Barron's Picks And Pans: General Motors, Spirit Airlines And More

• This weekend's Barron's cover story features the first annual ranking of the 100 most sustainable companies.
• Other featured articles offer the prospects for an auto maker that is back in the fast lane and a budget airline that is poised to prevail.
• Also, a baker's dozen big dividend hike projections, and the father of portfolio theory makes a big bet.

"Barron's 100 Most Sustainable Companies" by Leslie P. Norton shows why big corporations with the best environmental, social and governance policies have been beating the stock market. Barron's has sorted and ranked the large publicly traded companies with the best business practices. See who came out on top.

Jack Hough's "GM Gets Back in the Fast Lane" points out that big car maker General Motors Company GM has quietly retaken the lead from Tesla in market valuation and that its self-driving story is improving. Find out why Barron's thinks GM shares could rise 35 percent in the year ahead.

In "Why Spirit Air Will Survive Any Fare Wars," Brett Arends shares why, even though its share price has halved in the past three years, the sky's the limit for Spirit Airlines Incorporated SAVE shares in the longer term. The budget airline already has very low costs and doesn't go head-to-head with big carriers.

Wall Street has boosted the dividend projections for the corporate giants featured in "13 Mega Stocks With Rising Payout Estimates" by Lawrence C. Strauss by at least 2 percent over the past six months. Cisco Systems, Inc. CSCO and Oracle Corporation ORCL make the list; See who else does.

See also: The Dell, Dell Technologies And VMWare Family Tree

In Andrew Bary's "Dude, You're Getting a Dell Discount," see why Barron's believes concerns about Michael Dell's plans for VMware, Inc. VMW have created an opportunity in shares of a Dell tracking stock for it. Are the shares inexpensive even though risks lurk in the possible deal scenarios being considered?

"The Father of Portfolio Theory Bets on Rebuilding" by Mary Childs features a look at why 90-year-old Nobel winner Harry Markowitz is now betting on six companies, including USG Corporation USG, that stand to benefit from the efforts in Florida and Puerto Rico to recover from hurricanes.

Also in this week's Barron's:

• The worst week in two years for the Dow Industrials
• What's wrong with Elon Musk's new pay deal
• Why the bull market's days are numbered
• Robo-advisors crossing $200 billion in assets
• Whether oil prices are likely to spike
• The Trans-Pacific Partnership without the United States
• A prescription for health care
• Whether to worry about an inverted yield curve