by Becca Cobb

It has been reported by industry experts that the purchases and usage of green vehicles are continuing to increase annually. For the last few decades, chauffeured vehicles have been depicted as gas guzzlers and harmful for the environment. However, one company is changing that viewpoint.

Olympus Worldwide is a chauffeur services firm headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia and dedicated to being environmentally-friendly. Started in 1998 by Johan De Leeuw, the company has been dedicated to consistency, reliability and safety. It offers an array of limousine, sedan and bus services in more than 450 destinations around the world, including in each city in the United States.

Delivering a number of services in an eco-friendly manner by high-quality and trained experienced professionals, Olympus Worldwide offers corporate travel, airport services, private aviation, hourly service and transportation to meetings and events

As the company states: its cars are black, but its business is green. It maintains a variety of vehicles that are the latest luxury models and have the newest features for convenience and personalized needs for its clientele. Some of the cars in its fleet are comprised of the Lincoln L Series Town Car, Lincoln Super Stretch Limousine, corporate van, a 29-passenger shuttle bus and a large coach bus.

“Every person on our team has gotten better across the board since then” said Johan De Leeuw, owner and company president, in a press release. “We all realized that the bar was raised and the expectations of our clients increased exponentially. We have to be great every day, in everything we do.”

Customers are able to receive a quote and book reservations on the Olympus Worldwide website or by telephone. Clients also have the benefits of altering itineraries, perusing credit card invoices and receipts, and contacting the firm about anything 24 hours a day, seven days a week by either using its call center services or going online.

Olympus Worldwide is a founding member of the Limousine Environmental Partnership (LEP). It has introduced a series of strategies to make sure that the company is green and is reducing its energy consumption. Some of these tactics include a carbon emissions inventory assessment, voluntary reporting to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), using FlexFuel and Hybrid vehicles and integration of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reduction strategies.

“We have developed a world class group of partners by investing in the time to vet them properly. We work very hard to assure our clients receive the same level of care in every city that we service,” added De Leeuw.

Olympus Worldwide was ranked No. 1,202 on the prestigious Inc. 500 | 5000 list of fastest private American companies in the country, the state of Georgia and the Atlanta Metro Area. It posted a 261 percent growth from 2008 to 2011 with a workforce of only nine employees.

The chauffeur enterprise regularly publishes a newsletter that looks at the latest industry news, the green sector, tips from experts, things to do in Atlanta in each season and up-to-date news about the company.

It has big plans for the future: “We hope to double in size within the next 3 years,” confirmed De Leeuw.

by Becca Cobb

Not all of us are finance gurus. Some of us simply have a savings account, maybe a few GICs or even a mutual fund – heck, perhaps even some gold bars or silver coins. When it comes to playing Wall Street, it’s a whole other world for the average person.

The latest craze in the stock market world is binary options, types of options where the payoff is either a fixed amount of some asset or nothing at all. There are two specific kinds of binary options: a cash-or-nothing binary option and an asset-or-nothing binary option.

Binary options have grown in both popularity and scrutiny over the years. Those closely affiliated to the industry and some financial experts say it’s a dangerous way to trade because of two reasons: you don’t need to know a lot when you embark on trading in the market and there is a negative cumulative payout involved.

Analysts opine that the best way to determine if binary options are successful for you is to do the following: analyze the win/loss ratio, win size versus loss size, net income, net profitable trades and maximum losses in a row.

When global markets plummeted and took a beating in 2007, successful businessman and revered financier Oren Laurent established Banc De Binary in 2009 in light of the market insecurity and volatility. Since then, Banc De Binary has been the solo binary options company in the European Union. Recently, it has been authorized and registered by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission, the United Kingdom Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the EU regulatory bodies in the 27 member nations.

Located in Limassol, Cyprus, Banc De Binary has become one of the top investment firms with an innovative and original online platform. It boasts about the financial tools that allow hundreds of thousands of clients to prosper in a difficult market.

