Let’s start with the bad news this week. Activision Blizzard (ATVI) is a pretty reasonably valued company, valued at about 20X forward earnings now and with a predicted earnings growth rate (by the average analyst) in the 10-15% neighborhood. It’s one of the dominant game publishers in the world, it’s a large company (market cap […]
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So what’s up this week in the Real Money Portfolio? Quite a bit of news for our companies this week, so I’ll spare you any ranting about politics or current events for the moment (you’re welcome!) First, the ugly news. GAN (GAN) reported pretty much what they said they would report, strong growth fueled by […]
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’m celebrating my birthday tomorrow, so this Friday File comes to you a bit early — call it a Thursday File, I guess. That means I won’t be catching any interesting news that might come out of this evening’s conference calls, as earnings season continues to progress, but I’ll catch up with those next week… […]
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 Gumshoe family had a fun adventure over the past couple weeks, covering about 4,000 miles on our first big road trip since 2019… and every town and state we saw was a little different. Hotels are full, but wildly understaffed in a lot of places — we stopped at a beautiful historic hotel in […]
More Royalties, Please… The world of precious metals royalties has been quietly changing a bit, with new entrants and some rising interest in gold as inflation concerns have heated up this year, so there are a few updates to share… but first… If you don’t know what royalties are, they’re best thought of as a […]
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 […]
We’re now a year past the beginning of the real full-on panic about the coronavirus, and just a year past the worst drop in the stock market in March of 2020, so I went back to read my stuff from last April to see what I was doing and how I was feeling. Here’s a […]
I’ve gotten a lot of questions in the past couple days about Jeff Brown’s “Pre-IPO Code” presentation, in which he teases the idea of this “Pre-IPO” investing strategy as he pitches his new Blank Check Speculator newsletter. And I’ve got good news… and bad news. The good news is, I can explain what he’s talking […]
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 […]
We won’t be posting a Friday File next week due to the Thanksgiving holiday, and publishing will be light in general for the next few days for the same reason (though we will, of course, feature our annual Turkey of the Year) … so perhaps you can take some solace in the fact that this […]
Narratives and emotion drive the market in the short term, so last week we saw the tech stocks and COVID winners take another surge higher, perhaps in some surge of “election finally done” relief or just from the indications of a likely split government ahead… this week, some combination of Joe Biden’s election victory being […]
Let’s start with the obvious, just to get my weekly brain dump underway for you: We don’t know what the election will hold, or where the market will go from here… I continue to think stocks are pretty expensive, particularly the hottest tech stocks (and I still own a lot of them), but I also […]
My spirits have been lifted a bit in the last week… not so much by the general state of the world (unemployment is horrifying, the pandemic remains scary, politics has sunk even further into the gutter, a big chunk of the world is literally on fire, again), but by the return of some seasonal patterns […]
I shared part one of our Friday File with you this morning, when I took some time to dig into a nanocap idea being teased by Keith Schaefer, so part two will be a little more brief… just a few quick notes about things of interest this week, and some minor moves in the Real […]
The plan for today? Figure out what other name might be associated with Nikola Tesla, and use it as the name for a new-age company. Venture funding should flow without regard to merit, and you might just be able to go straight to an IPO and buy that private island. Nikola (NKLA) is taken, thanks […]
What will probably serve investors best right now is patience. Don’t sell all at once, don’t buy all at once, and don’t feel like you have to do something every day. If you’re someone whose heartrate climbs as you open your brokerage account website and feel the urge to buy or sell every few minutes, […]
It’s “goodwill toward all” season, right? So now is the time to get ready to be nice to yourself. I don’t know whether this trade war will end, or if impeachment will lead to something bigger, or whether President Trump will find a way to goose the stock market again next year to boost his […]
What’s going on with the market this week? Well, the accepted narrative keeps shifting — first we had trade war panic as Trump announced new tariffs last week, then celebration as those tariffs were delayed to ‘save Christmas’, and the market is overly obsessed with the high-level game of chicken being played by Trump and […]
As we close in on the end of the first quarter, it’s time to release some more data — I just posted the 2019 teaser tracking spreadsheet for you, you can find it on the tracking page along with all our previous years and use it both to see what we’ve been covering so far […]
Today we’ve got a quickie for you, in response to a couple questions about the Cabot Top Ten Trader teaser pitch that came out over the weekend. Top Ten Trader ($137/year) is a short-term newsletter edited by Mike Cintolo, he basically sifts out ten of their favorite growth stocks each week, and I think they’re […]
I haven’t written about closed-end funds in a while, so when I was skimming through the possible teaser pitches I might cover today this one caught my eye. It’s for Sovereign Man’s 4th Pillar newsletter, helmed by Tim Staermose (it’s pricey at $1,995/year but does, at least, offer a 30-day money-back refund, something most of […]
Nicholas Vardy has a newer low-end advisory called Smart Money Masters, and it looks like he’s aiming to be one of the “whale watchers” who run 13F-following services — the folks who watch the big buys by Warren Buffett and a couple dozen of the big hedge funds and institutional investors, and try to emulate […]
