The market is focusing most of its attention on an expanded list of companies reporting earnings this week, with investors eager to see if earnings provide indications that corporate America is weathering the pandemic storm successfully and to measure the odds that the economy will continue to recover. News over the weekend that lawmakers in […]
Read MoreThe market seems intent on rebounding from last week’s break in bullish momentum, with the major indices at the beginning of a new week all moving higher. That looks like another sign that investors generally want to emphasize the positive and be hopeful. Indications over the weekend that the federal government could approve a second […]
Read MoreOne of the big challenges during any economic period of being a value-oriented investor isn’t merely finding stocks that are trading at a discount to valuation metrics like Book Value. It is determining if the stock’s discount is due to temporary market forces like investor sentiment, which is often influenced by short-term uncertainty more than […]
Read MoreThe Consumer Discretionary sector includes stocks that cover a wide variety of the Retail industry. Because there are so many retail companies that offer different products to consumers, it’s hard to pinpoint any kind of specific niche. In the sporting goods niche, there were significant challenges even before COVID-19 became a global pandemic. Declining revenues […]
Read MoreOver the last week, the market has been set on pushing to new higher highs, with the Nasdaq setting a new all-time high at the beginning of this week and the S&P 500 breaking above its last pivot high in May. The start of a new earnings season seems to have lifted investor sentiment, as […]
Read MoreThe Materials sector is one of the more interesting sectors of the market, because it encompasses a pretty wide range of business types. It’s also an industry that the average consumer probably doesn’t think much about, I think primarily because as consumers we tend to be aware of just the finished goods and products that […]
Read More2020 has been a rough year for energy stocks. Even before COVID-19 became a global health crisis, the sector was rocked by an all-out price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia. At the beginning of the year, Brent crude – the benchmark for oil exported from OPEC and OPEC+ countries – was around $70 per […]
Read MoreMy approach to value-oriented investing can’t really be called pure value analysis. The main reason for that is because traditional value investing doesn’t worry about what a stock’s price has been doing; it is only concerned with what the stock’s price is now versus what the combination of fundamental and value metrics suggest it should […]
Read MoreCisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) is one of the most recognizable and established companies in the Technology sector. With a market cap of about $200 billion, they are also one of the largest, if not THE largest player in the Networking & Communications segment. They are, without question, the standard that all other networking businesses are […]
Read MoreThe market seems intent on keying off of encouraging news on the vaccine front, using it as the primary reason to keep pushing the market higher this week. It’s tempting to think that a fast-tracked vaccine is good news across the board, and so you should be “all in” on the market. I think that […]
Read MoreOil prices were among some of the most dramatically impacted components of the global economy at the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. As businesses were shuttered, and shelter-in-place orders ground economic activity everywhere to a halt, demand for crude oil cratered; both West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent crude fell to shockingly low levels. […]
Read MoreA lot of talk right now is starting to turn back, once again to how long the latest bullish rally in the major market indices is going to keep going. As of this writing, the S&P 500 is pushing near its highest point in June and appears set to break to a fresh high, the […]
Read MoreBeing a value-oriented investor means that the general mindset around a stock’s historical trading ranges is a bit different than what most investors, who tend to focus primarily on growth, tend to pay attention to. Value means looking for stocks trading at a nice price, and that usually means that stocks trading at or near […]
Read MoreOver the past couple of weeks, uncertainty has started to creep back into the market, after enthusiasm from the reopening of the economy on a national scale even as COVID-19 remains a concern that will persist into 2021. Unemployment is trending lower, but not as quickly as many economists and “experts” seem to expect, and […]
Read MoreThe analysis I apply to the stocks that I write about in this space reflects my preference for value-oriented investing strategies. That’s because, even though value investing falls in and out of favor with popular market news media types and talking heads depending on the shifting winds of change at any given time, I think […]
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