Returned from CES last week. Slept for a couple days. Woke up. Tried to remember something that will change the world. Couldn't think of anything.

Here's a problem: CES is becoming like the old Comdex. It's like a giant star that's gotten too big and general and will soon Supernova and collapse in upon itself.

Here's another problem. Apple generates the most excitement, both form the technology and a investment perspective, in the mobile consumer electronics space. And Apple doesn't go to CES. So what you have is a gigantic hallway filled with 150,000 people trying to copy Apple.

What's more important is what Apple will do next. Apple will do a sleeker tablet with LTE connectivity. Apple will try to do TV -- again.

That being said, there was stuff to listen to. If you want a list of some potential future tech trends, I wrote about some futuristic stuff on Investor Uprising.

In terms of investment ideas, I believe that the place to look in mobile and consumer is in suppliers and chips, because clearly as devices multiply it opens up many chip markets for many players. Read my CES Investor's Guide on Investor Uprising.

Next week I am launching a new Website for PRNewswire called Investor Uprising. It is going to focus on high-quality investment opportunities and business trends. We'll also pick and watch lots of stocks on a GARP (Growth at a Reasonable Price) basis.

For the first project, we are creating a list of 30 companies which we will use to build an Index. This comes from a methodology I have used for 10 years to screen stocks and build "monkey" portfolios that can be bought and passively left alone. Using this method, the portfolios have averaged a 30% (cumulative) return since 2006 and none of them has ever lost money.

Next week you will find these stock picks on Investor Uprising (which has not yet launched), but today I'm going to give you four of them. Here are some low-PEG stocks we will be following at Investor Uprising.

Dolby Laboratories (DLB)

 12-month sales growth: 28%

12-month income growth: 17%

Forward P/E: 15

Return on Equity: 20%

PEG Ratio: 1

Summary: Dolby is dominating the business for digital music tools. Specifically, it licenses many of the leading digital sound and signal processing systems for digital film, DVS, Blu-ray, and digital 3D systems. It has been steadily growing for years.

Veeco Instruments Inc. (VECO)

 12-month sales growth: 150%

12-month income growth: 1,000%

Forward P/E: 13

Return on Equity: 46%

PEG Ratio: .72

Qualitative: Veeco is a leading manufacturer of important manufacturing and testing equipment in the LED, solar, and seminconductor market. It also makes equipment for the manufacturing of disk drives. If Veeco's growth rates seem absnormally hight, its because it swung from losses to a profit in 2010, yielding what looks like spectacular earnings growth. It has also growth its revenue through merger.

Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD)

 12-month sales growth: 0%

12-month income growth: -20%

Forward P/E: 9

Return on Equity: 45%

PEG Ratio: .70

Qualitative: Gilead is an extremely well-managed biotech company with a long track record of high ROE. Recently, it's revenues have been flat and earnings have shrunk due to maturity of some key drug markets. However, it is still enormously profitable, booking $2.9B in profits in 2010, and its valuation is just plain cheap.

Medifast Inc. (MED)

12-month sales growth: 57%

12-month income growth: 147%

Forward P/E: 10

Return on Equity: 33%

PEG Ratio: .50

Qualitative: Medifast is a fast-growing producer of diet supplements and nutrition products. The Medifast brands include many varieties of diet and weight-loss shakes, vitamins, food bars, and other food products.

Stay tuned for the launch of the new site! We are looking for moderators and bloggers. If you are interested, ping me at scott.raynovich@investoruprising.com.

2010 was a great year in the markets, and a decent year for the Rayno Portfolio, but let's not get too excited. It's like being happy about getting a new Toyota after your buddy totaled your Porsche. That's how I view the 2009/2010 market in the context of the 2008 financial debacle. Yes, I like the Toyota, but can I get the Porsche back too?
 
The Rayno Model Portfolio delivered a solid 9% gain -- 10.4% total if you include dividends. This is a slight underperformance in the S&P gains. But please keep in mind that we advised readers to go to 100% CASH (or better yet gold) at the beginning of 2008 -- and so our 2008 Model Portfolio lost no money in one of the worst financial crises in history. A 10.4% gain looks a lot better when you managed to avoid the 35% decline two years earlier.

