My last missive declared that the market was “ a traffic accident waiting to happen”. Click here to read previous article. Well, voila. Everyone seems to have stepped into something unpleasant. For the last ninety days, pretty much the whole world has experienced lousy outcomes. Leaders who thought themselves special, countries thinking they were …
The Stock Market is a Traffic Accident Waiting to Happen Recently, I was reading an article written by a professor of finance who had done a detailed study of “How Novelty and Narratives Drive the Stock Market: Black Swans, Animal Spirits and Scapegoats”. Behavioural finance is all the rage these days. It’s interesting stuff for …
Pricing power has always been an important concept in valuing companies and something we take very seriously. It is a good measure of a company’s brand value and a strong measure of its “value” to the consumers of its product or service. One of the reasons we have de-emphasized the ownership of commodity-based companies is …
Stop reading the news it’s bad for your investment health. Mainstream media (MSM) is often reactive, usually catching up to what’s happened already, often gets it dead wrong with their narratives and spooky headlines and it’s not serving investors well. There is a reason the media focuses on bad news. It sells advertising. MSM is …
Facebook is in the crosshairs of governments for all kinds of reasons, but maybe governments should accept that Facebook is their friend and start making money like Facebook does. Facebook continues to capitalize on its magical hold on our lives. Why? Because they enable us to focus on something that captures our attention when we …
If one were to ask an investment strategist from a bank which way the market will be headed in the next year, they could reasonably expect to hear “higher”. That has always been the case. Wall Street’s modus operandi is to sell optimism; it’s hard to sell investments with bad news. Usually, it’s letter writers …
Mid-Summer Update: Ownership vs Playing Musical Chairs Read More »
July Update: Cleansing the Temple There really isn’t a lot to say about what’s going on in the stock market that you likely haven’t recently heard. Not much has changed, with investors at somewhat of a standoff. Given the positive tilt to attitudes as expressed by mostly fulsome valuations, the betting is mostly of the …
Month End Update – May 2021 All the companies that you own have now reported earnings for the quarter ended March, 2021. These companies continue to navigate well the various challenges that have beset the world since the outbreak of the Coronavirus early last year. It is a testament to the strength and creativity of …
Investors continue to value the companies in your portfolio with generous valuations. It is hard to find fault with their enthusiasm when confronted with the following facts. Amazon hit record highs this Friday after posting its 24th consecutive quarter of revenue growth exceeding 15%. This past quarter its sales grew 44% to $108.5 billion or …
April Update, 2021: Simple Delights of a Hot Fudge Sundae Read More »
Investors collectively continue to have a positive bias towards their assessment of economic progress, and by extension, this continues to be reflected in generally rising stock market valuations. This is good news indeed, and we fully encourage a positive bias in the longer-term. There is good reason for optimism about a continuing economic recovery. The …