Today’s teaser happens to also concern a stock that I’ve been curious about, so I’m taking the opportunity to follow the hints down the rabbit hole and do a little chewing on whatever it is I find down there. The teaser ad comes in from Motley Fool Canada in an ad for their Stock Advisor […]
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen an investor take the kind of beating Bill Ackman is taking at Pershing Square — and, of course, he brought it on himself with his very public pronouncements on his portfolio companies. One year does not determine whether you’re a “good” or a “bad” investor, but I do […]
Before I get into a bunch of updates for companies I follow and/or own, with some good news and some bad news, I do have a quick teaser solution to toss on the fire for you… This one I got late today, and it’s from the Oxford Club’s Dave Fessler — he’s pitching his Oxford […]
Apparently Apple had some sort of news this week, and I guess the Federal Reserve is supposed to do something next week, eh? Well, there are thousands of market pundits who will tell you all about those things — and dozens who will tell you that the world is going to start coming to an […]
I’ve got a biotech teaser solution that might make you smile a bit, particularly if you’ve been following Dr. KSS’s articles and discussion threads, and then several holdings that reported recently to update my thoughts on a bit — including at least one that I’ve bought a little more of following earnings results. The tease […]
We continue to see worrisome commentary about market valuations, with hand-wringing about whether the stock market is overvalued or might be in a bubble… and it can get a bit draining, frankly. Caution is important, diversification is important, but worrying does us little good. Yes, investors are paying a steep price for anticipated growth in […]
We’ve been on strange schedules here in Gumshoeland for the last two weeks, and during that time we’ve seen a large number of quarterly reports come through that deserve some attention or comment… as well as a few other notable news items that I feel like I should pay attention to. And, of course, we’ve […]
Here comes the dividend! OK, it’s not that exciting — but, as we’ve talked about quite a bit in the past year, Altius Minerals (ALS.TO, ATUSF) yesterday announced that they will now start paying a dividend. It’s what I would call a “token” dividend, really just a signal of their interest in repaying shareholders for […]
I’m feeling a little bit old today because my fourth baby, Stock Gumshoe, just celebrated its eighth birthday. Eight years of solving teasers, sharing thoughts, and defusing marketing hype… and it’s still such a cute little fella! I certainly never expected this to grow and get the attention of so many people when I sat […]
I’ve heard Chris Mayer talk about his “Coffee Can” strategy before, but this new way that Agora is marketing it caught my eye: “Investing tips for the couch potato “This has got to be the laziest investment strategy out there today. “Imagine investing in stocks and coming back 10 years later to discover your money […]
I don’t have a single idea that makes me want to jump up and down this month — I’ve been trickling more money into Pershing Square Holdings (PSH.AS, PSHZF) and Tekla Healthcare (THQ) as well as more boring broad index funds and such, and have been tempted by some other investments, but nothing jumps out […]
I haven’t looked at the Capital Wave Forecast stuff from Shah Gilani in quite a while, so the latest teaser pitch from him and the Money Map folks caught my eye — particularly because he’s touting big moves in specific large-cap “blue chip” type stocks, which is pretty rare in newsletterdom (it’s a lot easier […]
Insurance is one of the fairly large sectors in my personal portfolio, and several of the stocks I talk about often are in that business, so I wanted to take a quick look at those ideas and the state of the industry for you today — then I’ve got another interesting new name to kick […]
I’m getting to some Friday File-type chatter a bit early this week because things have been a little wild, and because some portfolio moves and questions have come up. We had a crazy week while I was gone for Thanksgiving, and I’m catching up with some portfolio moves and answers to some questions that readers […]
I’ve got a few thoughts for you on some companies I follow and own, and a little follow-up on last week’s chatter about hedge funds, but first I thought you’d like a quick teaser solution for your Friday File fun… The pitch is for Stephen Petranek’s Breakthrough Technology Alert — there’s been some discussion recently […]
Most of us are self-directed investors, for good or ill — you’re probably here because you like researching or trading stocks, and I obviously feel the same. But should we be trusting ourselves to manage our money? I know that sounds like a fatuous question — obviously, we should trust ourselves much more than we […]
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Thanks Travis....excellent analysis and thoughtful as always....I'm keeping my PSHZF for now, and seeing about re-enteri...
PSHZF - Pershing Square Holdings is really taking a dive today (-5%)...any thoughts about adding to a position? It's al...
Travis, do you know why some of the OTC listings are not available on Interactive Brokers? I have a Vanguard account and...
And what’d ya know, I mention PSTH and news leaks moments later about their negotiations to take Universal Music Group...
Hello Travis, I really was interested in buying into the discounted PSHZF fund (mostly because it has consumer goods, ...
Great analysis. I agree with you that it is better to buy the sponsor than the SPAC. House always makes money. TD Amer...
I read back in September that Ackman had approached both Stripe and Airbnb and been rebuffed by both, but haven't seen a...
Brought some shares of Pershing Square Holdings last August. (up 27%). I have been playing cow either since neither a...
I'm not sure if there's a specific legal term for its structure, but it's really a closed-end fund, a publicly-traded he...
Thanks Bry. 1 is just simple math, assuming "at the money" pricing for the options contract without any additional ...
WOW...What a great Friday File! I really enjoyed it! A couple of questions after reading it: 1) In the one paragraph ...
In relation to PSHZF… I bought one if its holdings, Howard Hughes (HHC), after Bill Ackman’s hedge fund announced th...
PSHZF is up about 30% since Jan.2. of this year. (from $12.65 to $16,79) That is quite impressive, but I am wondering ...