Valuentum Exclusive Analysis for the Discerning Investor

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Jan 12, 2020

Capital Appreciation or Dividend Growth?
Image source: David Mulder. “Xilinx crushed the market over its holding period of a matter of a few weeks during 2019” is not something that we think dividend growth investors are focused on, or even care to hear.

Jan 4, 2020

Valuentum Exclusive Success Rates Trump Even the Best Quant Hedge Funds
Image: President of Investment Research Brian Nelson, CFA. A new book, “The Man Who Solved the Market,” hit bookshelves last year, and thus far it has been a hit. The text goes into the story of quant hedge fund Renaissance Technologies and its hedge fund, the Medallion Fund, which has put up mammoth returns since inception.

Jan 2, 2020

Apple, Microsoft Dominated This Decade
Source: Marketwatch. Data by Andrea Riquier, through December 27, 2019*.The three best contributors to the S&P 500 return during 2019 have been included in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio for a long time, two of them, Apple and Facebook are top weighted (see image at the end of this article). Three of the biggest contributors to the S&P 500 return during this decade have been included in the Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio for a long time (see image above). Sure -- these are household names, but it's important you understand that mispricings can occur anywhere, even with some of the most popular names. Investing is synonymous with identifying mispriced securities.

Dec 30, 2019

Dividend Growth Newsletter Portfolio Delivers Again in 2019
 The story of the Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio this year was one dominated by big tech. Apple trounced the return of what could be considered our benchmark by about 80 percentage points. It basically beat the S&P Dividend ETF SDPR by a factor of about 5 times! 2019 was simply the year to own Apple, and my goodness we had it right near the top of both the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio. You would think this was a no-brainer, as everyone loves Apple, but many a portfolio manager did not own Apple this year. Apple also upped its dividend 5%+ during 2019...

Dec 27, 2019

Johnson & Johnson Rebounds
Image Shown: Shares of Johnson & Johnson are on the rebound as various analysts are coming around to the name. We continue to like Johnson & Johnson in both our Best Ideas Newsletter and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolios and view recent technical strength in shares of JNJ as a sign that the market is finally taking into consideration the company’s numerous guidance boosts and more importantly, the strength of its expected future free cash flows. Going forward, powerful tailwinds supporting rising healthcare expenditures in the US and abroad will continue to support Johnson & Johnson. To read more about those favorable tailwinds, check out this article here.

Dec 25, 2019

5 Things We Learned in 2019
Image: The Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. "The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it." -- George Orwell

Dec 19, 2019

2019: Another Market Beating Year for the Best Ideas Newsletter Portfolio!
We estimate thus far the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio return has beat the S&P 500 by 2.8 percentage points during 2019 (34.4% versus 31.6% for the S&P 500, as measured by the SPY). Our move to overweight Apple, Facebook, and Visa worked out wonderfully for members during 2019. We continue to overweight big winners, and we credit this to our team's conviction in our very best ideas. We also made quite the savvy move in rolling over a solid gain in Chipotle (60%+) into even more shares of Apple stock during the year. We're putting some of the best ideas right in front of our membership in full transparency. Berkshire Hathaway's overweighting added some stability to the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio, but it was a large drag on returns during the year. This is okay - we like the diversification benefits. 2019 was a very, very difficult year to beat the market, but by our estimates, the Best Ideas Newsletter did so, and by a fair margin, particularly for a large cap orientation. Note this kind of outperformance is unique as many money managers continue to trail their benchmarks during 2019. We credit the outperformance to our team's work ethic and the Valuentum methodology. We are disappointed with the current state of active management, and we are working to develop solutions for our membership. We expect to roll out an important survey in the coming months. We continue to encourage members to add the Exclusive to their membership, if they haven't considered this fantastic publication just yet. More on the Exclusive >> The Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio is part of a regular premium membership to Valuentum. More here >>

Dec 17, 2019

Cisco, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, and PayPal in the News
Cisco is trading at the low end of our fair value estimate range, and the company’s healthy dividend yield is well supported. Intel remains one of our favorite ides, and we expect a stellar dividend-growth trajectory at the company, too. Johnson & Johnson’s shares look poised to break out to new highs, and PayPal continues to execute nicely.

Dec 9, 2019

Health Care Sector Remains Hot
Image Shown: The Health Care Select Sector SPDR ETF, a holding in both our Best Ideas Newsletter and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolios, has been on an upward tear over the past several years. Strong macro tailwinds combined with the ability for industries within the health care sector to generate meaningful shareholder value have been key to supporting strong capital appreciation of equities operating in the area of late. The Health Care Select Sector SPDR ETF is a top holding in both our Best Ideas Newsletter and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolios. We like the exposure and diversification to health care equities that XLV provides. XLV yields ~1.5% as of this writing. State Street Corp acts as advisor to the fund through State Street Global Advisors, and annual fund operating expenses come out to just 13 basis points (we like the XLV ETF’s low gross expense ratio).

Nov 20, 2019

Economic Commentary: Marks, Dalio, and the Discount Rate
Image Source: Mike Cohen. We sat down with the Valuentum team to discuss their latest thoughts on recent economic developments. To kick off the conversation, let’s start with the team’s views on the latest memo from Oaktree’s Howard Marks: Mysterious. For those that don’t know Howard, he is the Director and Co-Chairman of Oaktree, which managed about $122 billion in AUM, as of September 2019. The memo goes into depth on the reasons for negative interest rates, the impact of negative interest rates, and opines on whether the US will ever see negative interest rates. Then, we’ll go from there!