For our 14th annual Turkey of the Year we’ve got a little something new… I always include my worst pick of the year when I’m covering the Turkey of the Year, too, to be fair… but this time around, they are one and the same. I too bought the Turkey, and I too paid the […]
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Infrastructure week! Looks like there’s a big ol chunk of cash that will be rolling downhill in the coming years for all the construction companies, broadband companies, materials companies, etc. after Congress finally passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill that they’ve been sitting on for months. Certainly our roads and bridges and public transport systems and […]
Today we’re starting with a little update on the portfolio, and that’s going to give me a chance to follow up on some reader questions about gold and cryptocurrencies. Then we’ll move on to Toast (TOST), a company I like but a stock that I can’t justify yet, a bunch of other minor updates on […]
Happy Friday! We’re coming to you pre-open instead of after the close today, for a little change of pace. I’ve mostly got some relatively optimistic comments to share, including a bunch of small purchases I made as stories shifted a little, so I thought I should start you out with some pessimism from someone else […]
Two of our companies got some good news on Monday, Brown & Brown (BRO) and Match Group (MTCH) will be joining the S&P 500 index, along with Ceridian (CDAY), replacing Unum Group (UNUM), NOV (NOV) and Perrigo (PRGO), which will be bumped down to the MidCap 400 (I don’t own those other four, to be […]
The hardest thing to do is nothing, and I again failed in that task this week. I added a new position to the Real Money Portfolio earlier this week in Match Group (MTCH), added a new position in a new company to the Lock Box at the close yesterday, and I’ll get to all of […]
I’m of many minds about the market, depending on how I feel in a given moment, so I try to avoid prognosticating… but if you want to force yourself to think about risk, as we all should do at least some of the time, one of the best go-tos is John Hussman, who has a […]
I pull together these thoughts for the Friday File throughout the week, and sometimes that means I end up feeling almost bipolar — the market sentiment on Monday was so wildly different than the sentiment this morning that our emotions can get a little whipsawed. Which means, of course, that I should be tuning down […]
The lead-in to recent Stansberry’s Investment Advisory pitches ($49 first year, renews at $199) is one of those “the wealthy are screwing you over” bits, inspired by recent reports about tax outrages: “You probably saw the news this week about how billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have paid nothing in federal taxes – […]
There are two conflicting drivers of my thinking right now: The notion that I should be conservative in cutting my losses on stocks that are losing money; and the fact that all of my largest mistakes have been made in selling stocks far too early. Yes, I’ve lost plenty of money in speculations or […]
If you’re going to be a long-term investor, focused on buying good companies whose value can compound over time, and not just a trader who’s trying to jitterbug in and out of positions for a gain in a month or a year, then at some point you have to remove your thought process from “the […]
I thought I’d start with a “benchmarked returns” question, since a couple readers have asked recently how the Real Money Portfolio’s returns compare to the broader market. In general, I have usually done a little better than the US stock averages (I use the S&P 500, just for convenience), but sometimes I’ve done a little […]
Blather alert… skip down a ways to the ***** if you want to get right to the specific investments I’m talking about today… The market feels very uncertain, despite the massive stimulus and reopening boost that we all expect to see in the real economy this year, and the doomsayers are clearly out in strength […]
Will this year bring a “wealth wipeout” as President Biden makes some effort to roll back the tax cuts of a few years ago, or as interest rates rise? Or will it be a massive rebound year thanks to government stimulus, really strong balance sheets among regular folks who have kept their jobs through the […]
Let’s jump right into it this week… I’ll get our latest tranche of the Annual Review started with one of the smallest companies in the Real Money Portfolio…. Tiptree (TIPT) Buy below 75% of book value if you can be patient, with the 3% dividend yield making the wait a little easier — I expect […]
With each passing day this week, I became more and more interested in “boring” stocks — there is ALWAYS a temptation to chase hot ideas, and I’m certainly not immune to speculation, but the GameStop (GME) craziness is too much. Plenty of folks have asked me about it, so I’ll just blather on about that […]
Bad news… Dream Finders Homes (DFH) did not partner up with Boston Omaha’s Yellowstone Acquisition SPAC (YSAC) to go public, as I had harbored some small hope they might… but good news, too, because DFH did go public this week, which came as a surprise to me on Thursday, since I hadn’t noticed the original […]
There’s a new version of Stansberry Venture Value’s big “SaaS” pitch making the rounds recently, similar in many ways to the previous versions that I looked at last February and September… so I guess it’s time to take another look and see if the same stocks are still being teased, and whether we can answer […]
I don’t know what’s going to happen to interest rates, taxes, GDP growth or the stock market, all of which are intertwined, but right now the sentiment expressed by the market seems still to be vaccine-driven optimism about economic recovery from the pandemic, which implies that the renewed push to speed up vaccinations will lead […]
Happy New Year! The fact that this week’s portfolio moves included a little stop loss selling and some nibbles in asset management, insurance and music royalties probably tells you all you need to know about how cautious I feel to start this year… though, as always, I try not to have my personal sentiment drive […]