The Rayno Model Portfolio still has a track record of having NEVER LOST MONEY, and the cumulative returns since 2005 are now in excess of 40% total since 2005. Again, a lot of this goes back to the decision of going to 100% cash in 2008.

Sometimes the best way to make money is to avoid losing it.

The results of the model portfolio are below. To summarize, there were some volatile results in our picks. Our best pick was silver, via the Silver ETF (SLV), which was up 70%. As you know we have been fans of the precious metals for many years, and we believe they are in strong, secular bull markets that will continue. I'm still a huge silver bull.

Just a quick hit, I pulled the plug on our annual Rayno Model Portfolio for year-end preparation -- we locked in a 10% gain when you include dividends. This lagged the S&P by a couple of points but as a reminder the model portfolio in 2008 was put in 100% cash -- and we alerted readers to the high potential for the crash -- so we missed the downswoop. That means the Rayno Model Portfolio is up a cumulative 40%+ since 2005 which beats the market by a mile.

The results of the model portfolio are below. I'll have a full summary tomorrow. Our best pick was silver, via the Silver ETF (SLV) up 70%. As you know we have been fans of the precious metals for many years and we believe they are in strong, secular bull markets that will continue.

To recap how the portfolio works: In leading up to the January of each year, I use several stock screening and analayis methods to pick stocks I believe will have favorable returns. I then buy a hypothetical $10,000 of each stock ($100,000 total portfolio), and we let it ride as a passive portfolio for the entire year. It is never rebalanced or adjusted.

The 2010 Rayno Model Portfolio performance summary:

Symbol Last     Bought         Value           Net     %Change    %Total

AMX  56.38  01/04/2010   11,557.90   1,541.85    15.39%     10.65

DO    64.15  01/04/2010   6,415.00    -3,692.00   -36.52%     5.91

LLY    35.07  01/04/2010  9,749.45        -232.39    -2.32%      8.99

MSFT 28.07  01/04/2010   9,066.61        -940.24    -9.39%      8.36

NYB   19.12  01/04/2010   13,199.70      3,288.20    33.17%    12.17

SLV    28.59  01/04/2010   16,582.19     6,578.79   65.76%     15.29

CTSH 73.08  01/04/2010   15,348.90      5,510.90   56.01%     14.15

SOHU 64.87  01/04/2010   11,029.59         950.50   9.43%      10.17

EWZ   74.04  01/04/2010   9,625.20          -419.50   -4.17%      8.87

CGA      9.31 01/04/2010    5,865.29       -4,054.59 -40.87%     5.40

Total 108,439.86 8,531.51 8.53% (without counting dividends) 10% w/dividends

In my 20 years as a journalist, investor, and a trader, there is no bigger warning sign for a company or its stock as when its executives start taking it upon themselves to battle short-sellers who think the stock is overvalued. Such may be the case with Netflix.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings -- who by the way has sold more than $40M worth of his company's stock in the last 12 months -- is stirring up a highly visible public battle with some well-known and respected hedge fund managers who are openly shorting his stock.

Bad idea.

A couple of points on this:

1) Netflix is a good company. Hastings is a brilliant man. But he should be focused on running his company not battling a few short-sellers. If the company is being run well the stock will take care of itself.

2) For some stupid reason, CEOs tend to seen their stock price as a direct measure of their ego. Of course, Netflix shares have traded to the stratosphere -- has Hastings' ego gone there too?

3) The action in the stock price is about fair valuation, not always about "is this company good or bad." If a stock gets overvalued and falls, it does not necessarily mean the comany is "bad," it could just mean the shares got overvalued. Hastings shouldn't take the trading personally.

4) These short-sellers -- Whitney Tilson and Manuel Ansensio -- are particularly smart and have good track records. Bad people to pick a fight with. Ansensio calls Hastings attacks "disrespectful." I agree.

5) It reflects poorly on the company. It is in bad taste. The street is littered with the bodies of CEOs who attempted to battle short-sellers and eventually lost.

6) Netflix has tons of cash, good cash flow and a great balance sheet. So what exactly are they worried about?

