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Apple's deal with China Mobile has been lauded far and wide by the tech community (myself included). There's little question that Apple now being able to sell its ever-popular iPhones to China Mobile, the world's largest telecom company by subscribers, will prove a positive for Apple investors. Heck, over the long term, this deal should provide Apple tens of millions of new iPhone sales.

Source: Apple

So, what could go wrong?While I hope it's clear that I firmly believe in this deal's big ticket potential over the next several years, there are also several key issues for China Mobile and Apple that could keep the two companies from reaping the full benefits of one of tech's most high-profile deals in recent memory.

Let's take a look at two of the greatest possible risks to keeping the deal from reaching its full potential.

No. 1: 4G availability on China Mobile
Let's face it... smartphones really aren't much good without a network to power them. And while brutally obvious, the present limited deployment of China Mobile's 4G network could mean that Apple's iPhones would work in only 16 major cities when the iPhone comes to China Mobile in January. Granted, many consumers in these cities are generally wealthier and more technologically inclined, making these first markets the cities where Apple could see the most success. However, these 16 cities only represent a fraction of China Mobile's 763 million total subscribers.

China Mobile should have this issue largely eliminated by the end of next year. By the end of 2014, China Mobile has said its 4G coverage will reach 340 cities, and a population of 500 million subscribers, so this issue should be largely mitigated. However, especially in the near term, the lack of adequate coverage could prove a drag on Apple's overall iPhone sales on China Mobile.

No. 2: Subsidy support from China Mobile
Subsidies from telecom companies like China Mobile are a key ingredient in winning in the smartphone space, and that should be no different for Apple's iPhone on China Mobile.

There's no question that smartphone subsidies are a winning recipe for both smartphone makers like Apple, as well as telecom providers like China Mobile. By eating a portion of the upfront handset cost, telecom companies drastically lower the purchase price of smartphones for consumers. This spurs greater smartphone sales volume for OEMs like Apple, while pushing consumers toward more lucrative data-rich plans for the telecom providers -- a win-win.

And, while being able to drop the cost of Apple's iPhones from, say, $649 in the case of the cheapest iPhone 5s, to $199, has done wonders for sales in developed markets, subsidies could play an even more pivotal role in emerging markets like China, where smartphone average selling prices are roughly 38% lower than developed markets. It's also worth noting that items like Chinese import duties push the cost of Apple's iPhones up even further. For instance, the cheapest iPhone 5s costs the equivalent of $866 in China, making the possible impact of attractive subsidies all the greater for Apple.

As of right now, it isn't exactly clear just how large a subsidy China Mobile plans to provide for Apple's iPhones when they officially go on sale in January. And, in typical fashion, both Apple and China Mobile remain silent on the matter. Regardless, the amount of subsidy China Mobile is willing to provide Apple will without question impact how the iPhone sells over the telecom giant.

Deal or no deal
These are certainly potential overhangs that investors in either company need to watch carefully. However, as alluded to above, this deal should clearly be a major win for both Apple and China. Apple has its hands trying to fend of Samsung and a handful of domestic Chinese names that are gaining steam in the Chinese smartphone space. Likewise, China Mobile has its hands dealing with smaller -- and in some senses scrappier -- rivals China Telecom and China Unicom, both of which have sold the iPhone for some time now.

Some of these issues, a la the pricing, are still evolving, but as always, we'll be sure to keep our readers up to date on how Apple's latest mega deal unfolds in the weeks to come.

In this video from Friday's Investor Beat, host Chris Hill and Motley Fool Million Dollar Portfolio and Inside Value analyst Ron Gross take a look back at the most important stories of 2013 for investors.

In this segment, Ron takes a look at LinkedIn  CEO Jeff Weiner, and how his managerial style has led this disruptive company to be an incredible performer in 2013. Though the stock is up nearly 100% this year, Ron still sees this as a very attractive stock with a lot more ahead of it in the future, and still considers it a buy at this valuation.

