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June 14, 2023 | ADBE, ALB, AMAT, CMI, Daily JAM, Dividend Income, GOOG, JCI, Jubak Picks, Long Term, MSFT, NVDA, SCCO, Top 50 Stocks |
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.
June 6, 2023 | Daily JAM, NVDA, Videos |
Today’s Trend of the Week is Should You Sell Nvidia? Nvidia (NVDA) has had a great run. Recently, post-earnings, the stock shot up even higher It’s up 44% in the last month, 67% in the last three months, and 166% year to date. The PE on trailing earnings is 203. (The average market PE for a well-liked growth stock is closer to 25-28.) That makes this an making this extraordinarily high-priced stock. However, the forward PE is “just” 84 times projected earnings per share over the next 12 months. That’s below very hefty projected earnings growth. The current growth projection for the second quarter is at 302%; the following quarter is 286%; and for the year as a whole, 132%. So at 84 times projected earnings this isn’t extraordinarily expensive–as long as those projections come through. It’s very hard for a company, even Nvidia, to maintain this kind of growth for very long. Growth in 2024 is only projected at 34%. If we get down to 50% or 30% growth, the market is likely to wake up one day and feel this is a really expensive stock. So keep an eye on guidance for 2024 as we get closer to 2024. (A rule of thumb is that Wall Street analysts tend to look about 6 months ahead in their buy/sell/hol calls on a stock. For now, hold on. Until you see growth projections start to drop below 100%. At that point, even if a stock growing by 50% a year is an amazing future story, a door might be a good thing to find.
June 4, 2023 | Daily JAM, EWY, Perfect Five-ETFs |
Deciding to sell the iShares China Large Cap ETF (FXI) out of my Perfect 5 ETF Portfolio wasn’t an especially tough decision. (See my post on May 31 “China’s economy continues to slow–and the problems don’t look temporary–so I’m selling my China ETF out of my Perfect 5 ETF Portfolio.” But that decision left me with a quandary and a hole in the portfolio. The iShares China ETF was, despite its sad performance, filling an important diversification function in the portfolio. So what asset should I add to give the portfolio the “required” non-U.S. exposure. That’s not an easy slot to fill at the moment. China’s economy is struggling and many emerging markets are carrying the big burden of falling commodity prices.
June 3, 2023 | Daily JAM, Long Term, Millennial, PANW, Top 50 Stocks |
Shares of Palo Alto Networks (PANW) rose by 5.59% in after-hours trading on Friday. The reason? News that the stock will be added to the Standard & Poor’s 500 index before the market open on June 20. Managers of portfolios that follow the index have to buy shares of Palo Alto to keep up with the change. The move to membership in the index increases ownership of the shares just as the stock is exhibiting extraordinary upward momentum. Shares of the cyber-security company are up 55.68% for 2023 to date as of the close on Friday, June 2, and up 22.81% in the last month. That performance rests on a record of high sustained growth. It’s the “sustained” part that I think the market finds so valuable right now.
June 1, 2023 | AMAT, AMD, CVS, Daily JAM, Dividend Income, EMR, GOOG, ILMN, Jubak Picks, Long Term, MSFT, NVDA, Top 50 Stocks, TSM, Volatility |
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.
May 24, 2023 | Daily JAM, NVDA, Top 50 Stocks, Volatility |
Nvidia (NVDA) shares were up 19.68% at 4:45 p.m. New York time today, May 24, after the company reported beating analyst estimates on earnings and revenue. The company also told analysts to expect second-quarter revenue way, way above pre-announcement projections. For the three-month period ending April 30, Nvidia earned $1.09 per share, excluding one-time items, as revenue came in at $7.19 billion. Analysts were looking for the company to report earnings of 92 cents a share and $6.28 billion in revenue.
May 23, 2023 | COST, Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, WMT |
More woe for the retail sector this morning BJ’s Wholesale (BJ) reported first-quarter results before the market open that missed expectations for same-store sales growth (with earnings per share matching estimates.) The big killer, though, was guidance from the company that said second-quarter comparable store sales are tracking below the 5.7% increase in the first quarter. That 5.7% growth in first-quarter comparable store sales was below the 5.9% that Wall Street analysts had expected. The stock closed today down 7.26% on the day.
