Invest Alongside Kenneth Fisher

Scraping together enough coin to win the annual luncheon auction with Warren Buffett is probably beyond most investors' means. With the proceeds going to charity, this year's winning bidder forked over $2.63 million for the privilege.

Feast or famine
While we likely can't afford to break bread with the greats, we can peek at their stock ideas through their SEC filings. Here, we'll pore over some of the top investors' reports to see which stocks they've chosen as their best investments. We'll then check in with Motley Fool CAPS members to learn whether they agree.

First, the caveats ...

• There's a delay between when the stocks were bought and when these investors filed their paperwork, so they might have sold out since.

• These legends may be hot investors now, but that can change in an instant. Bill Miller was a wunderkind after beating the market 15 years in a row. Then he went cold for three. He came back in 2009, but we don't know what 2010 will bring.

Contrary to popular opinion
Fools should definitely do their own further research here. But in the meantime, let's take a look at Kenneth Fisher, of Fisher Asset Management, the scion of investing legend Philip Fisher, but who has carved his own path to become a superstar in his own right.

Fund: Fisher Asset Management
No. of Stocks Owned: 526
Top 5 Holdings: iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index, Occidental Petroleum, Siemens, BASF, Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO)
Top Sectors: Industrials, Technology, Oil & Gas

Like a number of the investing legends we've looked at, Fisher has a very diversified portfolio, but with the sectors of the economy he's focusing on, it seems he's betting on a rebound. So let's look closer at a few of his most recent choices.

Source: GuruFocus and Motley Fool CAPS.

Price is what you pay
After Cisco's disappointing earnings report the other day on top of the Fed's action to combat a weakening economy, the hoped-for recovery may be further off than initially thought.

Perhaps the biggest reason investors buy into master limited partnerships like Kinder Morgan Energy Partners and Energy Transfer Partners is the rich yields they pay out, typically exceeding 7%, 8%, or more. Kinder Morgan, which has raised its dividend 11 times in the past four years, currently yields 6.4% while Energy Transfer is 7.5%. There are also the tax advantages that go with them.

That special tax treatment has resonated well with oil and natural gas producers who've set up their pipeline assets as MLPs. Both Kinder Morgan and Energy Transfer are hopping aboard the Mid-Continent Express, a pipeline connecting Oklahoma to Alabama, but feeding Chesapeake Energy (NYSE: CHK) with a significant amount of the output.

CAPS member gussaroni is enjoying the healthy yield that comes from this stable industry leader:

Wonderful dividend stock, with protected market, assured income and stable capital investment.

Delivering the goods
Internet network hardware and software maker Sonus Networks has been affected by the lull in network installations. But it could be the pause before the next leg up. AT&T (NYSE: T) accounts for 14% of Sonus' sales, and it's been no secret that the carrier is steadily making investments in its network, and the nationwide 4G rollout next year could have Sonus sounding sweet.

CAPS All-Star TMFZahrim thinks between the cash Sonus has on hand and its technology innovation, an argument can be made for its being a takeover target:

In the meantime, Sonus holds over $350 million of cash equivalents in its accounts and virtually no debt, and the company generated $9.5 million of free cash flows in the first half of 2010. This company will be alright until the orders start rolling in again, and its innovative voice traffic solutions might even make it a takeover target for someone like Cisco Systems.

You can bank on it
Ever squeeze a balloon at one end and have it pop out at the other? That's what's likely to happen in the wake of the credit card reform and overdraft legislation recently signed into law. Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) said the laws will swipe $225 million in revenues in the third quarter and $275 million in the fourth. US Bancorp expects the laws to take as much as $360 million from it in the second half of the year. Yet you can expect new fees to pop up elsewhere to offset much of that decline. Many banks, in fact, were raising fees last year ahead of the laws' passage.

With 93% of the CAPS members who rated US Bancorp marking it to outperform the broad market averages, it seems they think the bank will survive this legislative attack on its financial health.

Value is what you get
Become an investing legend yourself by starting your own research on these stocks on Motley Fool CAPS. Read a company's financial reports, scrutinize key data and charts, and examine the comments your fellow investors have made -- all from a stock's CAPS page.

Sign up today for the completely free service, and tell us whether these stocks are as good a value as these investing legends think they are.