I’ve been doing rather well in my Roth IRA for the last year. I’m holding Provident Energy (PVX: chart, web, Y!), which turns a healthy 11% dividend and pays monthly, Duncan Energy Partners (DEP: chart, web, Y!), which recently increased its dividend by 2.5%, and my company stock, which has better than doubled over the last year.

Being in the oil industry, I think it’s safe to say that I’m overweight in oil and gas; which, at this point in time is not such a bad thing. However, down the road, I foresee a major pullback in crude prices, which will not be such a good thing for the industry.

So, I’ve set out to find the next great “buy-it and forget-it” stock. Naturally, I don’t literally mean forget it. I just don’t want to have to watch the stock price every day with a twitchy trigger finger on the sell button.

I want a stock that I’ll hold for 2 or 3 years at a minimum, pays a bit of a dividend, but has tremendous room for growth, not only as an individual company, but I’d like to see a good forecast for growth in the sector too.

Here are a few options I’m looking at, for various different reasons.

Yesterday Provident Energy (PVX: chart, web, Y!) entered an agreement to buy out a privately held company with oil assets in southeast Saskatchewan for $79 million in shares.

The short end of this is that PVX is spending money to increase reserves, and add to their daily production. In fact, they’ll add 1,300 barrels per day of production, nearly all of which is crude. Provident’s proved plus probable reserves are estimated at 3.6 million barrels of oil.

“This acquisition provides excellent strategic and economic value to Provident, improving the quality and supporting the sustainability of our existing southeast Saskatchewan assets,” …

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Last Friday marked the 20th anniversary of “Black Monday”, in which the Dow Jones slid 508 points.  What’s interesting about this is that many blamed the Monday slide in 1987 on a big sell-off on the previous Friday.

Well, since I’m a firm believer in the notion that history bears repeating itself, I’m currious as to what direction the market will take Monday morning, after the 360 point dumping the Dow took last Friday.

The market has been volatile, more so it seems than normal.  We’ve seen periods of 120+ point gains several days in a row, and then a major short period sell off.

Anyway, the financial news is abound with speculation …