Exclusive Analysis for the Discerning Investor
The Valuentum analyst team covers market moving information that is top of mind from consumer staples valuations, the political election cycle, utility valuations, energy resource pricing, biotech considerations, Brexit uncertainty and beyond. ~8 minutes. Tickerized for several consumer staples entities and ETFs, several companies in the energy sector, emerging market vehicles and more.
The Valuentum Analyst team digs deep into the logical fallacy that paved the way for index funds, and the very real risks investors take while driving with their hands off the wheel looking only through the rear-view mirror. Summary Please read the first 3 minutes of the presentation (there is no audio at the beginning). Pause the program if you require more time to read. If you still don’t see the FALLACY that paved the way for the creation of index funds, be sure to comment below. The last 10 minutes of the program comprises a discussion by the Valuentum team of active versus passive. Looking forward to a good discussion. Please be sure to view the transcript below if … Read more
Image Source: Alan Levine “The forward 12-month P/E ratio is 17.0. This P/E ratio is based on Thursday’s closing price (2170.06) and forward 12-month EPS ($127.93). The P/E ratio of 17.0 is above the prior 5-year average forward 12-month P/E ratio of 14.6, and above the prior 10-year average forward 12-month P/E ratio of 14.3. It is also above the forward 12-month P/E ratio of 16.6 recorded at the start of the third quarter (June 30).” – FactSet Earnings Insight, July 29, 2016 Kleenex anyone? Because we’re at nosebleed valuations in the consumer staples (XLP) sector! At arguably no time in the history of the stock market have investors been willing to pay so much for each unit of earnings … Read more
Image Source: Robert Lyle Bolton “In some ways, a cash dividend is like paying shareholders with their own money, and making a big deal about it!” — Brian Nelson, CFA To the Board Rooms of America: We learn a lot from the culture we live in, the education system we promote, and the games we play. Who hasn’t played Monopoly, the age-old game that Hasbro scooped up from Parker Brothers, first published in 1935? For more than 80 years now, men and women of all ages have been collecting $50 from the “bank” after pulling one of the more-fortuitous Chance cards. Ingrained in society has become the belief that a “dividend” is incremental, that something is “given” to shareholders that … Read more
A portion of this article is excerpted from the January 2014 edition of the Dividend Growth Newsletter. Valuentum has two actively-managed portfolios: a Best Ideas portfolio and a Dividend Growth portfolio. Each portfolio has different goals and strategies. The Best Ideas portfolio seeks to find firms that have good value and good momentum characteristics and typically holds them from a Valuentum Buying Index rating of a 9 or 10 to a rating of a 1 or 2. The goal of the portfolio is to generate a positive return each year and to exceed the performance of a broad market benchmark. The Dividend Growth portfolio seeks to find underpriced dividend growth gems that generate phenomenal levels of cash flow and have … Read more
After Congress finally approved a deal to thwart the fiscal cliff Tuesday night, investors throughout the US finally have a clear picture on the tax treatment of investments going forward. Assuming no deal was reached, the US income tax code would have reverted to pre-Bush tax cut era rates, which included higher marginal rates at all income levels, higher capital gains taxes, and dividends being treated as ordinary income. Assuming several tried-and-true dividend aristocrats are valued by many on a yield basis, equity prices for high-yielding and overvalued stocks could have suffered a substantial price decline as the after-tax yield would have been meaningfully reduced. We felt the repercussions of uncertainty in the portfolio of our Dividend Growth Newsletter. Shares … Read more
After a volatile December, two of our favorite aerospace names, Astronics (click ticker for report: ) and EDAC Technologies (click ticker for report: ), are rallying significantly after a deal was finally reached to avert the fiscal cliff. Precision Castparts (click ticker for report: ), which had steadily moved higher during the fiscal-cliff ordeal thanks to optimism surrounding its planned acquisition of Titanium Metals (TIE), is also seeing strength today. We assumed both profit taking and overblown fears of defense cuts were the culprit behind the increased volatility, and it seems as though that could be the case. We continue to see substantial upside at these firms thanks to the massive, multi-year commercial aerospace backlogs of the large airframe makers. Our Best Ideas portfolio … Read more
Remember When We Said Economic Prognosticators Were Off Their Rockers? From the September 2012 edition of our Best Ideas Newsletter (see page 2), released September 15, 2012: “Could you imagine if you had listened to bond-king Bill Gross (please note he is not the equity king), Marc Faber (author of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report) or the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), which called for a recession in September 2011 – some 30% in the S&P 500 ago (yes, 30%!). Aside from being incorrect, bearish economic prognosticators fully admit that their expectations have little to do with what may happen to the equity markets in the future (as Bernanke’s unlimited QE has shown). Still, such admissions do not stop … Read more
Image: We think a rather modest sell-off in the market to the target range of 2,350-2,750 on the S&P 500 is rather reasonable in the wake of one of the biggest economic shocks since the Global Financial Crisis. The chart above shows how far markets have advanced since 2011, and an adjustment lower to the target range of 2,350-2,750 is rather modest in such a context and would only bring markets to late 2018 levels (note red box as the target range). The range reflects ~16x S&P 500 12-month forward earnings estimates, as of February 14, adjusted down 10% due to COVID-19. When companies like Visa talk about a couple percentage points taken off of growth rates, one knows that … Read more
Image Source: Lindsay Holmwood Let’s examine how we derive the forecasts in our stock and dividend reports. This article appeared on our website April 2014. It is updated and refreshed today for the benefit of new members. By Kris Rosemann and Brian Nelson, CFA One of the biggest benefits of being a member of Valuentum’s investment services is that we show you all of the numbers – the numbers tell the real story. An author/analyst may tell the story of a company through his/her eyes, but the author/analyst must still convert his/her thoughts and qualitative considerations into quantitative future forecasts to arrive at a fair value estimate of a stock. These future forecasts ultimately determine an intrinsic value estimate of the … Read more