Valuentum Exclusive Analysis for the Discerning Investor

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Mar 11, 2024

How Some Members Use Valuentum’s Investment Services
We serve a wide variety of investors, including dividend growth investors, value investors, and pure Valuentum investors, among others. Many different types of investors and professionals use our research and financial analysis in a whole host of applications from individual stock-selection to the evaluation of closed-end funds to an overlay in a money-management setting and beyond. The Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio seeks to find stocks that have good value and good momentum characteristics and typically targets capital appreciation potential over a longer-term horizon. The Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio seeks to find underpriced dividend growth gems that generate strong levels of free cash flow and have pristine, fortress balance sheets, translating into excellent Valuentum Dividend Cushion ratios. The High Yield Dividend Newsletter portfolio seeks to find some of the highest-yielding stocks supported by strong credit profiles and solid business models, but not always robust traditional free cash flow. Ideas in this newsletter offer higher-yielding opportunities, but also much higher capital and income risk. We also offer a full suite of products to financial advisers (gold level) that range from a more extensive Excel-based screening tool (the DataScreener) to 'Ideas' and 'Dividend' publications that are released on a quarterly basis. Our research product includes hundreds of stock reports, fair values, fair value ranges, associated commentary, as well as dividend reports with Valuentum Dividend Cushion ratios and expected dividend growth rates. Silver and gold-level members can add the Valuentum Exclusive or additional options commentary/ideas to their plans. The Exclusive publication is a part of the institutional (platinum) level membership.

Dec 14, 2022

Union Pacific Outperforming North American Rail Traffic Trends But Facing Inefficiencies and Inflation Hurdles
Image Source: Union Pacific. The rail industry may have avoided a labor strike, but North American rail traffic remains under pressure, while many operators are struggling with inflationary pressures and operational inefficiencies. Union Pacific remains our favorite way to play the rails, but 2022 has been a difficult year for the firm, with free cash flow coming under pressure as capital investments have soared so far in 2022. Union Pacific garners an ‘A’ rating by Moody’s, Fitch and S&P, so we’re not too worried about its large net debt position. Shares yield ~2.4% at the time of this writing, but we’re not pulling the trigger.

Nov 16, 2021

The Valuentum Weekly Is a Hit! Only Delivered By Email!
The Valuentum Weekly is a brand-new weekly market commentary from Valuentum Securities, released each weekend in digital form. The Valuentum Weekly offers members a weekly synopsis of the markets and major events. It will be straight and to-the-point. Our goal is to deliver to you the latest information and insights. We welcome your feedback on how we can make the Valuentum Weekly as useful and as relevant for you as ever!

Jan 25, 2021

ALERT: Bull Raids, Short Squeezes and Highly Unusual Market Activity
Image: Shares of GameStop have been on an irrationally wild ride recently driven by what looks to have been an orchestrated and highly unethical (and perhaps illegal) short squeeze on the stock. According to some reports, during the pre-market session January 25, GameStop’s shares were up ~80%, and turned red during the trading session, with no fundamental news.In late 2018, Valuentum published Value Trap, a book that warned to all that would heed its warning that a collapse in the traditional quant value factor was coming and that excessive volatility in the markets caused by price-agnostic trading--or those that aren’t paying attention to fair value estimate calculations--would only build and build to eventually reach extreme and irrational levels. The book, while hugely successful winning award after award, was largely ignored by the media, despite our best efforts to get the word out. Now, the chickens are coming home to roost.

Jun 21, 2020

Warren: Four Ways to Play the Market at This Juncture
Image Source: Daniel Lobo. In this piece, we examine where the economy and stock markets have been recently, where we are now, and where we are going next. We also highlight four key ways to play this volatile market. We think this is a helpful way to think about overall portfolio construction, especially so that one does not overly expose themselves to a particular set of risks that could come to fruition—like an extended downturn in the economy or a rapid discovery of a vaccine for Covid-19 on the other hand.

Jun 16, 2020

Reiterating Our Bullish Long-Term View on Stocks
Image: The NASDAQ 100 Index remains resilient, bouncing off support, after breaking out to new highs recently. Some of our best ideas are included in the NASDAQ 100, and our favorite concentrations include exposure to big cap tech and large cap growth. We continue to be bullish on equities for the long run. In addition to unlimited quantitative easing and "whatever it takes, squared" Fed policy, today, June 16, the Trump administration announced that it is weighing a $1 trillion stimulus bill to help support the economy. While uncertainties remain regarding specifics of the bill (it might include state assistance, extension of unemployment benefits, etc.), the move is consistent with the outsize spending we expect to further bolster the bull case, "ICYMI -- Stay Optimistic. Stay Bullish. I Am." We continue to emphasize that, in light of unlimited QE and runaway fiscal stimulus, the longer-duration components of intrinsic values are expanding considerably, and as a result, fair values, themselves, are actually rising during this recession and pandemic [a good estimate of the value of the S&P 500 today may be between 3,530-3,920, as outlined in the following: "Scribbles and More Newsletter Portfolio Changes.]."

