Part 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. That means paying attention to things that often get talked about on financial media like unemployment and interest rates. I have […]
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 early threads of this new year, aside from commentary and opinion about the political landscape, rising COVID-19 infections (not to mention a new strain that appears to be more infectious than the first) is the way the Financial sector has been among the sectors that have led the market higher. Two weeks […]
Read MoreThroughout the course of the last couple of years I’ve found the Consumer Staples sector, and specifically the Food Products industry a good place to find useful investing opportunities. In 2018 and 2019, a lot of that was being driven by international trade concerns that increased uncertainty in the marketplace. 2020 made the industry a […]
Read MoreNo matter what current market conditions are at any given time, the point of value-oriented investing is to find stocks that offer attractive long-term upside. For my approach, that means using a combination of valuation, fundamental strength, and technical analysis to filter through the thousands of stocks that are available. The market’s rally to fresh […]
Read MoreOne of the sectors that has seen an impressive rally over the last couple of months is the Energy sector. As measured by the U.S. Energy iShares ETF (IYE), the sector has increased from a trend low point at the end of October by about 54%. Much of that increase has been driven by a […]
Read MoreAs a value-focused investor with more than a bit of a contrarian bent, I tend to get nervous when stocks keep making one new high after another, and I like it when I see stocks trading at or near historical lows. That’s pretty different than the mindset of most investors that focus on growth first, […]
Read MoreIf you think strictly about price performance and what the price of a stock is now relative to where it was in the past – in particular, relative to where it was on a pre-pandemic basis – it’s pretty easy to understand why so much attention has been paid to Tech stocks that make remote […]
Read MoreOne of the challenges that investors have had to deal with throughout the past year is the market’s divergence from economic facts on the ground. From the early stages of the pandemic, analysts could not agree whether the expected, eventual recovery from both a health and economic-driven perspective would manifest as by a move back […]
Read MoreWith thousands of publicly available stocks to work with, the question most investors face when looking for ways to keep their money working for them isn’t really about which stocks they might be able to use. I’ve spent more than two decades watching the markets and studying different investing and trading styles and methods. What […]
Read MoreSurveying the stock market right now is an interesting mix of contradictions. It seems that with very few exceptions, every industry in almost every sector has had to absorb some kind of impact from the global pandemic that that plagued the world through 2020, and remains an ongoing concern even as the first practical vaccines […]
Read MoreThe longer a bull market lasts, the more extended price valuations become. The longer that condition continues, the harder it becomes for value-oriented investors to justify long-term investments in most of the stocks, industries and sectors that everybody else is talking about. I think this picture is starting to fit current market conditions, as valuations […]
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 MoreOver the years, I’ve learned to pay attention to the Energy sector as a way to measure a number of different aspects of the global economy. One of the those elements that is very interesting is the difference between U.S. oil production versus the rest of the world. The financial markets use futures contracts on […]
Read MoreIntel Corp (INTC) is a stock that I’ve followed for quite some time, and that I’ve written about in this space quite a bit throughout 2020. 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 industry. […]
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