There’s a popular saying that you might have heard in a lot of different settings outside of the stock market: “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and smells like a duck…then it’s a duck.” It’s interesting to me that I haven’t heard or seen the saying used when talking about stocks, […]
Read MoreIncreasing concerns about the pace of inflation – and what that might mean for a host of issues like whether the Fed will need to start increasing interest rates earlier and faster than they have forecast or than most economists have predicted – have given the market a reason to be a little bit choppier […]
Read MoreFrom late March to the first part of April, one of the attention-grabbing stories in the market was the fall of ViacomCBS Inc. (VIAC) from a peak at around $102 in less than one week to below $50. VIAC announced announced it would be selling new shares to the market. The news diluted the value […]
Read MoreIn the Technology sector, one of the most interesting trends to follow for the past few years has come from streaming media. Services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu were the early entrants into this fast-growing segment that has since seen a number of major broadcasting companies see the light and jump into the fray […]
Read MoreLong, extended bull markets – either on a broad basis, or even in an individual stock – generally tend to work against value-focused investors. That’s usually because once investors start to pile into stocks at good valuation levels, it doesn’t take long for prices to increase well beyond the point of useful value. I say […]
Read MoreOne of the things that always seems to be a little bit ironic to me about the markets is the way that fear tends to weave a web of intrigue and uncertainty under just about all conditions. That often means that when the market starts to correct, investors, analysts and economists don’t just look for […]
Read MoreThrough most of the pandemic, one of the hardest-hit sectors in the market was the Energy sector. Global restrictions on social gatherings and shelter-in-place orders meant that demand for crude oil products collapsed to practically nothing. The story for 2021 has shifted, of course, as vaccinations led to dropping infections and hospitalizations that have allowed […]
Read MoreIntel Corp is a stock that I’ve followed for quite some time, and that I’ve written about in this space quite a bit over the past year. This is one of the 600-lb gorillas of the Technology sector, after all, and the company that is easily considered the gold standard of companies in the Semiconductor […]
Read MoreAs a value-focused investor, I’ve read a lot of books and studied the methods of a lot of well-known money managers who have found success using the same reliance on finding bargains in any market. One of the most successful in the entire history of the U.S. stock market, and arguably the most famous of […]
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 MoreThe longer you invest in the stock market, the more familiar you become with a lot of the concepts that are used to define and justify the various investing methods that drive them. Years ago, as I began to incorporate technical analysis and shorter-term trading strategies into my system, one of the simplest technical patterns […]
Read MoreIn my search for value, I’ve found it useful to develop a watchlist of stocks that I can check on a regular basis. That means that I often recycle stocks that I’ve previously used to make useful investments in, but don’t currently have a position in. That’s useful, because the familiarity that comes with the […]
Read MoreThe Food Products industry in the Consumer Staples sector is an area of the market that doesn’t get much buzz from market media types because it isn’t very sexy. Despite that fact, it is one of very few segments of the market that saw consumer-driven improvements in demand during the pandemic in a trend that […]
Read MoreInvestors are always looking for the “next big thing” in the stock market to give them something to talk about with their friends. That is part of the reason that market media outlets tend to drive so much of the investing public’s focus on the fastest-growing industries. Along the way, stocks in other industries tend […]
Read MoreAfter about two months of mostly range-bound activity, the market appears to have broken out of that range and looks set to extend its longer-term, upward trend yet again. Much of the push seems to be on the heels of economic data, including this week’s most recent jobs report, that economists seem to be taking […]
Read More