Aside from its financial instruments, it also maintains several other features, such as publishing the latest industry news, support from its professional brokers, updates of technical analyses and a sublime overall customer experience.

Three years after opening its doors, Banc De Binary has expanded into 80 countries across the globe and is serving clients all day every day. It is in the midst of growing its already large book of clients. In order to do this, it continues to improve on its assistance, services and status.

“We have long voiced our desire to expand in these markets and through the obtained license and the registration of Banc De Binary in UK, Germany, Spain and Italy now we can serve investors throughout Europe,” said the Banc De Binary CEO in a media release last month. “Our clients can be assured of the highest level of professional standards, customer service, financial security and transparency in their transactions with us.”

The firm’s website contains a variety of functions to aid and improve the trading experience. Some of these features consist of an introduction to binary options, fundamental analysis, profit strategies (risk management, trading strategies, trading fundamental events), how to select the best broker and market reviews. It also has an up-to-date, comprehensive blog that covers industry news, helpful videos and important tips.

After a couple of superb years, Banc De Binary has been given several distinctions and honors from industry leaders for its excellence, including winning outstanding awards for best customer service, best brokerage and best platform of the year.

The minimum deposits are $250 with payouts averaging about 81 percent. Presently, it does not permit clients from the United States. Experts believe the company is reputable and successful as it has received on average four-star reviews from several finance venues.

by Bill Richards

From Google’s Florida, Panda and Penguin algorithms to search engines becoming more social (see Bing partnering with Facebook), the search engine optimization landscape has completely changed since the days when search engines first launched in the late 1990s.

With millions of websites competing for the top spot in their respective keyword phrase, niche or topic, the SEO industry still continues to grow, but there are different factors involved than there were back in the early 2000s when keyword phrasing was the ultimate decider.

Moving forward, webmasters must focus on generating frequent and unique content that can give visitors pertinent and inimitable information instead of rehashing content, repeating keywords and asking other fellow webmasters to link to the webpage. They also must establish a significant social media presence as this is another element that will be taken into account.

Is there any advice that web experts can give? Well, perhaps web developers should avoid the SEO-death talk and instead concentrate on how SEO will be here to stay and to generate new ideas to provide benefits to Internet users and offer a different type of landscape for visitors, customers and potential clients.

One firm that has been a staple in the SEO industry is Submit Express, a company that specializes in SEO, Internet marketing, web writing and other marketing services. Established in 1998 at a time when there was growing competition, Submit Express has become a household name in the SEO industry.

It was originally established by Pierre Zarokian, an Armenian computer science and web developing specialist, who became interested in how search engines determine page rankings and decided to start up Submit Express in his parents’ garage without any investment.

Located in Burbank, California, Submit Express offers a large number of marketing services, including opt-in email advertising, link building, Pay Per Click (PPC) search engine placement and local SEO. It also provides a number free webmaster tools, such as sitemap submission, link popularity check, pagerank checker, keyword traffic estimator, meta tags analyzer and many more.

For more than a decade, it has aided more than 5,000 companies with their SEO needs and more than 25,000 companies in relation to premium search engine submission service. In total, its free submission and webmaster tools have generated approximately 20 million visitors (at the time of this writing).

Over the years it has initiated new features. In 2008, it launched a foreign language SEO service that is comprised of French, Russian and Spanish. A year later, it started a popular content writing service called iClimber. By rejuvenating the popular web phrase “content is king,” iClimber offers website copywriting, Twitter posting, press release writing and distribution, article writing and submission and blog and forum posting.

As the company maintains a staff of 30 or more experienced professionals involved in project management, web copywriting, Internet marketing, website development and much more, Submit Express is searching to innovate the SEO marketplace and capitalize on its massive successes.

One way it has continued to be a premier company in the SEO market is its page rank on the Google search engine. For years, it has been ranked No. 1 and placed in the top 10 rankings for top keywords such as “search engine optimization,” “search engine placement,” and “search engine submission.”

