Today I was reading an interesting article in the WSJ describing the increased risk-taking that many retirees and near-retirees are taking with their investment portfolios.     For instance, “nearly half of Vanguard 401(k) investors actively managing their money and over age 55 held more than 70% of their portfolios in stocks.  In 2011, 38% did so.  At...Read More

The YTD rally in the S&P 500 has been dominantly comprised from the performance on the top 8 stocks, all of which performed poorly last year.  This is by far the narrowest rally since the Tech Bubble, which ultimately culminated in an 80% drop in the Nasdaq.  These stocks are so big and comprise such...Read More

Volatility has come back into the equity markets, driven by rapidly increasing Treasury yields.  In fact, since the vaccine data came out towards the end of last year, Treasury Bonds are down 27.7%, meaning yields are up.  This has coincided with value stocks and financials going on a massive rally and outperforming peers, after a...Read More

The speculative fever seems to be at full blast as we’ve seen with the wild price moves in stocks such as Tesla, or alternatives such as Bitcoin.  Many people are applying pandemic-inflated growth levels into perpetuity.  One example, I find interesting is Zoom Video Communications (ZM).  The stock rose 400% last year, as the technology...Read More

Last night’s Senate runoff in Georgia looks like it will be a clean sweep for the Democrats giving them control of the Presidency, House and Senate (with the VP holding the tie breaking vote). The margins in the House and the Senate are very small, so it won’t be easy to pass a major tax...Read More

I came across a terrific article I wanted to share with you by the asset manager GMO on how extreme the opportunity in value is versus growth.  I’m going to share some of the most important commentaries.   “The performance of Value from 2007 to 2019 was, to put it mildly, uninspiring. This was not...Read More

  I came across a very interesting article written by value investor and market historian Richard Pzena.  As you know, the closest comparison to the current market environment is the Tech Bubble, as the most expensive companies have seen P/E multiple expansion, while value stocks have seen multiple compression.  As you can see on the...Read More

I’ve written quite a few times about the Tech Bubble that currently exists in the U.S. stock market.  No stock better epitomizes this madness than Tesla.  Over the last 12 months, Tesla generated $24.578 billion in total revenue and generated EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) of negative $69MM.  Tesla’s market capitalization is a staggering...Read More

There was a really great interview between TD Ameritrade and Rob Arnott, who is one of the most respected stock strategists in the field.  Keep in mind that the spread between growth and value has literally never been greater. While it is easy to look at the recent past and extrapolate that into the future,...Read More

Over the long-term, the best performing stock strategy has been owning the cheapest companies from a valuation perspective.  Enterprise/value/EBIT, divides the (market cap+debt-cash by pretax operating income.)  An EV/EBIT of 5, means that if you buy a business for $1 million dollars, you are generating a 20% pretax return, or $200K.  That sounds pretty good...Read More