm planning to write about the stock in more detail soon.

Dillard's (NYSE:DDS), announced this morning that it swung to a second-quarter profit. Net income was $15.7 million, or 20 cents per share compared to a loss of $12.3 million, or 15 cents per share in the year-ago period. Revenue rose to $1.75 billion from $1.73 billion. The stock gapped higher on the open to trade at the highest levels we have seen since July 1999.

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) dipped today to the lowest levels we have seen since April 2003. The stock currently rests right on its 10-day moving average, so maybe some folks are eyeing it as a buy, though, as the old saying goes: "Cheap can always get cheaper." Nevertheless, AMZN has been one of my favorite stocks to follow ever since, when no one was looking, it morphed from being an online bookstore to an online department store. The transformation seems so obvious now that we forget it. Logically, it seems to me that the more departments AMZN has, the better, so a press release from BabyUniverse caught my eye this morning: "On July 1, 2006, BabyUniverse increased its offering through Amazon to approximately 2,500 product SKU's during the first weeks of July and to more than 20,000 product SKU's by the end of the second week of August." A SKU, if my memory serves, is a "stock-keeping unit," a unique I.D. for an individual product. That means AMZN now has 20,000 more items to sell than it did a few weeks ago. Food for thought.