Due to its helpful nature, various functions and features, free tools and thriving services, it has received quite a number of awards and accolades.

This year, TopTenReviews gave Submit Express gold and excellence awards. In 2007 and 2008, it was named as one of the fastest-growing companies on the Inc. 5000 list. Also in 2008, it made the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 list as one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the United States.

I regard banks and other financial institutions as black boxes. These firms are too complex to understand as executives, let alone as outside investors. Insiders have a hard time keeping track of their many regulations and contracts that these organizations have to honor. Outside investors have a worse task: they have to try to understand material changes in the company without detailed, proprietary information that is available to management.

The complexity of these businesses makes them very dangerous to investors and management. Sometimes there is forewarning of issues that become huge scandals and management misses it. New reports about JPMorgan Chase’s (JPM) proprietary trading scandal reveal some forewarning by regulators. Sometimes the problems are widespread in an organization, as was the case in HSBC’s (HBC) money laundering investigation and settlement. The risks of these firms cannot be quantified or even described until after they surface in the news.

The prevalence of these scandals demonstrates that financials are truly speculative bets.

SEC Warnings Before JPMorgan’s Loss

Almost a year before JPMorgan Chase lost $6.2 billion due to derivative positions, the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) was already pressing the bank for adequate disclosures to investors regarding its proprietary trading and principal transactions revenue.

The SEC wrote JPMorgan’s CFO Douglas Braunstein asking for the above-mentioned information, according to correspondence between the agency and the company communicated between June 15th and February 17th of last year. A provision contained in the Dodd-Frank Act known as the Volcker rule restricts proprietary trading – bets or trades executed by the banks using their own money, as distinguished from those it trades on behalf of its clients. To continue reading, click here.

The tech industry is often mentioned as one of the highest-growth sectors, with many top performers delivering strong, rapid growth. Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), AT&T (T), Cisco (CSCO), and Amazon (AMZN) have an enviable reputation in the sector, creating beautifully simple, intuitive products across all device segments. The sector is worth trillions of dollars, with a number of fast-moving companies attracting the attention of investment managers across the board.

One of them, Google, recently announced financial results for the quarter ended September 30th, 2012. Revenue was up 45% year-on-year, and the company earned its first $14-billion revenue in a quarter, an increase of 45% compared to the third quarter of 2011. The GAAP operating income in the third quarter of 2012 was $2.74 billion, or 19% of revenue, compared to GAAP operating income of $3.06 billion, or 31% of revenue, in the third quarter of 2011. Its revenues (advertising and others) were $11.53 billion, or 82% of consolidated revenue, representing a 19% increase over third quarter 2011 revenue of $9.72 billion. Google’s revenue from the United Kingdom totaled $1.22 billion, representing 11% of Google’s revenues in the third quarter of 2012, compared to the 11% in the third quarter of 2011.

I believe that Google is significantly overvalued based on valuation at its current price around $679 per share, but I also think its stock price could increase in the next few years. While many of its rivals are fretting about competition and decrease in market share, Google executives are excited that at just 14 years of age, the company has recorded a $14-billion revenue for the first time in a quarter. To continue reading, click here.

With interest rates remaining at historical lows, REIT investors have been nicely rewarded with growing share prices and healthy dividend yields. In some instances, especially in light of the recovering real estate market, REIT shares have risen year to date by as much as 20% or more.

While both the current and expected performance of most REITs has been positive, there is one REIT in particular that I feel could be a real winner in terms of longer-term income and growth due to its diversified portfolio and income-generating strategies. In this article, I will discuss why Two Harbors Investment (TWO) is a great fit for REIT buyers.

