Through a big portion of 2020, one of the areas that I was able to find some interesting valuations to work with was in the Telecommunications industry. Some of the largest players in the industry do much more than just telecommunications. For example, AT&T Inc. (T) has, of course long been one of the largest […]
Read MoreOne of the remarkable aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic is the fact that the economic downturn associated with immediate shutdowns and shelter-in-place restrictions didn’t have a stronger on real estate prices. More than a year later, we’re starting to talk about actual economic recovery on the heels of increasing vaccinations, and an employment trend that […]
Read MoreThe last year has seen a lot of different storylines emerge. Companies around the world found ways to evolve, but even so there are still significant challenges ahead. COVID is still a thing, even while pandemic-driven restrictions begin to ease, and that means that a complete “return to normal” as we tend to think of […]
Read MoreOver the last year, COVID-19 has forced businesses in just about every segment of the economy to find ways to adjust. The adoption by corporate America to work-from-home models helped keep a lot of people working, and one of the most intriguing success stories that I think will continue to be told for years to […]
Read MoreAmong a number of interesting storylines of the past year, is the way corporate America and the markets found ways to adjust and keep pushing forward. It’s true that a lot of the market’s rally can be tied directly to trillions of dollars of economic stimulus, including direct payments to families and individuals that helped […]
Read MoreMore and more this year, consumers have been thinking about the activities they’ve been deprived from enjoying because of pandemic-driven restrictions, and what they might want to do as the economy starts to reopen. For the market, that’s good news that has prompted investors to start paying more attention to companies in industries that traditionally […]
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 that I think has been driving the market’s big bullish trend from the initial, bear market bottom the market visited briefly in early 2020 is generally increasing savings rates during the pandemic. I think that was driven, at least in part by the fact that remote workers were limited by shelter-in-place […]
Read MoreThe market’s resilience over the past year can be considered a few different ways. A skeptic, or even just a conservative investor can point to the stock’s massive rally off of March 2020, bear market lows as an indication of investor’s desire to look beyond pandemic-driven pressures and concerns to the eventual, long-anticipated recovery and […]
Read MoreFor the past year, one of the most interesting storylines has been not only how corporations have evolved to survive and get by, but also how consumer behaviors and trends have adjusted as well. Broad-based shutdowns that shuttered businesses all over the U.S. at the beginning of the pandemic sent people home for an indefinite […]
Read MoreMost long-term investors put a heavy emphasis on fundamental analysis to help guide their decisions about what stocks they should pay attention to. In that vein, one of the big questions that most investors like to try to answer is what kind of returns they can realistically expect over time. That might sound funny since […]
Read MoreWithin the scope of long-term investing, there are two primary methods most investors use: investing for growth, or looking for value. I write a lot in this space about value-oriented investing, because more than two decades of study and hard experience have taught me that it is the investing method that suits me best. One […]
Read MoreSometimes there are forces that affect a sector or industry in such a way that it creates a storyline that extends into not merely weeks, or months, but years. These can be positive or negative, but one of the things that I find interesting as an analyst is to look for those threads and try […]
Read MorePart of taking a smart, value-based approach to investing in the stock market involves keeping track of information on industry and economic trends that are likely to have broad residual impacts on market activity. One of the sectors that I think has a broad carryover effect on multiple other sectors in the economy is Energy, […]
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 […]
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