May 18, 2023 | Daily JAM, GOOG, Top 50 Stocks, Videos |
Today’s Quick Pick is Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG), better known as Google. Morningstar calculates Google is trading at a 24% discount right now. Recently, the 50-day moving average moved above the 200-day moving average, showing momentum in the stock. There’s a perception that the stock had been unfairly pounded by AI hysteria because people believed Google wasn’t keeping up with Microsoft and its search business would suffer. Google did, however, come out with its own chatbot products and maintained some relatively slow growth. While ad revenue was down about 1% in the first quarter, total revenue was up about 2.6% year over year. The slowdown in the economy as a whole gave the impression that Google’s ads were slipping. I mentioned in yesterday’s video, we’re seeing a lot of Hedge Fund managers adding to their Google positions in the first quarter. I own the stock in my long-term portfolio and will likely add to my position. In the next year or two the stock will likely make up the difference between the current price of 120 and the Morningstar fair value of 154. You could consider this a value play.
May 17, 2023 | Daily JAM, GOOG, Videos |
Today’s topic is Value Over Growth. Hedge funds reported their first-quarter portfolio changes to the SEC and we’re starting to see those reports. Hedge Funds are a good indication of where institutional money is going and what their thinking is. These reports show that hedge fund managers are starting to move to value over growth. There are outliers but hedge fund managers like Steve Cohen at Point72 and Nelson Peltz from Trian Management were exiting or cutting their growth stocks and adding to their positions in value stocks like Google (Alphabet NASDAQ: GOOGL) and GE (NYSE: GE). Paul Singer at Elliott Investment Management exited both of his high-yield ETFs and reduced his exposure to Valaris (NYSE: VAL) an ocean drilling company. I saw other managers starting to reduce their exposure to energy and drilling companies as well. Going into the second quarter, after taking profits from first-quarter rallies, the pattern looks like institutions will be looking more closely at stocks that haven’t had big run-ups and could be considered to be value stocks (Alphabet?) vs putting new money into growth stocks.
May 17, 2023 | Daily JAM, LAC, Millennial |
One of the last remaining barriers to Lithium Americas’ (LAC) Thacker Pass lithium mine project in Nevada fell yesterday.
May 8, 2023 | Daily JAM, DVN, FANG, Jubak Picks, PXD, Videos |
This week’s Trend of the Week is Where is All That Oil Cash Going to Go? The likely answer: the Permian Basin and acquisitions. Oil companies like Exxon Mobil (XOM) are putting so much cash into the bank, they don’t know what to do with it. Exxon Mobil had $32.7 billion in cash in the bank. With little debt, and plenty left over after capital spending, dividends, and buybacks, the company is left with a tremendous amount of cash. Historically, extra cash could be used in oil exploration, which could take 5-15 years. In a global warming economy, that doesn’t make sense since we don’t know where oil prices and demand will be in the years ahead. The better option is acquisitions. One of the companies Exxon is rumored to be targeting is Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD) for their assets in the Permian Basin. Chevron (CVX) is in a similar position as Exxon and you can expect them to be in the market for Permian companies as well. Other Permian Basin companies that are ripe for being acquired are Devon Energy (DVN) and Diamondback Energy (FANG). I already have PXD and DVN in a portfolio in my JubakPicks Portfolio, and I’ll now be adding FANG as well.
May 4, 2023 | Daily JAM, Jubak Picks, LVS, Videos |
Today’s Quick Pick is Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE: LVS). Is Macau gaming the best way to play China? I would say yes. News out of China is that it’s clearly reaccelerating and will easily hit 5% economic growth in the current quarter. The economy is reopening and growth is up and Macau, as a gaming center, is benefitting in a pure Covid reopening story. Total gaming revenue in Macau was up 247% year over year in March and 450% in April. Normally I’d look at MGM International to play Macau, but their Las Vegas presence outweighs their China presence, and at this moment, I’m looking for something with less presence in Las Vegas. Although the name may suggest otherwise, Las Vegas Sands has a much bigger presence in China and is in the process of selling their Las Vegas assets in order to invest more in Singapore and Macau. This is a good place to play China gaming as the country accelerates and I’ll be adding it to my JubakPicks Portfolio with a target price of $70 a share.