7) If Netflix executives feel so strongly about their stock why are they unloading as if they have just won the lottery? Sure, they have sold through "automatic sales," but that is a pat defense. If they are so confident in their company's stock price you would think they would have scaled back the selling. After all, if they are selling they are doing the same thing the short sellers are -- trying to lock in the value of a huge run in the stock.

Calm down Reed, get back to real work.

The gold and silver negativity is suddenly back on financial TV after euphoria just a week ago -- you know what that means: Time to buy!

I picked up some more gold, silver, and mining shares on this AM's flush. We've come a long way back from this morning's sell-off. At one point we were down $20, now we are only down $6 on the day. Gold has now tested the $1370 level twice and survived; silver has tested $28 twice. Both of them are developing well-defined uptrend channels. I think the metals will bottom either today or Monday.

One of the overhangs has been the anticipation of a Chinese rate hike. That, and the fact that many people had a nice run in the metals meant profit-taking ahead of year-end. But everybody is talking about a Chinese rate hiike so how much of a surprise can it be? I say you buy on Monday whether or not there is a rate hike.

All of this sets up for a nice buy point some $50 or so off the recent high in gold. The last three corrections have been swift in violent: $74-$100 flushes in a matter of days, only to reverse higher. I think we will see a similar thing of this correction, most of which is probably done.

I have been doing some more research on the LED (Light Emitting Diode) market and I have concluded that it could easily be a $20B+ market, which would represent enormous growth from here. It's an exciting market.

As described here in my post on EBN Online, the math is pretty simple. Right now, LEDs are estimated to have less than 5% penetration of the global lighting market, which is estimated to be near $80B. In Japan, LED penetration is already approaching 50%. If you assume that LEDs can get to 30%-40% penetration of the global lighting market in the next 10 years, you are talking about a $20B+ market.

The most common LED play is Cree (Nasdaq: CREE), a market leader with a strong patent position. Another good public-market play is VECO, which makes a variety of LED technologies as well as manufacturing and testing platforms.

(Disclosure: I have been in and out of CREE and VECO over. Currently long VECO, and looking for a better long-term entry point in CREE.)

What do Michael Steinhardt, Lord Rothchild, Rupert Murdoch, and Howard Jonas have in common? Oil shale and IDT shares, obviously.

IDT Chairman Howard Jonas has presided over an eccentric -- and so far brilliant -- diversification of his telecom company into the oil-shale business. And somehow he's attracted some of the biggest moguls in the world.

IDT shares have rallied 600% since the company got into the oil-shale business, recently announcing plans to spin off subsidiary Genie energy. Read about it here.

Wow. Cisco. Who would have thunk the stock would be back below $20 when the new bull market in technology is pushing many shares to new highs. CEO John Chambers is still smiling on TV, but you know he is seething behind the scenes.

Where to start... there are so many things wrong with Cisco right now I'm not sure what to pick first. On a technical market level, it's clear to me that Cisco shares are being sold on strength. Last week's puke-out  in which Cisco lost 20% of its market cap came on gigantic volume.

On a strategic level, Cisco is adrift and its M&A strategy has been flawed. It has focused far too much on video and consumer products and less on cloud-computing infrastructure. I have been writing about this on Enterprise Efficiency.Cisco was buying flip-cams and settop boxes when it should have been focused on the cloud.

RightNow (Nasdaq: RNOW), the best little technology company in Montana, today is powering to new all-time highs fueled by excitement about cloud applications and its recent success in garnering new customers and restructuring the company with a new COO.

The stock rose 1.54% today to $27.68, a new all-time high.

Scanning the news, it's hard to find anything particular that's driving the stock, unless you think a press release entitled "RightNow Helps Leading Consumer Brands Deliver Positive Customer Experiences and Drive Business Value." Nah.

I last wrote in detail about RightNow this summer when it was powering up its new applications strategy, which seems to be taking hold quite well. Since then, the company has also announced it recruited telecom veteran Wayne Huyard to be the new COO. The stock has more than doubled since the summer.

Right Now's riding the wave of a strong technology rally and also some excitement about cloud applications. It could also be an attractive takeover candicate for a larger cloud applications company such as Salesforce (NYSE: CRM).