Which Sectors Are Leading the Market Higher? And Why Is This Important?

Missed the ’13 Most Important Steps to Understand the Stock Market’? Click here. Demand academic evidence regarding the efficacy of the Valuentum process? Click here. Tobias J. Moskowitz and Mark Grinblatt documented the “strong and prevalent momentum effect in industry components of stock returns which accounts for much of the individual stock momentum anomaly” in their scholarly article published in the Journal of Finance, ‘Do Industries Explain Momentum’ (download here; stable link here; updated by Fraulo and Nguyen here). Moskowitz and Grinblatt also concluded that “industry momentum investment strategies, which buy stocks from past winning industries and sell stocks from past losing industries, appear highly profitable.” Such findings are consistent with the ‘Case for the Valuentum Style of Investing,’ and … Read more

Assessing Reactions to Trump’s Victory

Image Source: Gage Skidmore Donald Trump will be the 45th President of the United States of America. Let’s dig into some of the reactions across the market. We’re keeping our cool. By Kris Rosemann and Brian Nelson, CFA The global markets often don’t know what to make of surprises, a characteristic that was on full display as news came rolling in that Donald Trump would soon become the 45th President of the United States, “trumping” Secretary Hillary Clinton in a decisive electoral college victory, despite the popular vote eventually going to the Democratic candidate. In the wee hours of the morning Wednesday, November 9, major markets across the globe were in shock, showing red almost across the board. At one … Read more

How to Think About Corporate Tax Reform

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

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

Roaring 20s? — Consumer Staples Valuations Stretched

Strong outlooks for Kimberly-Clark, United Technologies, Hexcel and Lockheed Martin point to an economy that is still gaining momentum. We caution investors of consumer staples stocks, however, with many equities holding large net debt positions, and the sector trading at almost 20 times forward earnings. Learn about the difference between the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio and the Exclusive publication and much more in this note. Image Source: Alan Levine — By Brian Nelson, CFA Welcome new members!    As you’re getting familiar with the website, please watch the Navigation Video. For those passionate about financial analysis and to see how deep our team goes with our research, please watch the Financial Analysis Video. Finally, don’t forget to flip through the , and read our … Read more

Where Are the Safe Havens?

“We believe that staying diversified as in holding a broad swath of ideas as in either the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio or Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio as the equity portion of one’s allocation makes a lot of sense in any environment…High yield dividend investing may become more and more popular in coming years as rates across the globe approach 0%, and the amount of negative-yielding debt proliferates.” — Brian Nelson, CFA By The Valuentum Team The Federal Reserve is weighing all its options as it assesses how to balance global economic weakness and strong performance in the US, pressure from the White House to aggressively cut rates, and a 30-year yield that puts the federal funds rate at the highest … Read more

Consumer Staples: Product Pricing Gains To Wane in 2017?

Consumer staples giants Kimberly-Clark and Colgate-Palmolive are expecting product pricing growth to be less of a contributor in 2017. We think investors are wising up to the risks of consumer staples stocks, and increasing risk-free rates seem to already be complicating the investment decision-making process for many investors. Consumer staples equities in the S&P 500 are currently trading at ~19.4 times forward 12-month earnings, well above their sub-17 times 10-year trailing average. We believe investors will continue to swap out of these steady-eddy, but overpriced, gems in the near term, in favor of higher-beta commodity and energy-oriented companies as the market sets up to surge in 2017. We have been warning about the tipping point in Treasury yields and implications … Read more

Volatility Spikes, Oh Cisco, the Mighty US Dollar, and More

Image Source: CBOE Let’s talk about recent market events May 17. There’s a lot going on. By Brian Nelson, CFA It looks like volatility is back in a big way, with “all 29 volatility indexes at the CBOE ris(ing) today,” one more-than-doubling, the CBOE Short-Term Volatility Index (VXST). The ridiculously-named “fear gauge” or “fear index” or the CBOE Volatility Index, the VIX (VIX) leapt nearly 50%. On May 17, we effectively bought volatility intraday by adding put options to the newsletter portfolios, both on the S&P 500 SPDR (SPY) and Netflix, a company whose valuation we think remains ridiculous. We may continue to add put options on entities whose equity prices we believe have become too stretched, positions that may … Read more

Valuentum’s ETF Reports

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

5 Years Strong!

Image Source: Andy Maguire By Brian Nelson, CFA This month was an important one for our investment research firm, Valuentum, and its flagship newsletter, the Best Ideas Newsletter. The June 2016 edition means that we have now surpassed the 5-year anniversary of the inception of this newsletter’s portfolio (page 8). This is a critical time horizon that we and many others believe is a good one to assess the quality of any money manager. Money managers can be lucky or unlucky over very short periods of time, as in the case of perhaps a 12-24 month period, but those that can generate and retain outperformance over a 5-year period and longer typically are doing a lot of things right, even … Read more