Author: Bill Smead

Saved by Zero

[…] The U.S. Federal Government has set a net zero carbon goal by 2050. Tremendous resources have been applied with borrowed money to fund these goals and subsidize money-losing green investments. After pouring money into green investments, investors are wisely fleeing the fantasies associated with the environmental movement’s agenda. Are we really more together? […]

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A Ticket to Purgatory

The Sherman Antitrust Act was created to stop our democratic republic from being ruined by “the concentration of capital in vast combinations.” The fear was that if too much of the success of industry went to too few people, our system would get disrupted.

The bad news is that the federal government has ignored the original purpose of the act. In our opinion, our society was first disrupted by the success of the FANG stocks and is now being disrupted by the Magnificent Seven. The good news is that the stock market has a history of solving problems on its own. What has happened over time to the largest and most popular stocks as measured by market capitalization? […]

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Drivers and Stock Pickers

In studies, 90% of drivers think they are above average. We believe that 100% of the people who pick stocks for a living think they will be above average. Is being above average a worthy goal and is the generation of alpha or excess return something to strive for? […]

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Stock Market-Interest Rate Rhymes

Warren Buffett regularly reminds his shareholders that interest rates are a gravitational pull to stock prices. History shows that the movement of stock prices and interest rates don’t necessarily happen simultaneously but play out over time. Where are we now in this continuum between long-term interest rates and stock prices? […]

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70/20/10 Rule Redux

A friend of our stock picking discipline reminded us of a very important force in the stock market. It was called the 70/20/10 rule, and it was promoted by Roger Edelman, Richard Evans and Gregory Kadlec in an early 2013 Financial Analysts Journal article. We had written about this in 2016, but today’s circumstances beg for a reminder. […]

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Long-Term Puzzle Pieces

[…] First, the S&P 500 Index is likely to produce very poor inflation-adjusted returns for the next 10 to 15 years. Second, we believe money can be made in the shares of companies which benefit from inflation like oil and gas stocks. Third, the most common question we get is, “When does the incredible run end for the 10 stocks that have made most of the returns in the last ten years?” Our answer is that it doesn’t make any difference to us when it happens, because we won’t own them now or when they get their reckoning.

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Stock Market Psychology

As bottom-up stop pickers and long-term investors, sentiment indicators don’t rank very high on our list of important considerations. However, there are times when extremes of sentiment occur and can have an impact on which stock sectors we avoid or ones we get attracted to researching. […]

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Thankful For James Chanos

[…] Even though we are eternal optimists by nature as long-only value managers, we relished Jim’s thoughts and studied his logic. He attempted to do on the short side what we try to do on the long side. He sold short popular and unmeritorious common stocks with confidence that economics would win out over time. He did this even though there has been a strong positive bias to the performance of the stock market. […]

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Artificial (Stock Market) Life Support

[…] In The Godfather movie, peace didn’t last long. Michael Corleone took over from his father and proceeded to murder the leaders of the other mafia families in the New York area. The truce only provided temporary life support. AI looks like tech stock and S&P 500 Index life support to us. If they turn on each other, which their latest earnings reports show they are doing, won’t it get bloody? What happens if the seven stocks that have propped up the passive S&P 500 Index go through what every stock of popularity has done historically? This is just another reason to fear stock market failure!

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Energy Magicians

Close your eyes and imagine the elimination of gasoline-powered automobiles. Among people who believe in a quick transition away from gasoline to electric vehicles, they conveniently overlook the second-order effects, one of which is what might happen to the price of electricity with such an increase in demand. Is there a magician out there who can create the electricity needed to replace the gasoline we use today? Let’s sit in on a good first-year economics class to see how supply and demand are adding up. […]

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