Valuentum Exclusive Analysis for the Discerning Investor

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Jun 15, 2021

Risk Management: Diversified Stock Selection or Modern Portfolio Theory?
Image Shown: If one had concentrated in large cap growth the past 10 years, or basically in undervalued stocks that had strong momentum, one would have outperformed the category of small cap value (IWN) and the 60/40 stock/bond portfolio (VBINX) by an incredible 200+ percentage points. Image Source: Morningstar. Volatility has always been a terrible measure of risk. It’s an imperfection of quant analysis that has left a path of financial devastation across investor portfolios. What’s worse is the investors, themselves, don’t know just how much they are trailing diversified stock selection strategies, a far better risk management tool, in our view.

May 13, 2021

Markets Back on Track – Seeking Net-Cash-Rich, Free Cash Flow Generators with Pricing Power!
Image Shown: The pricing action of ideas in the Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio May 13. Image Source: Seeking Alpha.  We remain intensely focused on the cash-based sources of intrinsic value—net cash on the balance sheet and future expected free cash flow—when it comes to identifying price-to-fair-value-estimate mis-pricings as well as in assessing long-term dividend health. We think it may be tempting to rotate into some names where fair value estimate revisions have occurred, but the margin of safety around many energy/commodity producers and banking entities may be too large even for conservative investors. We expect most energy/commodity producers to continue to endure boom-and-bust cycles, and banking entities to do the same, as the latter act more like utilities this day and age. Once implicitly nationalized during the Great Financial Crisis, and used as an extension of government programs such as the Paycheck Protection Program during the COVID-19 crisis, outsize economic profit spreads may remain limited for banks/financials given the punitive regulatory environment. Facebook, of course, remains our top idea for long-term capital appreciation potential. Newmont Mining remains our favorite dividend growth-oriented “inflation hedge” followed by garbage hauler Republic Services and its CPI-indexed contracts. AT&T remains our favorite high yield dividend idea, boasting a free-cash-flow covered ~6.5% dividend yield, and we prefer only diversified exposure to the energy and banking sectors through the Energy Select Sector SPDR (XLE) and Financials Select Sector SPDR (XLF). We’ll be looking to deploy the ~10%-20% cash “positions” in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio in the coming months. The High Yield Dividend Newsletter remains “fully invested,” and Exclusive idea generation remains robust. If you haven’t already, please be sure to have a look at the video in this article to see how we assess the cash flow statement and balance sheet to uncover stocks with strong net cash positions and solid future free cash flows that handily cover expected cash dividend payments. We apply this laser-focus on financial statement analysis across our idea-generation suite of publishing products.

Feb 3, 2021

Alphabet (Google) and Amazon Continue to Power Ahead
Image Shown: Shares of Alphabet Inc Class C surged higher in after-hours trading on February 2 after the digital advertising giant reported a stellar fourth-quarter 2020 earnings report. We continue to be big fans of the name and include shares of GOOG as a top-weighting holding in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio. On February 2, both Alphabet and Amazon surprised the market to the upside, but not us. We've been huge fans of large cap growth, big cap tech, and the NASDAQ for some time now. In this note, we cover Alphabet's earnings report. The company is one of our favorite tech giants and a holding in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio. We also dig into the recently announced management changes at Amazon. We like Amazon a lot, but we're already very consumer-tech heavy in the newsletter portfolios. We believe large cap growth, big cap tech, and the NASDAQ will remain the most resilient areas under any market pressure caused by price-agnostic trading (indexing, quant, WSB, Robinhood, etc).

Jan 25, 2021

ALERT: Bull Raids, Short Squeezes and Highly Unusual Market Activity
Image: Shares of GameStop have been on an irrationally wild ride recently driven by what looks to have been an orchestrated and highly unethical (and perhaps illegal) short squeeze on the stock. According to some reports, during the pre-market session January 25, GameStop’s shares were up ~80%, and turned red during the trading session, with no fundamental news.In late 2018, Valuentum published Value Trap, a book that warned to all that would heed its warning that a collapse in the traditional quant value factor was coming and that excessive volatility in the markets caused by price-agnostic trading--or those that aren’t paying attention to fair value estimate calculations--would only build and build to eventually reach extreme and irrational levels. The book, while hugely successful winning award after award, was largely ignored by the media, despite our best efforts to get the word out. Now, the chickens are coming home to roost.