In this video from Friday's Investor Beat, host Chris Hill and Motley Fool Million Dollar Portfolio and Inside Value analyst Ron Gross take a look back at the most important stories of 2013 for investors.

For Ron, 2014 looks to be about a continued firming up of the economy, and with that, the ability for several companies to allow a little more liberal spending as they reinvest in themselves, rather than hoarding cash through times of hardship. He identifies the industrial sector as a clear winner from that economic environment, and gives investors a few stocks he'll be keeping his eye on as a result in the year ahead.

Amazon.com plays it pretty close to the vest with a lot of its customer metrics, but it released a press release on Boxing Day to inform the world that it added more than 1 million new Amazon Prime members in the week leading up to Christmas. Earlier this month, a report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimated the number of Prime members at 16.7 million, and Amazon claims "we now have tens of millions of members worldwide" -- implying at least 20 million. (Note, though, that some of those million new Amazon Prime members may include those signing up for a free one-month trial for their holiday shopping with the intent of dropping the service upon the trial's expiration.)

Amazon Prime's growth is outpacing Netflix's , which reached 20 million streaming subscribers by the end of 2010, nearly four years after launching its instant streaming service. Comparatively, it took Amazon one year fewer to reach a similar subscription rate. Although I don't believe Prime is currently a large threat to Netflix, I believe it has the potential to become one.

Why do people subscribe to Amazon Prime?
The influx of Prime subscribers in the holiday season may indicate that more people are purchasing Prime for its two-day shipping. The recent increase in the minimum order price for Free Super Saver Shipping from Amazon may have led to an accelerated number of signups.

But Netflix, which only offers a singular service, typically sees an uptick in the number of signups during the holiday quarter as well. So, it's not farfetched that at least some Prime subscribers are looking for entertainment during the cold-weather season and see value in Prime's instant video selection.

Still, it's likely that many households with a Prime subscription also have a subscription to Netflix. Currently, Prime is not quite a replacement for Netflix, which maintains a larger video library and is now focused on curating the best content.

2013: The year Amazon Prime started competing with Netflix
At the end of last year, and even in March of this year, estimates for Prime subscribers were around 10 million. Part of what may have led to the fantastic growth over the last 12 months is Amazon expanding its video selection.

Amazon says that it increased its Prime Instant Video selection from 33,000 to more than 40,000 in 2013. Amazon added exclusive content from CBS/Showtime, Sony Pictures Television, A&E Networks, and Scripps Networks. It also picked up exclusive rights to Downton Abbey and tons of content from Viacom  after Netflix neglected to renew their contracts.

In fact, Netflix seemingly balked when its deal with Viacom expired. The streaming company demanded the right to pick and choose which programming it wanted instead of paying for a bundled package of Viacom programming. Viacom refused. Amazon stepped in and reportedly offered several hundred million dollars for multiyear rights to Viacom's bundle, including Nickelodeon kids programs and teen and adult entertainment from Comedy Central and MTV. This is exemplary of why content rights are increasing in price -- if one company doesn't buy the rights, another will.

Moreover, Amazon started adding exclusive original content to compete with Netflix's popular original series. The company says that Alpha House, one of its first originals, was the service's most streamed show in 2013. Neither Amazon nor Netflix will say how many people are actually streaming their originals, only that they're very popular.

Could 2014 be the year of Amazon Prime?
There's no doubt Netflix had a great year in 2013, but it might be more difficult to repeat its success in 2014. The company added more than 7 million streaming subscribers in the first nine months of the year, and expects to add more than 3 million more in the fourth quarter. Investors have rewarded the company's success by increasing its share price over 300% year to date, making my thumbs-down in CAPS look downright dumb.

But Netflix is facing the threat of rising content costs, which have already forced it to part with valuable content in 2013. Amazon, which sees a major boost in shopping revenue and profit (even after factoring in content costs) from Prime members, is better equipped to keep up with content price inflation than Netflix. It's started to show that in 2013, and as more content deals at Netflix expire in 2014 and beyond, I expect Amazon to snatch them up and become a stronger substitute for Netflix.

In this video from Friday's Investor Beat, host Chris Hill and Motley Fool Million Dollar Portfolio and Inside Value analyst Ron Gross take a look back at the most important stories of 2013 for investors.

Despite myriad doom-and-gloom macroeconomic and political stories emerging in 2013, the markets surged upward 30% this year, making it an incredible year for investors. But does this big run-up show that we're in a bubble, and about to careen off the cliff of a major market correction? Ron talks investors through what he thinks of the market today, and whether he sees a bubble in today's valuations. He also discusses the Fed and its recent quantitative easing program that has been keeping interest rates at rock-bottom levels, and how that could affect the market when that program comes to an end.

Then, Ron takes a look at LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, and how his managerial style has led this disruptive company to be an incredible performer in 2013. Though the stock is up nearly 100% this year, Ron still sees this as a very attractive stock with a lot more ahead of it in the future, and still considers it a buy at this valuation.

And finally, Ron looks ahead to 2014. He sees the coming year as being about a continued firming up of the economy, and with that, the ability for several companies to allow a little more liberal spending as they reinvest in themselves, rather than hoarding cash through times of hardship. He identifies the industrial sector as a clear winner from that economic environment, and gives investors a few stocks he'll be keeping his eye on as a result in the year ahead.

In this segment of the Motley Fool's Market Check-Up, Fool health-care analyst David Williamson takes investors through some of the biggest stories affecting Big Pharma, biotech stocks, and the health insurance industry today.

Pfizer has come to terms with generic drugmaker Teva Pharmaceuticals over its erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, with Teva due to launch its generic version two years early in 2017. As this will be earlier than Pfizer's patent expiration on the drug, Teva will be paying Pfizer an undisclosed royalty on sales, which should mitigate some of the damage the generic competitor would do. In this video, David tells investors why he thinks this is a great deal for Teva going forward, and talks about the most important catalyst for Pfizer investors on the horizon today.

The Department of Defense announced 12 new defense contracts Friday, worth $1.07 billion combined. Lockheed Martin , the nation's largest pure-play defense contractor, was also the biggest winner of the day -- by far. The $822.5 million in contracts it pulled in accounted for 77% of the funds on offer, and included one single contract that accounted for more than half.

This contract, worth $574.5 million to Lockheed Martin, hires the firm on a firm-fixed-price basis for multi-year procurement of Aegis Weapon System MK 7 equipment sets for installation aboard U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class (DDG 51) guided missile destroyers currently under construction, and contains an option to have Lockheed Martin produce weapons for the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System to be installed in Poland. The contract will run through September 2021.

Other winners of smaller awards Friday included:

• British defense contactor BAE Systems , which won a $16.5 million firm-fixed-price, partial-foreign military sales contract to supply Common Identification Friend or Foe hardware for the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and the governments of Korea, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates. Delivery is due January 2016.
• Raytheon , recipient of a $40.9 million ceiling-priced delivery order to repair 40 Weapon Replaceable Assemblies of the APG 65/73 Radar System used on U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter jets. Raytheon is to complete its work by December 2015.

The Department of Defense announced 12 new defense contracts Friday, worth $1.07 billion combined. Lockheed Martin , the nation's largest pure-play defense contractor, captured four of them, including the day's biggest contract -- a monster $574.5 million deal to build Aegis weapon systems for the U.S. Navy. As for the company's (relatively) smaller wins, Lockheed Martin also won:

• A $116.1 million cost-plus-incentive-fee contract modification paying for integration work on the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center's Space Vehicle 4 (SV-4), putting the space vehicle (a new GPS satellite) into the launch vehicle. Lockheed will also receive funding to prepare for launch operations for the mission. This contract runs through July 31, 2019.
• An $84.6 million contract modification funding production of Acoustic Rapid Commercial-Off-The-Shelf Insertion (A-RCI) sonar systems for the Navy. A-RCI is designed to integrate and improve towed array, hull array, sphere array, and other sonar sensor signals processing for U.S. nuclear submarines. Lockheed Martin is expected to complete work on this contract by September 2018.
• A $47.3 million option exercise, tasking Lockheed Martin with supporting critical air, missile and space defense operations at the NORAD Cheyenne Mountain Complex and other NORAD locations through Sep. 30, 2014.

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over daily movements, we do like to keep an eye on market changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

Stocks closed ever so slightly lower Friday, as the Dow technically broke its six-day winning streak despite losing just a single point on the day. Bond yields closed above the 3% level for the first time in two years, but many stocks kept climbing, with Barracuda Networks , Molycorp , and Sprint among the biggest winners.

Barracuda Networks jumped almost 20%, boosting its gains for the week to 38%. The stock continued to climb following the company's announcement Monday that it had made its enterprise-grade NG Firewall available for use in connection with Amazon.com's Amazon Web Services cloud-computing platform. With the product now included on the Amazon Web Services marketplace, investors hope that customers will use NG Firewall to protect their cloud-based infrastructure. Given the recent high-profile breaches of confidential data, the value of cloud-security products like Barracuda's could continue to rise, helping boost confidence in the company's future prospects.

Molycorp soared 15%. Despite facing substantial challenges in its operations, the rare-earth metals producer made its way onto a Barclays list of small-cap stocks that could benefit from a seasonal play known as the January effect. Bulls hope that the company will overcome weak rare-earth prices and make expansion plans pay off. Given the more than 85% plunge shares have suffered since early 2012, today's move upward is just a drop in the bucket toward a full-scale recovery for Molycorp stock.

Sprint rose more than 8% on hopes that the No. 3 wireless carrier will join forces with T-Mobile US . Reports of discussions among various high-profile players, including SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, have led many to believe that Sprint would be better off integrated with T-Mobile, arguably better able to compete with its two larger rivals in the U.S. market. Given T-Mobile's aggressive pricing strategies that have forced larger carriers to make price-cutting moves of their own, though, a Sprint/T-Mobile merger might not be good news for customers.

In this segment of the Motley Fool's Market Check-Up, Fool health-care analyst David Williamson takes investors through some of the biggest stories affecting Big Pharma, biotech stocks, and the health insurance industry today.

In this segment as part of the Motley Fool's continuing coverage of Obamacare, David discusses the significance for the law of the December 23rd deadline, the last day for enrollees to be assured that they would experience no drop in coverage come January 1st. David also discusses the new enrollment numbers, and how they are ramping up significantly from where they were at the rollout of the program, and he discusses some of the problems Obamacare, health insurers, and insurees could face as a result of the new legislation in 2014.

In this segment of the Motley Fool's Market Check-Up, Fool health-care analyst David Williamson takes investors through some of the biggest stories affecting Big Pharma, biotech stocks, and the health insurance industry today.

While both Gilead and AbbVie have been achieving miraculous cure rates with their hepatitis C drugs in clinical trials, Gilead's regimen of one pill per day for eight weeks vs. AbbVie's six pills a day for 12 weeks could put AbbVie's treatment in a very tight spot in terms of competition. Gilead is also striving to be first of the two to market by accelerating its timeline to get an earlier approval. Could this spell a major derailment for AbbVie? David discusses the two treatments, and gives investors an outlook for just how bad for this might be AbbVie .

In this segment of the Motley Fool's Market Check-Up, Fool health-care analyst David Williamson takes investors through some of the biggest stories affecting Big Pharma, biotech stocks, and the health insurance industry today.

Bristol-Myers Squibb has announced it will be divesting itself of its joint diabetes franchise that it held with AstraZeneca , selling its portion back to AZN for $2.7 billion, plus a milestone payment of $700 million if the sodium-glucose transport protein SGLT2 drug Forxega, focused on the treatment of diabetes, is approved. David discusses the likelihood of Forxega approval, and what this could mean both for Bristol-Myers Squibb, and for AstraZeneca, as well as why it is important as an investor to be thinking long-term about Bristol-Myers when looking at this deal today.