Although Two Harbors recently cut its dividend, the company still offers a nice yield of over 12%. Over the past 12 months, Two Harbor’s sales growth has increased by more than 400%, with income growth in excess of 250%. The company feels that this is due in large part to its diversified asset portfolio that consists of both agency and non-agency mortgage-backed securities, as well as the firm’s purchase of foreclosed single-family properties from big banks that are subsequently rented out for income generation.

Upon purchase of these homes, Two Harbors rolls the properties into an entity named Silver Bay Realty Trust. This trust has recently registered for its own IPO. Although Silver Bay is a new offering, it has an advantage when seeking financing from lenders in that it is owned by Two Harbors.

Two Harbors has a P/E ratio of 9, which is actually below that of the real estate industry overall of closer to 10, and substantially lower than the P/E ratio of 17.7 for the S&P 500 index. To continue reading, click here.

New government requirements are putting car maker ingenuity to the test. According to the Wall Street Journal, “by 2025, the U.S. government wants large pickup trucks like the Chevrolet Silverado to get about 44% better mileage than today.” The prospect “could be a daunting challenge, particularly if General Motors (GM) doesn’t want to cut the towing capability, payload or power of its best-selling and highly profitable big pickup,” especially since GM has already “improved the Silverado’s fuel efficiency by 20% since 2002.” In the end, GM will have to up its game even further or stop making one of its most popular models.

But, there is a loophole. “Administration officials [have] highlighted the goal of boosting the average fuel efficiency of new cars and light trucks to 54.5 miles on a gallon of gasoline by 2025,” writes theWall Street Journal. “In the real world, however, an auto maker could still sell significant numbers of vehicles that don’t meet that target. If the Silverado falls short of the requirement that it get about 26 miles per gallon in 2025 – the official target as adjusted to reflect real-world driving results – GM could make up the difference by selling a smaller truck or car that gets better mileage than required for its class.”

While hybrid technology is not a requirement to accomplish these standards, the easiest way to do this is by using electric car technologies.

The Obama administration estimates the cost of converting a vehicle to that level of efficiency at $1,800 a vehicle by 2025, and “consumers who buy 2025 cars can expect to save more than $8,000 over the life of a car compared to 2011 models. To continue reading, click here.

People have been clamoring for smartphones ever since Apple (AAPL) introduced the iPhone in 2007. Today, thousands of people carry smartphones or tablets. Now, soon the military may too.

Military operations require dependable information on locations, a way for communicating efforts and a way to share information in real-time – sounds like a regular Saturday night for most people as they use their smartphones or tablets to get directions, meet up with friends, and share pictures of the festivities.

Of course, the military versions of these items are considerably “hardened” and developed specifically for military usage by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), but many of the apps carry similarities to those used by civilians, such as DARPA’s custom application that sports Google-like maps based on satellite images.

“Darpa, the defense research arm that contributed to the development of the Internet, has launched an effort called Transformative Apps under which it has developed a few dozen smartphone applications that work on a number of mobile devices it is evaluating,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “In addition to mapping, the apps can do things like identify explosives and weapons and help navigate parachute drops” and they have shown marked success.

“During a battle in a village near Kandahar, Afghanistan, Lt. Kevin Pelletier used a tablet computer with a custom map application to direct soldiers’ movements,” continues the paper. “As thousands of rounds flew through the village near Kandahar, Lt. To continue reading, click here.

The best way to make money in oil stocks these days is to bet on companies that are redeveloping old oil fields. Putting new life into existing fields is the best and most cost effective way to increase oil production without spending a lot of money. Naturally, this strategy boosts profits because the companies that pursue it don’t have to build a lot of new infrastructure or engage in expensive exploration.

Tapping existing fields is the most cost effective method for smaller companies to generate a lot of cash. It’s the oil exploration equivalent of value investing: find an existing field with a lot of good value left that’s been ignored by others and develop it. One smaller company pursuing this strategy is Citadel Exploration (COIL) of Ojai, Calif.