Nov 4, 2020

Best Ideas Newsletter Portfolio Holdings Are Surging!
Image: The holdings in the Best Ideas Newsletter during the trading session November 4. We continue to pound the table on our best ideas. If you were like me, you stayed up as long as you could last night watching the U.S. election coverage before it became too difficult to keep your eyes open. When I went to sleep, it seemed as though Donald Trump would be re-elected. The only state that appeared to flip to the Democrats from the 2016 election was Arizona, meaning Trump would still retain greater than the 270 electoral votes required to gain re-election. Well, that was last night, and this is today. As more and more votes came in last night and into the morning, it became evident that the races in Wisconsin and Michigan were much tighter than the news coverage last night led to believe. In fact, with just a small percentage of the votes left outstanding to count in those states, Joe Biden appears to be running ahead of Donald Trump in those states, if only ever so slightly (~20,000-30,000 votes). Donald Trump’s huge gap in Pennsylvania--about 8.7 percentage points at the time of this writing--may also narrow when it is all said and done. The bottom line is that this election is just too early to call!

Oct 28, 2020

We’re Still Huge Fans of Microsoft
Image Shown: A snapshot of Microsoft Corporation’s first quarter fiscal 2021 performance. We continue to be huge fans of the cash-rich tech giant. Image Source: Microsoft Corporation – First Quarter Fiscal 2021 IR PowerPoint Presentation. On October 27, Microsoft Corp reported first quarter fiscal 2021 earnings (period ended September 30, 2020) that blew past both consensus top- and bottom-line estimates. Its GAAP revenues were up 12% year-over-year, hitting $37.2 billion, while its GAAP diluted EPS jumped 32% higher on a year-over-year basis, hitting $1.82 last fiscal quarter. Leading the charge was Microsoft’s cloud-computing Azure segment, which reported 48% year-over-year sales growth, and its Dynamics 365 segment (includes offerings that meet enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management applications needs), which reported 38% year-over-year sales growth last fiscal quarter. Almost all of Microsoft’s various business segments reported impressive performance last fiscal quarter. Microsoft is firing on all cylinders and we continue to be huge fans of the name. We include shares of Microsoft as a holding in both our Best Ideas Newsletter and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolios.

Sep 15, 2020

Microsoft Boosts Its Dividend and Announces a New Strategic Partnership
Image Shown: Shares of Microsoft Corporation are up significantly year-to-date as of this writing, and we see room for further capital appreciation upside. Shares of Microsoft are included as a holding in both our Best Ideas Newsletter and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolios. On September 15, Best Ideas Newsletter and Dividend Growth Newsletter portfolio holding Microsoft announced a ~10% sequential increase in its quarterly per share dividend, boosting its payout up to $0.56 per share or $2.24 per share on an annualized basis. As of this writing, shares of MSFT now yield ~1.1% on a forward-looking basis. Furthermore, Microsoft noted its 2020 Annual Shareholders Meeting would be held on December 2 and would be conducted through a virtual format.

Sep 9, 2020

This Stock Market Doesn't Scare Me
Image Source: EpicTop10.com. Markets are forward looking, and it's very likely we'll see a nice bounce back to north of $200 in S&P 500 earnings per share in 2022 or 2023 (pre-COVID-19 numbers were an achievable $196 per share for 2021), meaning that after the next few months, with political risk now behind us at that time, too, come January 2021, the markets, today, imply they are trading at 16-17x forward earnings, a very reasonable multiple given the Fed/Treasury "put" and the implicit "backing" via equity purchases coupled with the prospect for inflation. Frankly, I'm just not understanding the bears. Right now, the market is experiencing some profit taking, some hedging, some rotation, but not much more than this.

Sep 2, 2020

ALERT: Markets Now Fairly Valued
Image Source: Sam Valadi. Long-term investing is a great proposition. You have an incredible advantage over most professional investors that have to deliver on a quarterly or annual basis. The reason is due to something called time horizon arbitrage.

Aug 25, 2020

Facebook Hits Another All-Time High!
Image: The Valuentum Buying Index is not a stair-step trading strategy, and we view only 9s and 10s and 1s and 2s as material considerations to consider buying or consider selling criteria. We have held prior 9s and 10s in the newsletter portfolios until they reach our fair value estimates, until their technicals roll over, until they register ratings of 1 or 2 on the VBI, or due to changes in certain criteria with respect to market conditions or overall portfolio constitution. Our best ideas remain in the newsletter portfolios and Exclusive publication.Top-weighted idea in the Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio Facebook has hit another all-time high!