Two good bets among pipeline master limited partnerships are Williams Pipeline Partners and Energy Transfer Equity. Both have strong balance sheets, healthy sponsors, solid businesses and ample cash flow.

Two good bets among pipeline master limited partnerships are Williams Pipeline Partners and Energy Transfer Equity. Both have strong balance sheets, healthy sponsors, solid businesses and ample cash flow.

If you apply the same metrics to Tanzanian Royalty that are used for its peers, the stock looks substantially overvalued. And Tanzanian has less cash on its books than most.

Thanks to strong generation of cash and aggressive cost cutting, the company's earnings should resume climbing in 2010. The stock could triple to about 16.

Shares of Sherwin-Williams have held up well, even as the stock and housing markets have tanked. Now they could tumble to 44 from 53, as paint sales decline.

American Express is in better shape than investors think. Under CEO Ken Chenault, it boasts a premier brand, lots of liquidity and a less risky business model than competitors.

BB&T serves many small businesses in its mid-Atlantic and southeast strongholds, and economic weakness there could require more capital to be set aside to cover rising losses in its residential-construction and consumer portfolios. If that happens, consensus estimates for BB&T to earn $1.46 a share in 2009 may prove too upbeat. Goldman Sachs, for one, thinks the exposure to construction loans and slow pace of loan write-offs may hurt its ability to swiftly repay bailout money. As that rare big bank yet to cut dividends, BB&T also faces mounting regulatory pressure to shore up cash. Keefe Bruyette & Woods last week cut its price target from 20 to 13 -- equal to its tangible book value or four times normalized earnings.

We don't want to leave you with the impression that the T2 guys are cranky old perma-bears. They aren't. At the end of their report they point out that "the stocks of some of the greatest businesses, with strong balance sheets and dominant competitive positions, are trading at their cheapest levels in years." Nothing wrong with the companies themselves, they believe; rather, the stocks got beat up mostly because of the cruddy market and soft economy. Victims, as it were, of the bearish trends. The names they like that fall into that not exactly overly crowded category are familiar enough: Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Wal-Mart, Altria, ExxonMobil, Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft. That doesn't exhaust their portfolio picks, but those are the ones they obviously think are best suited to ride out any resurgence of the bear market.