Instead of spending a lot of money flying off to the jungle or the tundra, Citadel is traveling to the wilds of San Benito County, Calif., a few hours drive from its offices, to tap the Bitterwater sub-basin of the Salinas Basin with its Project Indian. The Salinas Basin is part of the San Ardo oil field. Project Indian could pay off because Citadel’s geologists think that there could be over 100 million barrels of heavy oil in the area. The area is not new to exploration: Chevron drilled there extensively in the 1970s.

Project Indian is an example of cost effective oil exploration that can generate high profits. It takes advantage of work done by larger and better capitalized companies. These include Occidental Petroleum (OXY), which owns Vintage Petroleum, from which Citadel is leasing 12 acres.

Companies like Citadel are able to get oil out of existing fields because of technologies such as cyclic steam injection. This process involves pumping steam into older wells to force up oil that wasn’t pumped out by using earlier methods. It is being used to get new production out of old fields all over the world. Cyclic steaming is an example of an enhanced recovery method. Reuters estimated that two-thirds of the oil ever recovered has been pumped through such methods.

Even major oil companies like Exxon Mobil (XOM) are getting into the act. Exxon and the Russian state oil company Rosneft plan plan to use another enhanced recovery method, hydraulic fracking, to wring up to13.2 billion barrels of oil out of the Bazhenov oil formation in Siberia. This field was developed by the Soviets in the 1960s, but it was thought to be pumped out. New technology will allow Exxon to open up Bazhenov, much as Citadel would like to do at Bitterwater.

Enhanced Recovery can be Costly

Enhanced recovery methods, such as cyclic steam, can save oil producers money because they enable them to pump in areas where expensive infrastructure, such as pipelines, roads, and power lines, has already been built. Another advantage is that the process enables oil producers to work in politically stable countries like the United States, where politics probably will not interfere in production.

Yet such methods can be costly; it costs around $13.50 a barrel to use cyclic steam. That means oil prices will have to remain fairly high for Citadel to make a profit and generate a dividend. With crude oil prices over $80 a barrel on June 29, 2012, it seems likely that Citadel can generate a profit from this field.

Another advantage to using enhanced recovery methods is that their use can get new fields into production quickly. Instead of spending years building roads and pipelines, the company can start producing oil as soon as new wells are drilled and steaming begins. That means a new field can be put into production in a few weeks or months.

So Citadel could be in a position to make large profits out of Project Indian because it has found a lot of oil at a proven field. Instead of taking risks, it is trying to recover oil that others have already discovered, but couldn’t get.

Such enhanced recovery is the future of the oil business because it is smart and cost effective. BP (BP) estimates that it will be able recover up to two billion barrels of oil from existing reserves by using a variety of enhanced recovery techniques. That enables producers to extend the life of oil fields and generate profits with existing resources.

Citadel Exploration is in an excellent position to tap existing fields in California. Its location in Oaj gives it access to several major oil regions, including the Los Angeles Basin, the Salinas Half-Moon Basin, and the San Joaquin Basin, all of which should be very familiar to the company’s management team.  At least three of the company’s officers have extensive experience in oil and gas operations in California.

Chief Executive Officer Armen Nahabedian was in charge of drilling operations for his family’s company, the Nahabedian Exploration Group. In that position, he oversaw some of the deepest exploratory wells drilled in California. Chairman of the Board Dan Szymanski served as Manager of Business Development and Manager of Financial Planning at Occidental Petroleum’s corporate headquarters in Los Angeles. Szymanski also served as manager for 42 oil and gas fields in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys, so he is intimately familiar with the oil fields in the region.

Small oil companies that specialize in enhanced recovery, such as Citadel, could be one of the best growth bets in the oil field. They can develop production quickly without taking great risks, and they can tap a proven resource. Smaller producers such as Citadel that have a proven relationship with a large oil company such as Occidental are in an even better position.

Such a relationship can get a company like Citadel access to existing oil fields with existing infrastructure and proven oil reserves. Occidental has dozens of existing oil fields and leases in California that Citadel can tap.