Jun 15, 2020

ICYMI: Survey Coming Later Today, More Market Volatility Expected
Image: The market's levels of volatility so far in 2020 have been among the greatest in history. Expectations for increased volatility in the marketplace as a result of the proliferation of price-agnostic trading (indexing and quantitative trading) is a key theme of Valuentum's text, Value Trap: Theory of Universal Valuation. We continue to emphasize the importance of due diligence, enterprise valuation, behavioral thinking, the information contained in prices, and stock selection across equity portfolios. Page 256. This week is setting up to be yet another volatile week of trading, but nothing too surprising. We've talked extensively about outsize levels of volatility in the book Value Trap, and many of our predictions regarding the magnitude of volatility have come to fruition, as described in this note here. But as we've also noted in Value Trap, we don't think increased volatility is a transient development. The Fed and Treasury have only further emboldened price-agnostic trading (indexing/quant) with recent bailout actions, and volatility and momentum funds, which exacerbate the swings, will only grow as a percentage of trading volumes. The magnitude of market volatility during the COVID-19 crisis has certainly been immense. During March for example, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had 8 consecutive days with a 4% move in either direction (this is the first time in history this happened--not even during the tumultuous times of the Crash of 1929 or Black Monday of 1987 or the Great Financial Crisis did this happen). Intra-day volatility has also been considerable, and it has become commonplace for equity futures to swing wildly before market open. Now, more than ever, investors need a steady hand at the wheel.

Jun 12, 2020

*ALERT* Scribbles and More Newsletter Portfolio Changes
Image: Why are stock prices increasing while the near-term economy and near-term earnings outlook isn't as bright as before...How unlimited quantitative easing, runaway government spending, increased inflation expectations impact equity values...Why this year's earnings expectations or next year's earnings expectations don't matter much...Why Valuentum thinks equity values are rising today, even as the near-term outlook remains unclear. Scribbles on page 76 of Value Trap. "I know it sounds crazy to say so during a global pandemic and during a recession, but the right multiple and the right earnings to use to value this market is an 18-20x multiple on $196 earnings, putting a fair value range on the S&P 500 today of 3,530-3,920. The S&P 500 is trading at about 3,000 today." -- Brian Nelson, CFA

Jun 8, 2020

ICYMI -- Stay Optimistic. Stay Bullish. I Am.
Image: My great-grandfather (second from left) and his buddies in the 88th Division of the United States Army during World War I, at the time of the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919. He would serve under Major General William Weigel, become proficient in the 37mm gun, and take part in the largest offensive in U.S. military history, the Meuse-Argonne Campaign. As a corporal, he would survive the Great War and the Spanish flu pandemic, returning to the U.S. in May 1919 from the port of Saint-Nazaire, France on his way to Omaha, Nebraska. First of all, I wanted to reiterate how bullish I am on equities for the long haul. There are no risk-less investments when it comes to the stock market, of course, but this "win-win" scenario we seem to find ourselves in today appears to be one-of-a-kind in history. Here's what it boils down to. If the U.S. economy re-opens and everything turns out to be "fine," or at least better-than-expected, it's hard not to be bullish on stocks. We can then possibly look to pre-COVID-19 earnings numbers for 2021 and 2022 with some adjustments here and there, and that means the bull market is on (and new heights may be in sight). On the other hand, if the U.S. economy re-opens and economic numbers don't live up to expectations, which could happen, there will likely be even more stimulus--but investors might be bullish in this scenario, too. For starters, there's been more money created during the past few weeks or so than during the entire year following Lehman Brothers' failure (there's even talk of more money creation with another round of stimulus). We cannot forget that, while stock values are calculated on the basis of future free cash flow expectations, they are priced nominally (not inflation-adjusted), and stock investing is one way to combat the risk of inflation as strong companies price goods ever higher to outpace rising costs to reap in ever-higher earnings. Even if this excess money in the economy is not translated into inflation in physical goods and services, however, it may translate into inflating equity prices specifically, as has arguably (or perhaps undeniably) been the case during the period of 2010-2019. But there's more to this line of thinking...

Jun 5, 2020

Dow Jones Surges Past 27,000; Bull Market Continues!
"What a bull market off the lows we are having. I don't think we're finished, as I have pounded the table time and time and time again about how bullish I am. In the words of Frank Sinatra, "The Best Is Yet to Come," and I truly believe that. Yesterday, I explained to readers why we're seeing this huge rally, "Stay Optimistic. Stay Bullish. I Am." If you understand the duration and composition of equity value (page 74-83 in Value Trap), you can start focusing on what drives share prices and returns. How else could a market rally this much with 13% unemployment, right? How wonderful it would be if everyone understood the duration of stock value composition! What would happen to ambiguous, backward-looking factor investing? Finance could then start talking about things that make sense again." -- Brian Nelson, CFA