When Buffett was asked about his brief foray into buying and subsequently selling McDonald’s stock decades ago he made a comment that offered a rare insight into the framework he uses to evaluate the long-term merits of a firm. While it’s well-known that he likes a company to have an enduring competitive advantage, it’s not as clear to many what that actually means.
If one analyst is to be believed, today should mark the top in the market. Cem Karsan pinpointed January 17, 2024 a few months ago as the day when market tailwinds would subside in favor of market headwinds, but how could he be so specific in his date selection? And will be be right?
To be the best sometimes you simply have to follow the best and see what they are doing. That old adage applies to trading Nvidia recently when, on the same day, both Oliver Kell, who posted a 941.1% gain to win the US trading championship a few years ago, and Mark Minervini bought it.
Mark has famously become one of the most successful traders of all time,
Usually cable stocks should be avoided like the plague. The trend towards cord-cutting has been unrelenting as streaming services like Netflix came to the forefront over the past decade. After all, why pay $80 per month when you can pay $10 for a range of movies on your favorite streaming platform?
But most of the well-known cable companies compete against each other in city environments and have to fend off stark competition.
When it comes to energy stocks, some names leap off the pages. Exxon, Valero, Conoco Phillips are all well-known but what about the lesser known names, is there an opportunity to find one trading at bargain basement prices there?
We stumbled across one such firm that likely has never crossed the radars of most investors.
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From 1982-2023, a massive bull market in share prices took place, creating enormous wealth. But the prior decade or so between 1966-1982 was quite the opposite. Indeed, investors who bought the top in 1966 would have had to wait a full 15 years before seeing their investments turn profitable.
The bull run over the past forty years has been intermittently interrupted by stock market crashes,
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By many measures, the stock market is overextended now yet calls for a correction have vanished with the wind in recent weeks.
Within a few weeks, though, we expect the market will find a plateau and turnaround. If it does top as expected and start a new downtrend, one index above all others could be the top performer in 2024.
When markets fall, they seem to go down in sync. It’s one of the key insights into markets that many ordinary investors fail to spot, the correlation between markets.
Similarly, this year you’ll see the S&P 500 up 25%, and the NASDAQ up closer to 45%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average up too.
A couple of decades ago, eBay stock was all the rage. Buyers and sellers couldn’t get enough of the platform, transacting in a wide range of goods, and investors couldn’t get enough of the stock. When PayPal was spun out, eBay became a whole lot less interesting to investors, and today it stands virtually ignored.
When a stock has soared 63% for the year it’s a risky proposition to step in the way of the momentum freight train and short it, but sometimes the highest flying stocks create setups for the biggest crashes. One social media stock that went on a huge run this year falls squarely into that category.