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over daily movements, we do like to keep an eye on market changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

For those who had been hoping for a seventh straight day of gains for the Dow, Friday was a mild disappointment. Yet, even though the Dow dropped only 0.01% and the S&P followed with a 0.03% decline, many stocks posted much more dramatic declines. Twitter and RetailMeNot were among the worst performers today, as was the VelocityShares 3x Long Natural Gas ETN .

Twitter fell 13%, marking its biggest one-day decline in its short history as a public company. The social-media giant had soared earlier in the week on long-term growth hopes, but multiple analysts weighed in today with more pessimistic assessments of Twitter's future prospects. Despite the drop, Twitter stock still gained ground during the week, but many are now pointing at the microblogging site's shares as being too hot to handle. In the end, Twitter will obviously have to produce the earnings growth implied by its valuation, and that could be a tall order even for a company in the middle of a high-growth area.

RetailMeNot dropped 7%, following the trend in Internet and social-media stocks downward. The digital-coupon specialist had posted substantial gains in the last two weeks of the holiday shopping season, even amid reports of rival Coupons.com seeking to come public. But news of insider sales took the wind out of RetailMeNot's sails, and the downdraft in Twitter seemed to make investors think twice about the entire sector today.

The VelocityShares 3x Long Natural Gas ETN declined 9% on a bad day for natural gas, which fell 1% after a government report said that inventories fell 177 billion cubic feet during the week that ended last Friday. Yet, cold weather had allowed investors to anticipate the drawdown in inventories, and substantial domestic gas production continues to hold prices down somewhat. The leveraged exchange-traded product has struggled to post even a small gain for 2013, despite favorable moves in gas prices, as the way in which the ETN produces leverage has weighed on its overall performance.

As the end of the year approaches, many people are looking for ways to make last-minute tax moves to save money on their returns in April. But the simplest way to cut your tax bill is to avoid procrastinating in the first place and getting one smart move done as soon as you possibly can.

In the following video, Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool's director of investment planning, talks about the value of getting money into IRAs, 401(k)s, and other retirement accounts as quickly as possible in 2014. Dan notes that while most people wait until the last minute to set money aside for retirement, putting money into IRAs and 401(k)s at your earliest opportunity avoids tax pitfalls. As Dan points out, one category of potentially high-tax situations involves investing in acquisition targets, and he uses Micron Technology and iRobot as examples of how owning shares outside a retirement account can be costly if takeover rumors become reality. Meanwhile, Dan also points to dividend stocks, using the example of Frontier Communications and its recent acquisition of assets from AT&T , to show the value of having high-yielding dividend stocks safely stowed in tax-deferred retirement accounts. Dan concludes that it makes sense to start as soon as you can when the New Year begins to make the most of your retirement accounts.

Beechcraft AT-6 Texan II. Still waiting for liftoff. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Fresh out of its bankruptcy earlier this year, Hawker Beechcraft has found a home. On Friday, fellow planebuilder and defense contractor Textron announced that it is buying Beech Holdings, LLC, the parent of Beechcraft Corporation, for approximately $1.4 billion in cash. And if not quite a match made in Heaven, it's at least a match made in the heavens.

As described by Textron, Beechcraft today is "a leading manufacturer of business, special mission, light attack and trainer aircraft." Between sales of new aircraft and revenues collected from servicing and maintaining the 36,000 Beechcraft-, Hawker-, and King Air-brand planes in service around the globe, Beechcraft generated $1.8 billion in revenues this year. Thus, Textron is getting its rival for a very fair price of just 0.78 times sales -- a tidy discount to its own shares' 0.85 P/S ratio.

The deal makes sense from a business, as well as a financial, perspective. As Textron CEO Scott C. Donnelly explained, Beechcraft's "iconic King Air product line perfectly complements our Caravan and Citation jet line-up and our combined global service network will deliver the superior level of services expected by our Cessna, Beechcraft and Hawker customers." It will also help the combined plane maker give Gulfstream owner General Dynamics a serious run for its money in the business jet market.

