Stock Market Investors

A mania associated with electric production companies providing electricity to technology enterprises pursuing Artificial Intelligence (AI) agendas looks familiar. An announcement this week by Meta that they signed a deal with Constellation Energy (CEG) and the corresponding surge in the share price of CEG rang a big bell in our minds. Our regular readers will be reminded that a few weeks after the 2024 US presidential election, we made the case that we were in the stock market at the polar opposite of the late-1980 euphoria over President Ronald Reagan’s victory. Stocks were massively under-owned in 1980, interest rates were sky high, and inflation had run rampant. […]

The investors of Smead Capital Management believe, which we count ourselves among, that energy stock valuations in the stock market have become too depressed. Mr. Market gets scared, as he does from time to time. This can go on for a while, but we have seen a couple of private transactions in two different parts of North America energy markets that explain how attractive the pricing is for the assets that Mr. Market could own. […]

[…] Thanks to pressure from the new Trump administration, the pharmaceutical stocks look somewhat as deeply out of favor relative to the S&P 500 Index as they were in 1994. For political reasons, the new administration is looking to bring inflation down. The persistent inflation from the massive $12 trillion of U.S. Treasury borrowing done to get us through COVID-19 seemed to doom any reelection possibilities for President Biden. Therefore, President Trump wants to get Republican candidates elected in the midterm elections. To him, driving down drug prices (and oil prices) is the way to gain favor with voters. […]