Every year we call out a “turkey” stock teaser around Thanksgiving time and poke a bit of fun at some terrible investment ideas… … so it seems only fair to highlight a few winners as well, and this week, when we’re getting ready to close down for the holiday, seems a good time to spread […]
As we close in on the end of the year, with the market still rallying so fiercely, I’ve begun to think about risk management a little bit more — I’ve been using the stellar performance of many of my options speculations this year to take profits and “let out the steam.” As I see it, […]
Quite a week, no? As expected, my predictions about the election were wrong… and, perhaps more importantly, even anyone making a prediction about how the election returns were going to come out would have probably been wrong in guessing what might happen to the market in the wake of those results. I expected there to […]
President Trump’s “germophobia” and longstanding reluctance to shake hands or hug people hasn’t saved him from exposure to the coronavirus, we learn this morning — both the President and First Lady have tested positive, following the announcement yesterday that Hope Hicks was going into quarantine after a positive test — but perhaps it will help […]
I’ve gotten a pile of new questions about Stansberry Venture Value this week, all relating to their pitch for some cloud SaaS stocks — and I found the first pitch about these stocks pretty compelling back in February, and even ended up buying two of them, so I thought it would be worth digging in […]
Yesterday it was a long-running but newly urgent (or so they said) pitch from Tom Gardner at the Motley Fool that got my attention… today it’s a piece from their Canadian offspring, as Iain Butler from Motley Fool Canada teases a “next Shopify” company. Here’s how the ad launches: “Not to alarm you, but you’re […]
Every once in a while I cite the DALBAR studies, or other indicators and reports that can serve as reminders that each of us is his own worst enemy in the market — and there was another such release of data this week. Vanguard looked at the small subset of its investors who were active […]
It’s been almost three weeks since I last dug into the Real Money Portfolio and shared my updated thoughts… and a lot has been happening, with earnings reports and other big news from a lot of Real Money Portfolio stocks, so buckle in and I’ll try to at least hit the high and low points […]
Let’s start with a reminder this week that will lead me into a bit of blatheration (feel free to skip ahead to the first ****, this might veer into sanctimonious lecturing): Don’t double down with your retirement money. Taking extra investing risks might be appropriate for some folks who don’t have enough exposure to equities […]
Sea Ltd (SE) is the stock I spent most of my time writing to you about last week, and they reported strong first quarter earnings on Monday. As expected, they saw some acceleration in users and revenue as the coronavirus began to impact Southeast Asia in March… and some indications that April represented even stronger […]
Have you ever heard the quote, “nothing tastes as good as thin feels?” Such sayings have been attributed to waif model Kate Moss, plenty of her anorexic fans, and dozens of others in the perfection industry (including Stephen Covey), and I’ll confess that the sentiment has never resonated with me even a little bit (as […]
I’m still able to generate some enthusiasm about specific stocks that I think are appealing enough to buy at these prices… but I find it very hard to be optimistic in a macro sense right now, it really feels to me as though the market is whistling past the graveyard and being far too sanguine […]
We’re used to seeing biotech stocks surge because of the results of a clinical trial… but it’s quite crazy to see the whole market pinning its hopes on a clinical trial. Gilead’s (GILD) Remdisivir had some weak results leak last week and that helped inspire the market selloff (“Oh no, we won’t get a drug […]
I knew to buy like crazy last Friday morning, because people say that I am the SMARTEST INVESTOR IN THE WORLD. Woohoo! Oops, sorry, I forgot that I wasn’t selling myself with hype-filled puffery. That’s obviously not true, I did some buying last week and opened a few new positions that have done well so […]
It’s been a wild week. The mood was still pretty upbeat on Monday and Tuesday, a little anxiety but a lot of complacency (including mine)… I was in Toronto early this week, with plenty of hand washing and hand sanitizer but no real signs of panic or changes in lifestyle for most folks — the […]
I’ve gotten a bunch of questions about the latest teasers for Stansberry Venture Value (“on sale” for $1,897/yr, no refunds), so I thought I’d dig into that a little bit today — they’re hinting at a couple cloud SaaS stocks to pique your interest… and, well, consider me piqued. The ad is not brand new, […]
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If I go with math and the likely numbers for this year, the highest number I can pitch without feeling a little foolish ...
This is very helpful Travis. Excellent Work! Learned so much over the last few years from your way of looking at the ma...
Hi Travis, excelllent Friday file again. Especially like your link to the Interview with the CEO of PAR. That was an ...
Thanks Thinkolator! I will take a small nibble on INTZ Intrusion too. also bought PAR last April based on your artic...
The only honest answer I can give is that I think it’s a great company, but just took a little profit. I would expect...
Trade Note: And another follow-up to my "10% stop loss on 10% of the position" trades that were slotted in before Chr...
Thanks Travis for the discussion on SNOW Snowflake; gives me a better understanding. Today it was down 6.27% to $227.10...
Hey Travis. About PAR's stock offering: are you thinking of doing anything about it? Bit of a let down, imo....
Beautiful read. I love learning about how business models like PAR work. Thanks for making it so easy to absorb, Travis....
PAR seems an impressive company and being focussed on the restaurant market its shares are not surprisingly a third of w...