Meanwhile, the addition of Beechcraft's line of AT-6 light attack aircraft to Textron's own new creation, the Textron AirLand Scorpion, roughly doubles Textron's portfolio of budget combat aircraft. That's twice the chances Textron will have to win a contract with some military, somewhere, to begin making a go of this business.

Meanwhile, from Beechcraft's perspective, this deal will soften the blow, and mitigate the risk to its viability, suffered when Embraer beat out the AT-6 for a lucrative contract to supply light attack aircraft to the Afghan military earlier this year.

Foolish final thought
If I've one reservation about the deal, it's this: To date, Beechcraft has not been particularly successful at winning contracts with the military, or generating profits from its business. At the same time, Textron will have to go deeply into hock to buy its new subsidiary. Management anticipates having to take out as much as $1.1 billion in new debt to finance its purchase. That will push Textron's debt load up past $4.4 billion -- nearly half its market cap -- and with little reserve cash to offset the debt.

That wouldn't worry me so much if Textron was currently generating positive free cash flow with which to pay down its debt. But it isn't. So it does.

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over daily movements, we do like to keep an eye on market changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

After a six-day rally, the major indexes calmed down today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed lower by one point, or 0.01%, and now sits at 16,478. The other major indexes didn't perform any better as the S&P 500 lost 0.03%, and the Nasdaq closed off by 0.25%. Without a major catalyst to move stocks higher today, it seemed investors were content taking the day easy after the major indexes had rallied the previous six sessions. With limited economic data being released today, individual stocks moved largely on their own news or industry-wide events. Let's take a look at a few of today's losers that put downward pressure on the major indexes.

Shares of the social networking site Twitter ended the day off by more than 13% today. The move came after the stock was downgraded by analyst at Macquarie Securities. The analyst believes the stock was overvalued heading into today, and lowered the rating from neutral to underperform. Furthermore, the firm's price target of $46 remained the same, and Ben Schachter, the analyst, stated that he didn't feel anything fundamental has changed with the company recently to cause the share price to rally like it has. Heading into today, Twitter was up more than 22% this week alone, which really consisted of two-and-a-half days of trading. Investors need to be careful with this one, as it would have seemed that, heading into today, the bullish momentum had taken over and the stock was trading purely on speculation. 

Shares of Facebook also lost ground today, closing down 3.97% on very little news. Shares are up more than 122% during the past 52 weeks, which easily beats the Dow's 25% return, or the S&P 500's 31% gain. But today's decline could have been a combination of investors closing out the position before the end of the year, and a side effect from the Twitter move. Sometimes, traders, not investors, will sell competitors or a whole industry when one company is having a bad day.

Outside the social media world, shares of Delta Air Lines traded lower by 3.05%. The fall comes after the company had a computer glitch yesterday morning for a few hours, during which time, customers could book airline tickets for extremely cheap rates. One customer got a roundtrip ticket to Hawaii for $6.99; another got a $12.83 first-class ticket from Oklahoma City to St. Louis; while another customer got a $132 ticket from Houston to San Francisco -- which is not a great price until you consider that it's a first class ticket. The airline has not reported how many tickets were sold, and what it ultimately will cost the company, but investors seem to believe that it will show up on the quarterly statement. This is a short-term problem, and current shareholders shouldn't sell due to this issue. 

More Foolish insight

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Every quarter, many money managers have to disclose what they've bought and sold, via "13F" filings. Their latest moves can shine a bright light on smart stock picks.

Today, let's look at Robeco Investment Management, which, until recently, was a U.S.-focused subsidiary of major Netherlands-based financial institution, Rabobank, and which had three primary divisions: Boston Partners (value equity), Sage Capital (multi-manager strategies), and Weiss, Peck & Greer (fixed income, equity and alternatives). Earlier this year, though, Rabobank sold Robeco to Japan-based ORIX Corp.

