Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater

Image: Erica Nicol Takeaways: Junk tech should continue to collapse, but the stylistic area of large cap growth and big cap tech should remain resilient. Moderately elevated levels of inflation coupled with interest rates hovering at all-time lows isn’t a terrible combination. In fact, it’s not bad at all. The markets are digesting the huge gains of the past few years so far in 2022, and the excesses in ARKK funds, crypto, SPACs, and meme stocks are being rid from the system. Our best ideas are “outperforming” the very benchmarks that are outperforming everyone else. The BIN portfolio is down 6.4% and the DGN portfolio is down 3.2% year to date. The SPY is down 7.8%, while the average investor … Read more

Bitcoin, U.S. Large Cap Growth, and Technology Continue to Dominate Returns

Image source: Seeking Alpha, retrieved November 28 —– Valuentum members have access to our 16-page stock reports, Valuentum Buying Index ratings, Dividend Cushion ratios, fair value estimates and ranges, dividend reports and more. Not a member? Subscribe today. The first 14 days are free.  The Benefits of Premium Membership Sign Up Today. First 14 days FREE!  At Valuentum (val∙u∙n∙tum) [val-yoo-en-tuh-m], we strive to stand out from the crowd. Most investment research publishers fall into a few camps, whether it be value, growth, income, momentum, chartist or some variant of the aforementioned. We think each in its own right holds merit, but the combination of these approaches is even more powerful. After all, stock price movements aren’t just driven by investors of the value or … Read more

Hut 8 Mining Is an Interesting Play on Cryptocurrencies

Image Source: Hut 8 Mining Corporation – November 2021 IR Presentation By Callum Turcan Hut 8 Mining Corporation (HUT) is headquartered in Toronto, Canada (in the province of Ontario), and “mines” digital assets from two operations in Alberta, Canada (in the city of Medicine Hat and town of Drumheller). The firm is in the process of developing a third mining operation in Ontario, Canada, at the small city of North Bay, having secured a long-term power purchase agreement with Validus Power Corp. Overview  Though Hut 8 Mining mines for both bitcoin (BITO) and ether, two of the most popular cryptocurrencies, when it mines for Ether it historically has preferred to get paid in bitcoin. Hut 8 Mining has built up … Read more

FinTech Stocks Still Attractive, Market Overreacting to Visa’s Cross-Border Travel Outlook

Image: Visa continues to rake in the free cash flow. Though its outlook is clouded somewhat by recovering cross-border travel transaction volumes, we still like its asset-light, free-cash-flow rich business model. By Brian Nelson, CFA It’s easy to lose sight of everyday life when we hear stories about the latest and greatest cryptocurrency or the next iteration of yet another ETF that centers on one theme or another, but when we take a step back, almost all of us are still using and continuing to use one of a few payment options. Maybe it’s your Visa (V) Card, your Mastercard (MA), Discover (DFS) Card, American Express (AXP) Card, Capital One Financial (COH) Card or perhaps PayPal (PYPL), Stripe, or Square … Read more

Best Idea Visa on the Rebound, Generating Gobs of Free Cash Flow

Image Shown: Visa Inc is a stellar free cash flow generator and is included as an idea in our Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio. Image Source: Visa Inc – Third Quarter of Fiscal 2021 IR Earnings Presentation By Callum Turcan We’re huge fans of the payment processing and payment solutions space. This industry is supported by secular growth tailwinds due to the global shift away from cash-to-card and card-not-present (e.g. online purchases) purchase options, and the ongoing proliferation of e-commerce. Furthermore, companies in this space benefit immensely from the network effect, which creates an economic moat for their business.  These companies are incredibly lucrative with relatively high operating margins and impressive free-cash-flow generating abilities, aided by their relatively modest capital expenditure … Read more

Best Idea PayPal Is a Tremendous Enterprise with Ample Capital Appreciation Upside

Image Source: PayPal Holdings Inc – 2021 Investor Day Presentation By Callum Turcan PayPal Holdings Inc (PYPL) is a stellar enterprise, and we view the fintech company’s capital appreciation upside quite favorably, which is why we include shares of PYPL as an idea in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio with a significant ‘weighting.’ Shares of PYPL have been on a steady upward climb of late, and investors continue to warm up to the name. Expansive Offerings Creates Sizable Synergies PayPal put up stellar performance during the first half of 2021. Its number of active accounts rose to 403 million at the end of June 2021 from 377 million at the end of December 2020, while its payment transactions per active … Read more

Valuentum Weekly

Image: Bitcoin, technology and large cap growth have led the pack the past 5 years while pipeline MLPs, crude oil and energy stocks have fallen way behind. Large cap growth > small cap value. Bonds, non-US stocks continue to lag. 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! Takeaways The markets offer investors an asymmetric risk opportunity, … Read more

Two Alerts and Bull Market On!

By Brian Nelson, CFA It’s very hard not to be bullish on the stock market these days. The prudence exercised by many of the largest companies in the S&P 500 remains unprecedented, in our view. Some of the best companies out there have tremendous balance sheets, as evidenced by huge net cash positions. Perhaps two of our favorite companies, Microsoft (MSFT) and Facebook (FB) are the best examples of this, but Apple (AAPL) still retains quite the large net cash hoard as it works to net-cash breakeven. As we look at the next couple years, most investors will continue to focus on the Fed. We’ve seen this song and dance following the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) that wreaked havoc on … Read more

Best Ideas PayPal and Visa Have Ample Capital Appreciation Upside Potential

Image Shown: PayPal Holdings Inc’s digital wallet offers the firm multiple sources of upside. Image Source: PayPal Holdings Inc – February 2021 Investor Day Presentation By Callum Turcan The payment processing and fintech industries are incredibly lucrative and supported by powerful secular growth tailwinds such as the proliferation of e-commerce and the global shift away from cash (towards card, tap to pay, QR code, online, and other payment methods). PayPal Holdings Inc (PYPL) and Visa Inc (V) are two of our favorites in the space, and we include both firms as ideas in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio. PayPal’s Long Term Growth Prospects Are Immense PayPal offers an expansive slate of services for consumers and merchants including checkout and point-of-sale … Read more

News Round Up and Some Answers

Image Shown: Wendy’s is the latest stock to be swept away by the meme-stock craze, providing further evidence that 1) markets are inefficient and 2) prices and returns are based on future expectations that may be realized or not. By Brian Nelson, CFA Hope you all are doing great. We saw a nice breakout of Facebook’s (FB) share price yesterday, June 7, and we continue to be fans of the social media giant. We view our long-term assumptions as quite reasonable and peg a fair value estimate of $413 per share for this innovative behemoth. There is considerable upside potential as Facebook continues to monetize its massive user base and pursues new initiatives including e-commerce (Shops) and dating (Dating) and … Read more