Valuentum Exclusive Analysis for the Discerning Investor

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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 11, 2019

Visa Operates a Great Business
Image Shown: Shares of Visa have shot upwards over the past year and we continue to like the name as a top holding in our Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio. One of our favorite companies out there is Visa. The company generates robust free cash flows, its outlook is supported by powerful secular growth tailwinds, the firm doesn’t take on credit risk as it doesn’t issue out credit cards (making Visa a “pure play” on the shift from cash to card around the world), and generally speaking, the company has been very shareholder friendly. We continue to like Visa as a top holding in our Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio, a position it has been for some time now.

Dec 11, 2019

Apple Charging Higher
Image Shown: Shares of Apple Inc continue to climb higher and we like the name in both our Best Ideas Newsletter and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolios. This is a long-term holding with substantial potential capital appreciation and dividend growth upside. We like Apple’s pristine balance sheet, top quality free cash flow profile, and decent growth outlook. The company retains an enormous amount of firepower for additional share buybacks and material dividend increases going forward. Depending on whether the US decides to impose additional tariffs on Chinese imports soon will be very material to Apple’s near-term performance, but the long-term trajectory remains the same. Beyond Apple Pay, the company has its new streaming offering (Apple TV+) which launched on November 1 to drive services-related revenue growth.

Nov 22, 2019

PayPal Buys Honey and We Like the Fit
Image Source: PayPal Holdings Inc – Press release covering its acquisition of Honey. A holding in our Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio, PayPal Holdings announced on November 20 it was acquiring the shopping and rewards start-up Honey for ~$4 billion. Honey is a high-growth technology platform (delivered through a browser add-on and mobile application) that helps consumers find deals and save when they shop online. That includes finding price discounts, promotions and events, sending alerts, creating lists, and offering a rewards system known as Honey Gold to its ~17 million monthly active users. We think this deal is highly complementary to PayPal’s operations, and we continue to give shares of PYPL a fair value estimate of $125 per share.

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!

Oct 27, 2019

Our Reports on Stocks in the Financial Tech Services Industry
Image Source: frankieleon. We've optimized our technology coverage.

Oct 25, 2019

Portfolio Holdings Intel and Visa Hit It Out of the Park
Image Shown: Shares of Intel Corporation leapt higher on Friday October 25 as the market digested its solid earnings report and guidance for this quarter. We continue to really like Intel in our Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio and Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio, and Visa in our Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio. The share price action seen in shares of INTC and V on Friday October 25 seem to indicate the market really appreciated each company’s latest earnings report, with shares of both companies marching higher as of this writing.

Oct 25, 2019

Dividend Increases/Decreases for the Week Ending October 25
Let's take a look at companies that raised/lowered their dividend this week.

Oct 24, 2019

Shares Up +9%; Best Ideas Newsletter Portfolio Holding PayPal Posts a Blowout Quarter
Image Source: PayPal Holdings Inc – Third quarter 2019 earnings press release.  We think PayPal should continue to perform very well going forward as secular growth tailwinds combined with strong operational performance (with an eye towards its rising ‘Merchant Services’ and Venmo total payment volumes) support the company’s free cash flow growth trajectory. The company does not pay out a common dividend at this time but could given its pristine balance sheet and quality free cash flow profile. Our fair value estimate for PYPL stands at $125 per share at the time of this writing.

Oct 17, 2019

An Update on Facebook’s Libra as Roughly Two Dozen Members Sign On
Image Shown: Facebook has room to run higher, with or without Libra. While several large financial technology and payment processing firms have recently made it clear they no longer want to be a part of the nascent Libra Association, that didn’t stop roughly two dozen members from signing the group’s charter in Geneva, Switzerland, on October 15. We really must stress that our discounted free cash flow models for Facebook don’t take in account the upside its proposed asset-back cryptocurrency Libra might generate. This opportunity represents pure upside to our forecasts, and we continue to like Facebook as a top holding in our Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio.