SPY

Bellwethers Drive Dow Jones Past 23,450 – Cheers!

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Image: The stock market is partying like it’s 1999 or 1929, or 1987. You pick. Cheers! Creative Commons, Ruth Hartnup. The market is reacting positively to calendar third-quarter earnings reports during the trading session October 24, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DIA) has now surpassed 23,450+. The rally in US equities ensues. Stocks mentioned in this note: General Motors (GM), McDonald’s (MCD), and Caterpillar (CAT). By Brian Nelson, CFA General Motors Delivers!!! We couldn’t be more excited for holders of newsletter portfolio idea General Motors. The auto giant released a solid third-quarter report October 24 that has sent shares rallying to ~$46 each. If you remember, GM’s stock was languishing in the mid-$30s when we penned our September piece, … Read more

North Korea and the Bomb

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Tensions between the United States and North Korea have heightened, and we may look to August 2017 as the dawn of yet another Cold War. The news has little impact on our thesis, however. Stocks generally remain overvalued, and some of them considerably. Let’s cover a few stocks in the news and reiterate our generally positive stance on defense contractors, two of our favorites recently highlighted in the Nelson Exclusive publication. Learn more about the Nelson Exclusive here. “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” Trump said, arms crossed, from his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Tuesday. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” – CNN, … Read more

Apple, Hanesbrands Power Higher

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Image shown: Performance of the S&P 500 SPDR (SPY) since the beginning of 2017. There aren’t two other companies within the Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio that may be more controversial positions than Apple and Hanesbrands — one is on the cutting edge of technology and the other makes T-shirts and underwear, a very interesting dichotomy. By Brian Nelson, CFA The stock market continues to roar ahead, and the latest rally is starting to set some new records. According to Charlie Bilello at Pension Partners, the S&P 500 (SPY) currently has the fourth-longest streak in history without a 5% drawdown, at 275 consecutive trading days. That’s incredibly low volatility. The S&P 500 now also has had 9 consecutive months where it … Read more

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

Random Musings: Retail, REITs, BlackBerry, and More

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Image shown: Best Buy’s resiliency in the face of competition from Amazon. Let’s cover some recent news. By Brian Nelson, CFA The markets have been relatively flattish the past week or so, but that may not mean much. They could still be digesting some of the big gains thus far in 2017 before potentially staging their next move. At the close June 26, the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY), a proxy for the S&P 500 stood at $243.29. For some reason, I felt it important to make note of this level, as if it were an important one. Things have been very quiet for a long time now, and I get the feeling that an inflection point may be … Read more

I CARE

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Image Shown: The S&P 500 from early 2009 through today, June 15, 2017. By Brian Nelson, CFA There it is — the upward-sloping chart of the S&P 500 (SPY) since the March 2009 panic bottom. What a sight to see… The past 8 years have marked an incredible bull market in US equities and one for the record books in many instances. The drivers behind the multi-year rally have been many — ultra-low interest rates and their magnifying impact on equity valuations, strong earnings growth from the doldrums of the Financial Crisis, and the proliferation of passive and dividend-growth strategies de-emphasizing the price-versus-value equation. “Money,” it seems, is chasing stocks at any price, and most of the trading on exchanges … Read more

Labor and the Economic Cycle

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As we arguably near the “peak” in the business cycle, labor is starting to demand more, a dynamic that we believe is emblematic of the period of aging economic expansion. Let’s have a look at what’s happening in the fight for higher wages. By Brian Nelson, CFA Each business cycle is different in both magnitude and duration, but there are some common qualities that define where an economy might be within the cycle. First, it has been more than 8 years since the March 2009 stock-market panic bottom, a period that witnessed firms such as Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and AIG (AIG) flounder. The unemployment rate peaked at 10% during that difficult time. Since then, the US economy has emerged … Read more

Alert: Adding Protection! Finally Acting on Netflix Idea

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Image Source: Esther Vargas We’re adding protection to the newsletter portfolios and finally making a move on Netflix. By Brian Nelson, CFA Nothing should be alarming in this note. We’ve talked about our concerns about the broader stock market for some time now, and how we think we’re in a bubble. One has to look no further than the very intro to the May edition of the Best Ideas Newsletter here (pdf), released Monday, for example, or our continued reminder of how markets perform during periods of contractionary monetary policy. Of course we’re still content with riding the market higher–should it go in that direction, perhaps on the backs of incremental index investors and dividend growth re-investors–but we’re also being … Read more

Not Worried About Priceline, Boeing; Yes Worried About Fickle Retail

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Image Source: Mike Mozart Priceline and Boeing have been here before. Fickle retail continues to succumb to the Amazon effect. By Brian Nelson, CFA The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DIA) closed just shy of the 21,000 mark on May 11, while the S&P 500 (SPY) ended the session at ~2,395. We continue to ride the wave in the equity markets higher, even as we exercise caution almost across the board. First-quarter earnings season has actually been quite good, however, with the “blended earnings growth rate for S&P 500 companies north of 10% (it was 13.5% with more than 80% of S&P 500 companies reporting). FactSet noted in its May 5 report that this pace of growth is the highest since … Read more

New Taxes? Trump’s Misstep and Seeming About-Face

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Image Source: FactSet and Valuentum estimates (2019, 2020) News that Trump was considering new taxes, his failure to repeal Obamacare, and the seeming about-face on for-profit education regulations have put the probability of corporate tax reform in jeopardy, from where we stand. If we’re right, the implications on the market could be considerable… and not in a good way. Let’s talk about this in the context of current market valuations. By Brian Nelson, CFA The shot across the bow has been fired. The news came and went, and many seemed to ignore its potential massive implications. What am I talking about? As you have read by now, Donald Trump’s first major move as President has resulted in failure–a divided Republican … Read more