2 Great hotesl to choice from

For my Financial Tides portfolios I was using Barchart to screen for some new stocks and on the top of my screens came 2 hotels: Host Hotels & Resorts (HST) and Starwoods Hotels & Resorts (HOT). If I'm on Bing and trying to make a travel reservation I have to pick one or the other but how about when I'm investing? How do I choose?

Let's take them one at a time with my normal analysis:

Host Hotel's & Resorts (HST) had a price appreciation in the last 30 days of 27.32%. It hit new highs on 17 of the last 20 trading sessions and was 4 for 5 recently. On Barchart 13 of the 13 technical indicators signal buy for a 100% technical rating.

The analysts like it and have 5 buy and 9 hold recommendations published, Although they look for sales to decrease by .4% this year they look for a 6.0% increase next year. They predict nice earnings increases of 9.8% this year, 30.4% next year and 7.5% per year for the next 5 years.

Investor sentiment over on Motley Fool shows the CAPS members think the stock will out perform the market by a vote of 141 to 39 with the All Stars in agreement with a vote of 78 to 7.

Now how about Starwoods Hotels & Resorts (HOT) :

HOT had a price appreciation in the last 30 days of 19.06%, It hit new highs in 12 of the last 20 trading sessions and was 4 for 5 recently. On Barchart 12 of the 13 technical indicators signal a buy for a 96% technical rating.

The analysts like this one too with 10 buy recommendations and 9 holds published. They think sales will increase by .7% this year followed by a 6.2% increase next year. Although earnings are expected to be down this year by 36.6% a turn around is forecasted for next year of 58.5% and a 5 year compounded growth rate of 1.52% after that.

Investor sentiment is high with the Fools CAPS members thinking it will out perform the market by a vote of 226 to 114 with the All Star in similar agreement by a 65 to 21 vote.

HST is trading around 14.82 with a 50 day moving average of 12 and HOT is trading around 45.11 with a 50 day moving average of 39.

They both have:

• Recent price momentum and similar scores on Barchart's technical indicators
• Analysts have buy recommendations on both and predict increasing sales and earnings
• Both have positive investor sentiment

An idea just hit me: I can only stay at one hotel at a time but there isn't any reason I can't split my stock purchases between the 2. Since most of us are trading of less than $9.95 per trade anyway I'll just split the amount I wanted to buy in two and buy them both.

Jim Van Meerten is an investor who writes on financial matters here and on Financial Tides. Please leave a comment below or email JimVanMeerten@gmail.com.

Disclosure: I have no positions is the stocks mentioned above.