The New Frontier for Oil Exploration

The growth in oil stocks in the next few years will come not from the giants such as Chevron (CVX) or from new fields, but from smaller companies willing to use enhanced recovery to tap existing fields. Larger oil companies will increasingly turn to smaller companies with proven experience in technologies, such as cyclic steam for their recovery efforts.

The big boys will call upon these smaller players because they are more cost effective. Citadel Exploration, which is based in one of America’s historic oil regions, is well poised to take advantage of this trend. It has the knowledge and experience to redevelop a number of oil leases.

If Citadel can successfully bring Project Indian to completion, its stock could rise above the $1 mark. It will have demonstrated that it is capable of working with established oil companies to tap valuable existing assets in its own backyard. Project Indian should give the company the experience and expertise it needs to develop similar projects in other fields in the San Joaquin and Salinas basins.

The new frontier for oil and oil stocks may not be in the deep sea or countries such as Russia. Instead, it could be right here at home among America’s historic oil fields. Value investors should be able to cash in on that trend by taking a bet on smaller oil and gas companies that specialize in enhanced recovery.

Transparency/Disclaimer: We were paid $150 by a third-party shareholder to write this article. While we vetted each company, researched it thoroughly and done our own due diligence, it is no substitute for your own diligence. Consult a professional investment advisor before you invest.

Chesapeake Energy (CHK) is all set to announce its new chairman this week, a long awaited change. This change in leadership is nothing short of historical. The company, which was founded 23 years ago by Aubrey McClendon and Tom Ward, has never experienced a change in management once during that time. Perhaps that is part of the problem for the company’s current bad image. Perhaps still, an earlier change in leadership would have kept it from deteriorating as it has.

So it is widely agreed then that the company needs a change in leadership if it is to survive. However, I believe that the subtext that we can infer here is that the quality of the new leader needs to be such that he or she actually has the ability to make the required changes a reality. However, I do not think that there are many qualified individuals out there who would be willing to take Chesapeake on in its current state.

McClendon, whose strategies in the past were instrumental in making the company what it is today, has agreed to step down as chairman following an investigation that showed that he has secured huge amounts of money in personal loans using his shares in the company as collateral. This is an unacceptable abuse of power and has caused the entire management structure of Chesapeake to be called into question.

Consequently, the company has a bad name at the moment and will struggle to find a good leader willing to tarnish his or her name by associating with the company on such an intimate level.To continue reading, click here.

In recent remarks, David O’Reilly, CEO and chairman of Chevron (CVX) until January 2011 and now chairman of the National Petroleum Council, indicated he is betting against U.S. oil independence based on shale extraction. O’Reilly said, “I do believe that we will still be importing oil 20 to 25 years from now, and that is one area of vulnerability we have in our supply system,” citing weakness in the current infrastructure and a lack of economic scale. O’Reilly’s view partly explains why Chevron is moving slowly on entering unconventional plays in the lower 48 states, which I believe is ultimately to Chevron’s detriment.

Chevron’s reluctance to participate in shale plays puts it behind all of its U.S. based competitors. Marathon Oil (MRO) is betting heavily on shale to fuel its growth. Exxon Mobil (XOM) is now the largest producer of natural gas in the U.S. following its acquisition of XTO Energy in 2009. It was not until February 2011 that Chevron acquired Atlas Energy to obtain its first foothold on U.S. shale gas, though the deal was nowhere near as large or as successful as Exxon Mobil’s acquisition of XTO. As of the end of 2011, Chevron owned 700,000 acres in the Marcellus and 600,000 acres in the Utica, but is apparently not very excited about the prospects here as these plays are not even mentioned in the company’s first quarter earnings presentation.

If Not Drilling in the U.S., then Where?

Chevron’s strongest area of focus remains its natural gas projects, primarily centered in Australia, where it operates the Gorgon and Wheatstone projects, among others. To continue reading, click here.