I did much more of a deep dive into big picture stuff and some recent market news on Wednesday for you, in a little preview of the Friday File, so there’s not as much to talk about today — mostly, I’ll give some updates on a few of our Real Money Portfolio companies who have reported their quarterly updates recently.

Keysight (KEYS) finally reported its quarter this week, and it’s yet more “steady as she goes” from our favorite electronic and telecom testing equipment company. Strong earnings, but no surprises, and guidance for next quarter that was slightly higher than analysts had been forecasting. This has become one of my largest holdings in the past few years — not because it’s growing in any spectacular way, but because it is steady.

This one often dips out of view because it’s fairly boring, but it turns out I end up saying mostly the same thing every quarter… here’s what I said back in August:

“Keysight Technologies (KEYS) is helping us to close out the end of earnings season with some strength, they reported another nice, steady growth quarter, a little better than analysts were estimating, and they reiterated their 2022 growth expectations. In a world where everyone’s feeling a little edgy about companies pulling back and cutting their forecasts and worrying about inflation, that was a nice little breath of fresh air. I beefed up this position back in May, when the shares finally dipped under my “preferred buy” level for the first time in a long time, so I didn’t act on this news… but it was nice to see.”

So, yeah, more of that. I’ve bumped up my numbers a little bit for Keysight — they guide investors to expect 10% earnings growth, so I’d like to pay less than twice that for shares (meaning, looking for a trailing PE ratio below 20). That would be about $152 right now, so I’ll pencil that in as my “preferred buy” level (which used to be $146). You can be more conservative than that if you wish, of course, the market multiple has come down and KEYS now trades at a bit of a premium to the market, so there’s some patient logic in just waiting for this above-average company to trade at an “average or below” valuation, as it probably will someday (the forward PE for ...