FCG

The Wisdom of Oaktree’s Howard Marks

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Image Source: emmolos The latest memo from Oaktree’s Howard Marks here should be read and then read again. The section on passive investing is an absolute treasure. “Passive investing is done in vehicles that make no judgments about the soundness of companies and the fairness of prices.  More than $1 billion is flowing daily to “passive managers” (there’s an oxymoron for you) who buy regardless of price.  I’ve always viewed index funds as “freeloaders” who make use of the consensus decisions of active investors for free.  How comfortable can investors be these days, now that fewer and fewer active decisions are being made?” — Howard Marks, Oaktree Capital Financial Tech Services: ACIW, EPAY, FDC, FIS, FISV, FLT, GPN, MA, MELI, … Read more

Adviser Fees on Indexed Assets Can Eat Up Your Nest Egg?

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Indexing sounds like an easy way to track the market’s performance, but if your indexed assets are held in financial advisors’ accounts, it can come with a big cost: significant underperformance. Over 20 years, we estimate in this hypothetical example that the cumulative cost as a result of a 1% annual financial advisor fee on indexed assets can amount to as much as 66% of a saver’s initial investment — just for holding an index fund. Please be careful out there!

Systemic Risk in These Frothy Times

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Let’s talk about index investing, market valuations, and mention how a few ideas in the Best Ideas Newsletter are doing. By Brian Nelson, CFA For most investors during most parts of the economic cycle, index investing (VOO), or holding a broad basket of stocks that approximate the returns of a large market index may make a lot of sense. I have always said this from the very beginning: Individual stock selection is not for everyone. What may not be well-known, however, is that index funds have experienced multi-year periods of both outperformance and underperformance relative to actively-managed funds since the dawning of the very first index fund many decades ago. I’m worried that some investors today may not have this … Read more

This Oil Stock Is Surging!

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The Valuentum analyst team digs into recent developments in the oil and gas space and highlights one of the most leveraged ways to play rising crude oil prices. ~12 mins. If you cannot view the podcast below, please select the link here or view the transcript that follows. Tickerized for Valuentum’s oil and gas coverage universe. Chris Araos: Hello, this is Christopher Araos at Valuentum Securities, and today with us is Brian Nelson and Kris Rosemann. Today, we are going to talk about the outlook on oil and gas. Brian Nelson, CFA: Thanks Mr. Araos. I think to kind of set the stage for this conversation, we probably need to bridge the gap between what was truly the depths of … Read more

ICYMI — Video: Will Hasty Policy Facilitate the Next Leg Down, or Do We Have It Coming Anyway?

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President of Investment Research and award-winning author of Value Trap: Theory of Universal Valuation Brian Nelson explains how US policymakers are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and how the market may be factoring in too high of a probability of a return to normalcy before 2021. This and more in the latest video report. Summary Make sure you review Value Trap on Amazon. Do so here. We think those that bought equities near the bottom of this swoon may be looking to take profits at present levels. The market is currently reflecting an 80%-85% probability of a return to normalcy before 2021, which we believe is too high at this time. Our main concern is that government … Read more

LINK –> Massive Unrest In Europe, Energy Crisis Could Be the Catalyst to Topple the Global Markets

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Image Shown: The SSGA ETFS Europe II PLC SPDR MSCI Europe Industrials UCITS ETF, listed in the UK, tracks large and mid-sized European industrial firms. Shares of the ETF have fallen sharply year-to-date as recessionary fears across Europe have grown substantially in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the related European energy crisis. “Surging energy prices in Europe are decimating consumer spending power and forcing industrial companies to sharply scale back production. It is estimated that six in 10 British factories could fold as a result of the crisis, according to reports from Bloomberg.” — The Valuentum Team By Callum Turcan The European energy crisis continues to unfold, and we’ve been keeping our members … Read more

Valuentum’s ETF Reports

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Image Source: GotCredit Welcome to Valuentum’s ETF coverage. If you’re new to the site, please be sure to access the stock reports and dividend reports as part of your membership. If you are looking for the archives to the Best Ideas Newsletter, they can be found here. The Dividend Growth Newsletter archives can be found here. The Exclusive and High Yield Dividend Newsletter have their own website with archives, the latter coming soon. To learn more about Valuentum’s ETF reports, please see  here . To request a report of an ETF we do not currently cover, please contact us. To access the relevant Valuentum reports for each major ETF category, please click on the respective link, “Click Here to Access Valuentum Report.” The links … Read more

Seeking Balance: What’s Happening in the Crude Oil and Iron Ore Markets

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Image Source: Sollven Melindo Commodity prices are notoriously volatile as the global markets often struggle to maintain a sustainable balance of supply-demand. Let’s take a look at some recent developments and coming events that are impacting the prices of crude oil and iron ore. By Kris Rosemann We’re not rushing to add any commodity-based exposure at the moment. We have some of course – but we’re not looking to add more to the newsletter portfolios. For starters, the iron ore pricing market appears to be setting itself up for another period of pain, and we’re preaching serious levels of caution for those considering the space as iron-ore prices have already begun to descend from the peak of the puzzling early-2017 … Read more

Analyzing Chevron and Important Updates in the Global Energy Industry

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Image Source: Chevron Corporation – November 2019 IR Presentation Summary In this note, let’s cover the current state of raw energy resource prices in North America and around the world. We’ll analyze Chevron’s 2020 capital investment and exploration budget, in particular, and the global energy industry at-large. Shares of CVX appear generously valued as of this writing given the numerous headwinds facing the energy industry going forward. By Callum Turcan The world of oil and gas equities has been battling with persistently low raw energy resource prices for some time now. Back in the middle of 2014, a barrel of light sweet crude delivered to Cushing, Oklahoma (home of the West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, benchmark), would fetch over $100. Now … Read more

2,350-2,750 on the S&P? Could the Coronavirus Catalyze a Financial Crisis?

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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