The 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 […]
Read MoreBeing a contrarian investor can mean a few different things. To some, contrarian investing is correlated with value investing, and I think that makes sense in a lot of ways. For one thing, being a contrarian means recognizing that all price trends – up or down – are finite in length and duration. That means […]
Read MoreIf you’re like me, you’re undoubtedly getting tired of the seemingly endless discussion and examination of COVID-19. Latest infection numbers, speculation about vaccine development progress, whether governments will reimpose restrictions or mandate common sense measures like wearing masks in public – let’s face it, it gets tiresome to be confronted with what appears to be […]
Read MoreIn the last couple of weeks the market seems to have been trying to resolve the contradiction of the world we’re in right now. State governments began lifting COVID-19-induced restrictions in order to restart economic activity, which gave investors reason to start being optimistic again, but even as we are seeing progress in terms of […]
Read MoreIn the last three months since the market hit a bear-market bottom, we’ve seen a number of stocks rally from extreme lows to new highs. A lot of the buzz is around companies that facilitate work-from-home business operating models or encourage other activities that make self-isolation and the social restrictions associated with living through a […]
Read MoreAs questions continue to loom about the continued progression of COVID-19 in the United States – and to what extent it may blunt any progress made in the last month or so from the standpoint of economic recovery – it’s pretty easy to give in to the fear that new restrictions may have to be […]
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