One of the core principles about technical analysis that was drilled into my head early in my investing career is that “the market is always right.” It’s one of those idioms that is good as a sound bite. It’s also useful in building a disciplined investing mindset, because it’s designed to disconnect a person’s bias […]
Read MoreThe market’s rough start to 2023 has kept a lot of stocks plumbing new, historical lows. See stocks on the low side of their historical movements is something that makes the typical, growth-oriented investor nervous. The longer that condition lasts, and an actual bear market is maintained, the more it tends to flush most of […]
Read MoreSince before 2020, I’ve been writing about the wisdom in taking a defensive approach to your investing portfolio. There are lot of ways you can get defensive. Pulling cash out of the market when you have opportunities to do so, and keeping it on the sidelines for the time being is one approach. Another is […]
Read MoreOne of the best tools I’ve found to filter through the market quickly for fundamental strength is dividend payout. Dividends are one of the simplest ways for a company’s management to express confidence in its long-term prospects, and to return value to its shareholders. Talking heads and a lot of analysts tend to focus on […]
Read MoreThe market’s increasing volatility over the past week has forced a lot of stocks off of near-term highs, with speculation increasing about whether the market could be increasing in risk. Market drawdowns are scary for most investors, but for value-focused investors and contrarians, they’re new opportunities to mine the market for useful value. In my […]
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. Another way to describe this mindset uses the word “contrarian,” and it’s a mindset that I think becomes more useful when market uncertainty increases. […]
Read MoreValue-oriented, contrarian-minded investors like me tend to think a little differently than the average investor, which means we like to look for opportunities in the areas of the market everybody else tends to ignore. The Food Products industry is a good example. While this is pocket of the economy that I think makes sense to […]
Read MoreEvery year, threads emerge that can be used to tell the story of the U.S. economy, and therefore the financial markets. For me, one of the most interesting, consistent threads is the pace and level of energy prices. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude, which acts as the benchmark for oil produced throughout North America started […]
Read MoreNo matter what your approach to the stock market may be, there are a myriad number of issues that come at you and demand attention. Some of those elements can be anticipated, if not predicted; for example, if a company is getting set for a new quarterly earnings report, it’s pretty normal to see a […]
Read MoreThe Tech sector has enjoyed the lion’s share of attention among all segments of the economy for a number of years. That’s been a good thing during bull markets, but it also means the sector really gets pummeled when uncertainty increases. Since 2020, that attention – driven in no small part by the increasingly central […]
Read MoreOne of the challenges for every investor is the task of assimilating different storylines to put the market in practical context. Beginning In 2022, the focus began to shift away from pandemic-driven questions to concerns about the pace of inflation and the rise in interest rates that some fear could push a growing economy into […]
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. That puts a big emphasis […]
Read MoreGrowth investing leans heavily on the idea that stocks tend to follow the direction of their previous trends. That may just be a nerdy way to say that the longer a stock has been going up, the more likely it is to keep going up. It is also why growth investors shun stocks that are […]
Read MoreBeing a value-oriented investor means that seeing stocks trading at or near historical lows tends to make a stock more interesting than when it is trading near historical highs. For growth investors, that sounds odd since growth investing puts an emphasis on upward trends and stocks trading at or near their yearly highs. Sometimes a […]
Read MoreThere is a pretty significant difference in the way different investors perceive a stock in a long-term upward trend. For growth oriented-investors, the longer the upward trend, the more attractive the stock is, simply because the expectation is that the longer, bullish trend will outlast any near-term, bearish sentiment or momentum the stock may see. […]
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