U.S. Housing Market Showing Signs of Weakness

Image Shown: The US housing market is starting to show signs of weakness. Companies involved in the home building business in the US are starting to feel the heat, with the iShares US Home Construction ETF down ~30% year-to-date as of early September 2022 on a price-only basis. By Callum Turcan The national U.S. housing market has been on fire during the past few years. Sharp increases in U.S. housing prices are now contending with rising mortgage rates, which is prompting the question, are U.S. housing prices heading for a crash? Affordability issues are rampant, with many households now priced out of the market, and signs of weakness are emerging in the U.S. housing market. Background The Federal Reserve is … Read more

Nelson: Executing the Valuentum Strategy

Video: Valuentum’s President Brian Nelson, CFA, explains why he’s turned bearish on the equity markets after a great bull run. In this 8-minute video, learn about the fantastic returns of the stock market the past three years, and how the Valuentum way has cushioned the market decline in 2022. Watch now to learn about the textbook execution of the Valuentum strategy and more! –——— Tickerized for holdings in the SPY. Brian Nelson owns shares in SPY, SCHG, QQQ, DIA, VOT, BITO, and IWM. Valuentum owns SPY, SCHG, QQQ, VOO, and DIA. Brian Nelson’s household owns shares in HON, DIS, HAS, NKE. Some of the other securities written about in this article may be included in Valuentum’s simulated newsletter portfolios. Contact … Read more

Video: We Expect A Huge Market Flush! Looking to “Raise” Incremental Cash

Video: Valuentum’s Brian Nelson, CFA, breaks down the current market environment, highlighting reasons for the poor market sentiment driven by “tapped out” consumers and investors alike. He expects a big market “flush,” and a challenging next couple years but remains a big fan of stocks for the long haul. Valuentum continues to seek to “raise” incremental cash in the simulated newsletter portfolios as it prepares to weather the storm. Video length: ~10 minutes. –——— Tickerized for holdings in the SPY. Brian Nelson owns shares in SPY, SCHG, QQQ, DIA, VOT, BITO, and IWM. Valuentum owns SPY, SCHG, QQQ, VOO, and DIA. Brian Nelson’s household owns shares in HON, DIS, HAS, NKE. Some of the other securities written about in this … Read more

Dividend Increases/Decreases for the Week of July 15

Below we provide a list of firms that raised their dividends during the week ending July 15. The dividend reports of covered firms on this list will be updated shortly with the new information. To access our dividend reports use the ‘Symbol’ search box in our website header. Firms Raising Their Dividends This Week                Alta Equipment (ALTG): now $0.057 per share quarterly dividend. Bank of New York Mellon (BK): now $0.37 per share quarterly dividend, was $0.34. Bassett Furniture (BSET): now $0.16 per share quarterly dividend, was $0.14. Clorox (CLX): now $1.18 per share quarterly dividend, was $1.16. Cummins (CMI): now $1.57 per share quarterly dividend, was $1.45. Duke Energy (DUK): now $1.005 per share quarterly dividend, was $0.985. … Read more

Valuentum’s Unmatched Product Suite

Hi everyone! — We continue to be huge believers in the concept of enterprise valuation, which emphasizes the key cash-based sources of intrinsic value–net cash on the balance sheet and strong and growing future expected free cash flows. Meta Platforms, Inc. (META) and Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) remain two of the most underpriced ideas on the market today, and we remain huge fans of their tremendous long-term investment prospects. — There are a couple things worth reminding readers, however. A good relevant rule of thumb I learned early in my career working for my first portfolio manager is that a stock’s return in the near term is driven roughly 40% by the market, 30% by the industry it operates in, and 30% … Read more

Nelson: I Have Been Wrong About the Prospect of Near-Term Inflationary-Driven Earnings Tailwinds

Transcript During the past several weeks, we’ve grown increasingly concerned about the health of consumer-tied entities across not only the consumer staples but also the consumer discretionary spaces. Many consumer staples entities, while raising prices, aren’t raising them fast enough to drive operating-income and bottom-line expansion, while many consumer-discretionary companies are facing higher freight and logistics costs and weaker performance in China, perhaps best revealed by Nike’s most recently-reported quarter, where inventory advanced 23% compared to the prior-year period. The tell-tale sign about the health of the consumer may be Amazon (AMZN) Prime Day, which is coming up on July 12-13, but based on many of the reports we’ve monitored this past earnings season, even if sales are strong on … Read more

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

Our Report on the Banks & Money Centers Industry

Image Source: Ethan Stock  Banks & Money Centers Industry Report – select the link below to download the pdf Summary We’ll talk about how banks make money, and the three most important costs of running a bank. The Great Financial Crisis revealed the tremendous risks of banking equities, and we’ll walk through these risks in depth. We will also cover how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted capital markets and the banking industry, and what to expect going forward. We’ll discuss how to conceptualize where we are in the banking cycle, and how that helps inform our valuation process for banks, which is different than traditional operating entities. The stress tests have helped many of the big banks from pursuing hazardous endeavors during … Read more

The Valuentum Weekly Is a Hit! Only Delivered By Email!

Image: Excerpt from the November 14 edition of the Valuentum Weekly. November 14, 2021: Inflation Is Positive for Nominal Earnings While Interest Rates Remain at All-Time Lows Tickers mentioned: GOOG, FB, PYPL, DIS, JNJ, BRK.A, BRK.B, ASML, BYND, RIVN, TSLA, JD, WB, BABA, GE, TOSBF, Z, ZG, OPEN, RBLX, GLD November 7, 2021: Large Cap Growth Has More Room to Run Tickers mentioned: SCHG, GME, AMC, BBBY, CVX, XOM, XLE, MA, V, PYPL, QCOM, RSG, NEM, TSLA, PTON, Z, ZG, F, IWN, GMET October 31, 2021: Happy Halloween! Tickers mentioned: AAPL, AMZN, QQQ, SPY, INTC, FB, GOOG, MSFT, LMT, MVRS, DLR, XOM, CVX, DIS, SLB, HON, INTC, CMG, PYPL, PINS, TSLA, HTZZ, PTLO, RSG, SBUX, MCD, NEM, SCHG, IWN October 24, … 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