Robeco Investment Management touts its flat management structure and focus on value equity investing. The company's reportable stock portfolio totaled $41.5 billion in value as of September 30, 2013.

Interesting developments
So what does Robeco's latest quarterly 13F filing tell us? Here are a few interesting details:

The biggest new holdings are Allstate and Siemens AG. Other new holdings of interest include Rite Aid and Corning . Rite Aid's stock has more than tripled over the past year, as the company executes a turnaround. It's focusing more on wellness and customer loyalty and, like other health care-related companies, it's poised to benefit from Obamacare delivering many newly insured customers. It might seem that the stock has no upside left after its strong run, but it actually seemed cheaper than its key rivals last month, and that was before the stock took a hit due to a mixed third-quarter report. That report featured estimate-topping earnings and revenue up 2%, but management tempered near-term expectations. Bears would also remind us that Rite Aid still carries a lot of debt.

Corning's stock has surged more than 40% over the past year, and its dividend, which yields 2.3%, has doubled in less than three years. Bulls are very excited about a big partnership with Samsung, and see much potential in Corning. Its Gorilla Glass is installed in more than a billion mobile devices across some 500 product lines, and its curved glass could prove useful to the solar energy industry, among others. Corning has been buying back billions of dollars' worth of shares, too.

Among holdings in which Robeco Investment Management increased its stake were Odyssey Marine Exploration and Two Harbors Investment . Odyssey Marine Exploration is down by more than 25% over the past year, and its stock is sitting firmly in penny-stock territory. The company is in the intriguing business of searching for and recovering deep-sea shipwrecks (and their often valuable cargo). It has many doubters, as more than 20% of shares outstanding have been shorted. The company has been posting a string of losses and negative free cash flow. Odyssey Marine's third-quarter results featured revenue up sharply due to 61 tons of silver recovered from the three-mile-deep SS Gairsoppa. Management added that, "Our current commodity target list represents more than $800 million in total potential recovery value." It's good to remember, though, that this is a speculative kind of investment, facing high exploration costs, international regulations, and discoveries that are not guaranteed.

Two Harbors is a mortgage REIT, or "mREIT," and one regarded highly by our analysts for its flexible investment approach and effective management. It offers shareholders a fat 10.9% dividend yield, but note that its payouts don't get the lower tax rates of other dividends. Two Harbors Investment is a "hybrid" mREIT, investing in both government agency-backed mortgages, and ones that are not so backed. Still, rising interest rates (and mortgage prepayments) have hurt mREITs, though Two Harbors has fallen less than its key peers over the past year, in part due to its hedging - such as its purchase of mortgage servicing rights (MSRs) from Flagstar Bancorp.

Robeco Investment Management reduced its stake in lots of companies, including Towers Watson and K12.

Finally, Robeco's biggest closed positions included Mattel and Vornado Realty Trust. Other closed positions of interest include Tower Group International . Tower Group International is a small insurance company -- but it hasn't always been so small, though, as its stock is down some 80% over the past year, and has averaged 31% annual losses over the past five years. It's in penny-stock territory, recently at risk of being delisted from the Nasdaq market. It also has had to restate several years' worth of earnings, which has unsettled some investors, and a restructuring has lowered its ultimate profit potential. If that's not enough, Tower Group recently reported a reserve shortfall, which is worrisome for an insurer. With its last quarter topping expectations, and the company lowering its costs via a major 10% downsizing, some are hopeful. But caution is definitely warranted here.

We should never blindly copy any investor's moves, no matter how talented the investor. But it can be useful to keep an eye on what smart folks are doing. Therefore, 13F forms can be great places to find intriguing candidates for our portfolios.

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over daily movements, we do like to keep an eye on market changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

After solid gains this week and last, stocks held the line today with just two more trading days remaining in the calendar year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished essentially unchanged, dropping one point, or 0.01%, while the S&P 500 was similarly steady edging down just 0.03%.

