If you think the economic recovery is just beginning, then these three stocks will benefit. They've just released their earnings so you can see how they've fared even in these tough times. They all share positive attributes: plenty of cash, growing sales and earnings, and a dividend.

General Electric (GE): This stock has been a frustration for years. It cut the dividend. The price went from $38 a share to $8 from 2008 to 2009. Now it's coming back. The latest quarterly and annual reports for 2010 confirm the company's finally seeing better demand for most of its products and services.

GE mirrors the economy because it's in so many different parts of it. Here are only some of its offerings: jet engines, light bulbs, credit, mortgage finance, appliances, power plants, locomotives, electric distribution and control equipment, generators and turbines, real estate, commercial finance, aircraft leasing, NBC Universal, health care and several more. When the economy does well, so does GE.

Wow. General Electric Company (GE) is up 7.9% to $19.89 as I write this. Volume is strong. I wish I could say I was participating in today's rally, but alas, I am not. Late last year, I sold out of my GE position, as I explain in this article. I obviously could have sold at a higher price, but hey, I needed to sell when I did; that's just how it goes.

I like the price action I'm seeing, and I believe the Q4 profit report was solid. According to the Associated Press, continuing operations captured 36 cents per share, four pennies above the projection. Probably of more significant note in some respects is the top-line performance: the AP stated that net sales increased on a year-over-year basis, a feat that hasn't been observed for quite a while.

Conglomerate General Electric Company (GE) will be reporting its fourth quarter results before the market opens on Friday, with analysts expecting to see the company report $0.32 per share.

During the same period last year, GE had earnings of $0.28 per share.

Analyst Upgrades

• Verizon (VZ), FEMSA (FMX), Vornado (VNO), Duke Realty (DRE) and AvalonBay (AVB) to buy from neutral, as well as Carnival (CCL) to conviction buy from buy, at Goldman.
• Symantec (SYMC) to buy from hold at Citigroup.
• Copano Energy (CPNO), DCP Midstream (DPM) and Inergy (NRGY) to overweight from equal weight at Morgan Stanley.
• SYNNEX (SNX) to strong buy from buy at Needham.
• Eli Lilly (LLY) to hold from sell at Hapoalim.
• World Wrestling (WWE) to buy from neutral at Roth Capital.

Analyst Upgrades

• General Electric (GE) and Barclays (BCS) to buy from neutral at UBS.
• Warnaco (WRC) to outperform from market perform and Melco Crown (MPEL) to market perform from underperform at Wells Fargo.
• Parker-Hannifin (PH) and Emerson Electric (EMR) to buy from neutral at Goldman.
• AMD (AMD) to buy from neutral at Nomura.
• Novellus (NVLS) and Sherwin-Williams (SHW) to equal weight from underweight at Morgan Stanley.
• OpenTable (OPEN) to outperform from market perform at Morgan Keegan.
• Skilled Healthcare (SKH) to buy from hold at Jefferies.
• Lear (LEA) to overweight from equal weight at Barclays.
• Adobe (ADBE) to buy from neutral at BofA/Merrill.

I have already gone on record this year saying that financial companies and insurance stocks are going to continue to rebound. In my previous two posts Chasing Value: 2011 Stock Picks -- 5 of 11 and Chasing Value: 2011 Stock Picks -- 6, 7, 8, 9, I included several financial institutions. Today I add an insurance company.

The industry got whacked hard for many reasons. For one, it makes a significant amount of profit by investing its float, and like every other investor, the industry lost a pile of money in the financial crisis. It was embroiled more directly than some industries, as several insurers are affiliated with banks. Finally the housing crisis meant disruption to payment streams by homeowners who were delinquent on more than their mortgages.

Here are the next four of my 2011 picks. I am behind schedule, after publishing the first 5 earlier in the week (see: Chasing Value: 2011 Stock Picks -- 5 of 11). This year instead of starting completely anew, I am adjusting my 2010 picks. There is no sense in abandoning good ideas just because the calendar turned a page.

You will actually find support of running themes I have been writing about over the past few months. One of these is the idea of making a contrarian investment in a basket of stocks that have been both scalded and scolded in the headlines. Six stocks were included in such a group that I called the "toxic stocks" (see: Chasing Value: Toxic Stock Update #3 -- BAC, BP, C, GE, GS, RIG).

This is the fifth year that I am posting my stock picks for the year. There is a lot of foolishness in doing so because each year that I have made such suggestions, including 2009 when I owned all of the picks, it is assumed that I would hold all of the positions without responding to market conditions, or changes in the specific company. No adding to, or cutting a position. This is not the real world.

It is not possible for everything to remain static. For example, you might find that you hold a stock that made a great run through three quarters, beyond your wildest expectations, and decide it has passed a point where the metrics cannot support anything close to the price. Under normal circumstances you might sell it, except you cannot. By the end of the year the profit you might have realized fades away and you end up reporting on something that is not a true measure of your objective strategy. Nevertheless, once again I will stick with this approach because this seems to be how its done in every publication's annual picks. This year there are eleven.

The year 2010 has come and gone and my results are in. This is my fourth annual stock results to be reported on BlogginStocks, so something of a track record is starting to form. This past year ended with a modest improvement over the unmanaged Standard & Poors 500 index

The original story, Chasing Value: 10 Stock Picks for 2010, took readers through a review of many candidates, concluding with the ten picks, using prices from Dec. 28, 2009.

So, last month, I sold out of my long-term General Electric Company (GE) position. I didn't really want to do it, but sometimes you have to make tough money-management decisions.

Why did I sell out? Well, we're all playing the tax game right about now, am I correct? I had some gains to offset, so I took a hard look at my portfolio to see what I might be able to do to reduce the burden that my profit implied.

Diversified industrial giant General Electric (GE), first discussed here on June 2, 2009, at a price of $13.80, continues to put the summer's bottom at/near $13.75 behind it, with the shares vectoring toward $20, and I obviously still like the stock at this juncture.

Look for GE's energy infrastructure, consumer/industrial, technology units to post revenue increases in 201q, boosted by both emerging market and developed-world demand and order increases. GE should record impressive gains in oil and gas products, health care imaging, and airplane engines. Meanwhile, losses at GE Capital Finance should decline in 2011, as it did it in 2010.