The “herd mentality” can be a funny thing to think about in societal terms – but it’s a real thing in the stock market. The sheer number of publicly traded stocks on U.S. exchanges alone creates a wave of market data that no single person can handle alone, and that’s a big reason why it […]
Read MoreOver the last couple of weeks, the market has been largely range-bound, with an increasing level of volatility that has been making stocks pretty choppy. I think the shift in the uncertainty of which that volatility is a reflection is interesting; the ongoing health crisis remains a part of it, but most of the commentary […]
Read MoreThere is a lot of fundamental data that I rely on to help paint an overall picture about underlying strength of any stock I might consider using for a value-based investment. While some fundamental investors prefer to work with easy-to-reference, quick-glance data like earnings per share, I prefer to expand my view of a company’s […]
Read MoreInvestors can be divided into a lot of different categories. Day traders, swing traders, long-term investors these are just a few broad description you often hear used to describe some of the different attitudes about how to find and take advantage of opportunities that emerge in the marketplace. Even among long-term investors, there are important […]
Read MoreI’ve written quite a bit in this space about my opinion that the Consumer Staples sector – and more specifically, stocks in the Food Products and Food and Staples Retail industries – are smart places to find good values in today’s market. That’s because most of the stocks in these industries are benefitting from the […]
Read MoreBeing a value-oriented investor means that seeing stocks trading at or near all-time highs is actually a demotivating factor; that’s because value-based analysis compares the value of the company’s book of business against the stock’s current price. Since the market tend to inflate stock values, upward trends typically outpace the growth in profitability. That means […]
Read MoreOne of the things about value investing that I think makes it hard for most investors to embrace is the fact that value-based principles tend to be counter-intuitive to the mindset that most often gets presented about the market. The first, most basic principle of value investing fits well with rule #1 of investing in […]
Read MoreThroughout the past year, stocks in the health care business have drawn a lot of attention from investors and analysts. That includes stocks in the Pharmacy/Drugstore industry; these were names, like Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA)and CVS Corporation (CVS) that worked actively in the early stages of the crisis to provide a critical piece of the […]
Read MoreUncertain economic conditions are often a good time to think about stocks that most people tend to overlook because they’re “boring.” These are stocks that also tend to operate in counter-cyclical fashion. They often make up segments of the economy that you and I rely on every day, but that don’t generate the same kind […]
Read MoreOver the last few weeks, the market has started to get choppier, which generally means that it’s harder to determine whether investors are bullish or bearish. That’s a sign of uncertainty about market direction, and I’ve noticed that an increasing number of analysts have started to talk or write about something I’ve believed for some […]
Read MoreThe “herd mentality” can be a funny thing to think about in societal terms – but it’s a real thing in the stock market. The sheer number of publicly traded stocks on U.S. exchanges alone creates a wave of market data that no single person can handle alone, and that’s a big reason why it […]
Read MoreThe broad sense of hope that 2021 will set the stage for a broad recovery on multiple fronts seems to be a primary reason the broad indices pushed to a new set of all-time highs at the end of last week, with a total increase since January 1 of a little less than 6%. Indications […]
Read MoreFor more than a year, the Aerospace industry, which includes commercial airlines has been one of the biggest, unquestioned losers in the stock market. Yes, the biggest portion of that drop comes from the reality that the industry took some of the biggest drawdowns in the market starting in February 2020 as commercial travel dried […]
Read MoreAs a conservative-minded, value and fundamental-driven investor, my natural tendency is to shy away from stocks that market experts and popular market media analysts tend to talk to the most about. That means that my investments rarely look very sexy – but I’m far less interested in being sexy than I am in being able […]
Read MoreI tend to take most of the information I get from news media with a large grain of salt. That is especially true of market media outlets, which have so much information to try to report about on a daily basis that they really can’t do much more than talk about whatever happens to be […]
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