Twitter shares crashed the holiday party, falling 13% following a dramatic rise over the last few weeks that led shares to nearly double. Shares of the recently IPO'ed social network sold off today after Macquarie Capital analyst Ben Schachter said the stock had climbed "too far, too fast," lowering his rating to sell strictly on a valuation basis. The market's response to Schachter seems a bit inane, considering that even he admitted that nothing has fundamentally changed with the company since he first gave it a neutral rating on Dec. 11. It's easy to call Twitter overvalued, as shares had nearly doubled this month before today's fall, and almost tripled from its IPO price. The stock also sports an insane price-to-sales ratio of 75. Most blue chips, by comparison, trade at P/S's of less than five.

However, the microblogging website is that rare once-in-a-decade kind of stock that has the power to upend the likes of Google and Facebook, two companies with a combined market cap of nearly $500 billion. Like a 17-year-old bombshell poised to sign a six-figure modeling contract, or a star quarterback headed for the NFL, Twitter's earnings potential is nearly infinite, and its valuation defies traditional methods. Looking at its financial history is an utterly ridiculous way of measuring the company's worth.

Target unveiled more bad news in the saga of its hacked customer information today. The big-box chain admitted that the criminals had stolen customers' PIN data in addition to other personal data, saying that the theft was worse than first acknowledged. Data from about 40 million cards was taken in the security breach, though Target reassured its customers that the PIN information was "strongly encrypted." The Secret Service and Justice Department are investigating the online theft. Target shares finished down 0.5%, and have dropped 4% since the news first broke a month ago. The black eye comes at a time when the retailer has struggled with its entry into Canada, and predicted an underwhelming holiday shopping season.

The holidays are over, and 2014 is just days away. In this special edition of The Motley Fool's everything-financials show, Where the Money Is, analysts David Hanson and Matt Koppenheffer discuss nine companies they think are well-positioned to thrive in 2014 and beyond. The list includes heavyweights like Goldman Sachs and AIG, as well as smaller, lesser-known players like Platinum Underwriters.

Follow @DanDzombak

Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over daily movements, we do like to keep an eye on market changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average started the day with a strong rise, but fell after Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Plosser said the Fed may have to be "aggressive" in raising interest rates if banks increase their lending. As of 1:30 p.m. EST the Dow was up 10 points to 16,451. The S&P 500 was down two point to 1,830.

The Nor'easter that hit the East Coast did not stop Fed officials from speaking today. Three Federal Reserve officials are speaking in Philadelphia at the American Economic Association annual meeting. Plosser was first, followed by Fed Governor Jeremy Stein at 1:15 p.m. EST and then a 2:30 p.m. EST speech and Q&A by Chairman Ben Bernanke. Separately, Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker was also speaking today in Baltimore.

Plosser rotates into a voting role on the Federal Open Market Committee at the first meeting in 2014, along with the presidents from Cleveland, Dallas, and Minneapolis. Plosser is seen as a hawk in favor of tighter economic policy. His speech met those expectations when he suggested fellow FOMC members' expectations of rates below 2% in 2017 may be too low if the economy reaches full employment. He also warned that it is unclear what distortions have been created in the market from the Federal Reserve's zero interest rate policy and other extraordinary measures to keep interest rates low for the past six years. Plosser also commented that while the FOMC would like to raise rates gradually, "it doesn't always work that way." He went on to say: "How fast will we have to move interest rates up... we don't know the answer to that. People like to think the Fed has all this great control over interest rates, but the market does its own thing."

It will be interesting to follow the remaining speeches from the FOMC members today to see what they are thinking. Tomorrow will see a panel discussion on Federal Reserve banks, moderated by former World Bank chief economist Stanley Fischer and including Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren, and New York Fed President William Dudley. Plosser caps off the meeting tomorrow with a speech at 5 p.m. EST.

What's an investor to do?
Your investment strategy shouldn't be dependent on the Federal Reserve. Constantly educate yourself, find great companies, and invest for the long term.