Shares of ASML Holding (ASML) closed up 8.85% today after the company reported record orders for its chip-making equipment in the fourth quarter. ASML sales grew 12.5% year-over-year. And orders more than tripled from the third-quarter. I added shares of ASML Holding to my long-term 50 Stocks Portfolio on December 12, 2023. The position is up 17.6% since then as of the close on January 24.
So what do you do with your portfolio for the rest of 2023? And what’s your best strategy to be prepared for 2024? In Part 1 of this Special Report I laid out the 10 developments that I thought would drive the financial markets for the rest of 223 and into 2024. Today, in Part 2, I’m going to give you the first 2 of 10 moves to take–with as much detail and as many specifics as possible–that you should be making now to position your portfolio for the uncertainties of the last quarter of 2023.
After the close, yesterday, August 17, semiconductor equipment gorilla Applied Materials (AMAT) reported a 2% year-over-year drop in fiscal third-quarter revenue. At $6.43 billion revenue still beat Wall Street estimates of $6.15 billion. Gross margins of 46.3% were up 0.2% from the year-earlier period. The company reported operating income of $1.8 billion, with earnings per share of $1.85. And the future looks solidly better.
I think a well-constructed portfolio should resemble an onion. (Yes, to continue the analogy, it may make you cry in the short term, but the end result after cooking time is yummy.) At the center of that onion is a core built of stocks with extremely high, risk-adjusted potential rates of return. These stocks won’t deliver the kind of huge gains you can reap from investing in a risky bet–if everything turns out right for that company and its stock. But neither are they likely to crash and burn because something goes wrong at the company. These core portfolio stocks will drop if the market as a whole heads south, but they will drop less and recover faster. These aren’t buy-and-forget, or hold-forever stocks. They can soar to unreasonable valuations at times and an active investor should take profits at some point of overvaluation. (I did a YouTube video recently (you can find it on any of my sites) on when to sell a very overvalued Nvidia, for example.) And they can trade at big discounts to fair value (which is, of course, when the steely-eyed among us will buy) because management has made a mistake or between the industry in which they do business is slumping, or because the market for the company’s goods and services has taken an unexpected direction. At that point, you’ll need to consider selling or adding to your positions depending on your analysis of how long the damage might last and how bad it is. But the point of this core to your stock portfolio is that these are companies that will deliver index-beating results with relatively small risks. Which will enable you, the investor, to plan how to achieve your financial goals with relatively less worry and uncertainty. So, without further ado, here’s my list of 10 stocks for a core portfolio–with the very important “whys” for each pick.
Artificial intelligence really is a paradigm-breaking, transformative technology. Right now, investors are so enthusiastic about the sector, especially the obvious leader Nvidia (NVDA), that we’re looking at a potential bubble that will collapse with much gnashing of teeth and I-told-you-so “wisdom” casting doubt on the reality of the entire endeavor. I think a bubble is indeed possible. Nvidia did trade at a trailing twelve-month price-to-earnings ratio of 196 on May 31, after all. But I think you do want to own the sector now–because the breaking of the bubble, if it does break is, in my opinion, two quarters or more away. And you want to own the sector for the long run–say, 10 years or more–because it is such a game changer for so much of the economy. But what to own? I’ve put together a list of the 10 stocks that I think are the best way to participate in the AI gold rush.
Yesterday, September 29, after the close of trading DRAM chipmaker Micron Technology (MU) reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings of $1.35 a share and adjusted earnings of $1.45 a share. That was down from $2.42 a share in adjusted earnings in the fiscal fourth quarter of 2021. Wall Street was looking for earnings of $1.37 a share. Revenue fell to $6.64 billion from $8.27 billion a year ago. Analysts had been looking for revenue of $6.73 billion. The drop in earnings and revenue was widely expected. Which is why the stock closed up 0.18% today after the earnings. You’d have to say that the big hurt from Micron’s news–and especially from its report that it would cut total capital spending by 30% year over year and spending on wafer fab equipment by 50% year over year–fell on chip equipment makers.
First, it was Nvidia (NVDA) cutting its guidance for revenue and earnings due on August 24. Today, August 9, it was Micron Technology (MU) warning that its revenue for the fourth-quarter revenue may come in at or below the bottom end of a forecast range provided in the company’s earnings call on June 30. Micron is scheduled to report on September 27. All this comes as the market is on edge anyway ahead of tomorrow’s report on CPI inflation. As of the close on Tuesday, August 9, shares of Micro Technology were down 3.74%. Shares of Nvidia were down another 3.97% after closing down 6.30% yesterday.
My second Fundamental Value Pick in my Special Report 5 Fundamental Value Picks is Applied Materials (AMAT). Let’s go to the classic formula for calculating fundamental value of an asset, the Capital Asset Pricing Model, known affectionately by generations of MBA students as CAPM. Don’t worry. I’m not going to force you into the sometimes arcane mathematics of CAPM. Instead I’m going to use the formula as a framework for understanding what matters in calculating a fundamental value for a stock–as well for understanding how these factors fit together.
I’m starting up my videos on JubakAM.com again–this time using YouTube as a platform. My one-hundredth-and second YouTube video “Strong hands vs. hot hands” went up today. Today I’m looking at a few stocks that exemplify what most experienced traders know: some hands are steady, and some are not. So when Nvidia announced this week that it expected to see supply chain issues (despite beating earnings and raising guidance), the stock fell. Similar things happened to chip-making equipment supplier Applied Materials and Albemarle, the lithium maker. I’m taking this opportunity to add some of these stocks into my portfolios. What about you?
In the first section of this Special Report: When will the selling stop? When to buy What to buy” posted back on January 11, I said that I’d look to buy in tiers. And thus stagger my buying to take account of any earnings season selling and any volatility around the Fed’s January 26 meeting. In the first tier, I said, back on January 11, I said I’d look for former momentum and earnings growth favorites, especially in the technology sector, that had taken big hits in the selling from the November 19 high. The three first tier buys were Nvidia (NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and and the first three buys back on January 11 were Nvidia (NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, and Adobe (ADBE). I said I’d name my second tier picks after bank earnings. Which means today.
Here we go again. It’s not that we really have any more information about the Omicron Variant–we certainly don’t know what its effects will be on global economic acuity–but just as fears that the Covid-19 variant would send the world back into lockdown crushed stocks last week, this morning, December 7, a belief that Omicron won’t be all that bad has taken root and stocks are soaring in morning action.
Want to know exactly how volatile the stock market is right now? Yesterday investors and traders got news that the first case of the Omicron Variant had been recorded in California. On that, and some “We’ll tighten sooner than expected” remarks from Fed officials, stocks plunged with the Dow Jones Industrial Average showing a 972 point swing from high at 11:25 and 34,994 to the close a 34,022. Today investors and traders got news of a second case–a Minnesota man who had attended an anime conference in New York. And the stock market didn’t just shrug; it rallied big time with the Standard & Poor’s 500 closing up 1.42%, the Dow Industrials u 1.85%, and the small cap Russell 2000 ahead 2.74%.
