ALERT: Markets Now Fairly Valued

Hi everyone: — Long-term investing is a great proposition. You have an incredible advantage over most professional investors that have to deliver on a quarterly or annual basis. The reason is due to something called time horizon arbitrage.  — For example, where most professionals are focused on near-term economic data or near-term earnings, you can focus on how the broader earnings trajectory might look like in 2022 and beyond. I think we’d both agree that the economic data or earnings performance for the remainder of 2020 won’t matter much when we turn the calendar to 2021 in just a few months–and in 2021, the market will be looking at 2022 numbers.  — Markets will always be forward-looking, and stocks are long-duration … Read more

Excerpt from ‘Value Trap’ 2nd Edition: MPT Sounds a Lot Like “Empty”

The second edition of President of Investment Research Brian Nelson’s book ‘Value Trap’ will be released in the coming weeks. Here is a short excerpt to whet your appetite: — … — Enterprise valuation, or the discounted cash-flow framework, remains at the center of finance, in my view, and the core of what we do at Valuentum. The process and its key cash-based components helped deliver a suite of outperforming equity considerations at a time when modern portfolio theory (MPT) and diversification benefits were breaking down. Both stocks and bonds, for example, dropped aggressively in unison during the COVID-19 crisis, and the popular U.S. 60-40 stock/bond portfolio “suffered one of its worst performances since the 1960s” during the first quarter … Read more

Mutual Fund Tragedy, ROE, and the Time Horizon

Comparisons between growth versus value stocks may never go away, but President of Investment Research Brian Nelson explains why you should know better than to think stocks can easily be divided up as such. He talks about this, as well as the pitfalls of ROE (return on equity) and how to think about the time horizon. Running time: ~10 minutes.