Its that time of year again. The leaves are turning color. The air is getting crisp. Soon the streets will be filled with trick-or-treaters. So while you pick out costumes and carve jack o’lanterns, here are some ghoulish small stocks for your perusal:

Life Partners Holdings (Nasdaq: LPHI)

The name "Life Partners" evokes images of sweethearts walking hand-in-hand down an empty beach, but LPHI is not in the love-and-tenderness business.  Instead, Life Partners engages in the secondary market for life insurance, commonly known as "life settlements."  These controversial investments pay out more quickly, and generate a higher rate of return, if the policyholders expire sooner rather than later.   

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Rock of Ages Corp.  (Nasdaq: ROAC)

Rock of Ages makes tombstones, or as they call it "granite memorial products."  Enough said.

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Matthews International  (Nasdaq: MATW)

At just over $1 billion market cap., Matthews International is hardly a microcap.  Still, this list would not be complete without it  — Matthews Int’l is one of the largest makers of caskets and cremation urns.

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StoneMor Partners LP (Nasdaq: STON)

StoneMor is a microcap limited partnership of 60 funeral homes and 232 cemeteries in 25 states and Puerto Rico.  That’s a lot of dead bodies.

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Darling International  (NYSE: DAR)

Darling has nothing to do with human death, but boy do they do a booming business in animal death and dismemberment.  Or as they call it " rendering, recycling, and recovery solutions."  In a nutshell, Darling takes animal byproducts and uses them to manufacture other stuff, like greases, oils and proteins.  This is another company name misdirection — there’s nothing "darling" about animal carcasses.

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 DISCLOSURE:  No positions.

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