It’s not news that the stock market has been sloppy lately. After the steady march upward to a doubling of the S&P 500 from the early 2020 low, and a 33% increase from year-end 2019 before the pandemic, one can hardly be disappointed the...
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After a stunningly strong market so far this year, with the S&P 500 producing a 20% total return through Monday, the slow grind-down of most stocks since early September has seemed interminable. The 1,100 largest stocks in our 3,000-stock database have declined only in...
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This week, we are rolling forward our valuation comments – generally dropping our valuation based on 2021 estimates, where appropriate, while adding commentary based on estimates for 2023. Most analysts project that all of their companies will have higher earnings in future years, we...
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The Cabot Undervalued Stocks Advisor is on vacation this week, recharging the batteries for what could be a very interesting September and fourth quarter in the financial markets. As such, this week’s edition will be abbreviated in length, although we include our Cisco earnings commentary full...
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Some time ago, there was a television show with the above title that pulled viewers back into the 1970s. It used that earlier era to create a somewhat unique vibe that inadvertently highlighted how much has changed in our world over the decades.
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Just reading those words, “climate change,” is almost certain to light up emotions. Regardless of one’s opinions on the degree of urgency and which of a very wide range of proposed policies and actions should be taken, how could words about the end the...
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The stock market reached yet another record high on Monday, but it just doesn’t seem the same as earlier records. Investors (and everyone else) is starting to wonder if Covid is now endemic – an inherent component of everyday life. Will cases surge the...
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Last week, we wrote about how the damp Boston-area weather matched the soggy stock market. Pressing our literary luck today, the market is following another New England weather meme: “if you don’t like the weather, wait a few minutes.”
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In the Boston area, we’ve had nearly 8 inches of rain so far this month. This 0.7 inches-per-day average compares to the 0.6 inches-per-day average for a monsoon rainforest, the type found in the tropics along the equator. Sounds a lot like the mood...
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In our continuing series on deciding how many positions to hold in a stock portfolio, let’s borrow a page from Major League Baseball (MLB). The methods that these teams use managing their players can be applied to investment portfolios.
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Last week, we started our multi-part discussion on position sizes, and looked at the benefits and weaknesses of an equal-weighted approach. Let’s look at perhaps the most common weighting used by fund managers: relative weighting.
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In most professional and personal endeavors, there are dozens if not hundreds of decisions to make. Manage a tech company? You need to decide who to hire/promote/fire, what responsibilities to give them, how much to pay them (base and bonus), resolve conflicting agendas, what...
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The market seems to have settled into complacency. We’re in a period after first-quarter earnings reports and government statistics indicate a surging economy, yet investors rightfully wonder if or when the Fed will raise interest rates and are starting to consider what happens the...
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We’ve written about inflation in the past two letters and promise that we’ll stop with this letter, unless some major news on this front emerges. Yet, what keeps us on the topic is commentary from brokerage firms and media outlets saying that the is...
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Investors have started to see a cloud or two in an otherwise sunny stock market sky. We don’t focus much on short-term market moves, but we have noticed that the weather is shifting, at least slightly.
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We’ve seen signs of it everywhere. Retail prices for homes, apartments, food, gasoline, cars and everyday services are higher than they were a year or two ago and are going higher. Upstream from these consumer-facing prices, input prices for raw materials, semiconductors, crops, energy...
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When looking at an investment idea, investors may want to replicate this intake process, tweaked of course for a clearly different (and less urgent) task. By using a consistent process, regardless of whether the idea comes from a friend, that off-beat relative, an broker...
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Proxy season is moving into full gear. As a shareholder, you are one of the owners of your companies, so you get to vote on major decisions. Shareholder votes are, of course, much like public government elections, but in most cases your vote a..
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EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, is a straight-forward measure (not a perfect measure, though) of a company’s cash operating profits. But, like seemingly all metrics published by company managements, it is usually adjusted for unusual items that may be non-recurring.
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Stop-losses, or more fully, stop-loss orders, are trading orders that are placed to execute a sale automatically if a stock falls below a specified trigger price. The idea is that these orders can prevent a small loss from becoming a large loss. It also...
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