RIP those who are invested in UNH or other health insurers:
“CMS proposes a nearly flat 0.09% average payment increase for 2027 Medicare Advantage rates”
For the knife-catchers, I bought CVS today.
UNH and HUM down 18%, CVS less than half of that.
UNH and CVS are getting into interesting dividend yield territory.
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Paypal - falling knife or great deal?
@anon17469660 - what does the chart say?
A little bit of both it seems. This is a case where I won’t mind if my written put options get assigned in due course. Such extreme volatility past days despite some solid metrics.
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Anyone invest in Gartner (IT). Not sure if I’m missing something here, but selling seems to have gone too far - even if we accept that Gartner will have low/nil growth going forward.
Looks like one of those companies that did try to buy growth. Usually a company gets a short time boost in growth this way. We may have seen that a year ago. But now this boost is over, but the debt for buying companies stays.
Sales still go up a little but earnings go down, seems like too much competency, maybe by AI.
Got tempted to buy CRM and NOW. AI SAASpocalyse? what SAASpocalyse?
Did bottom fishing work for you in the past? For me it did not, cut by the falling knife until I did mechanical investment.
I think I did read a few books about contrarian investment and I do consider myself a contrarian. I think all books want some kind of catalyst, a change, to enter a stock that has fallen that much. Like a change in management, insider or outsider with knowledge buys and so on. Personally I like some technical formations like cup-with-a-handle.
The most money I made with stocks I bought a second position at all-time high - completely against my nature as contrarian. But then I’m in stocks to make money, not to feel good. To go up it just has to go up, not down… 
Let’s see. After taking bites here and there, I took a full position in CHTR now. I guess my bottom fishing bets are:
- CHTR +0.5%
- FDS -21%
- WHR +3.5%
- ELV +6.7%
- LNC +65%
- CRM -8%
- FMC -46%
- CAG +9%
- ARE -36%
- CNC +39%
- IT +2%
- KDP +11%
- CPB +0.1%
- KMB +8.5%
- CVS +2%
- GIS -2%
- TGT +32%
This year, I decided to join the hype bandwagon and buy hype stocks
- 2513 (z.ai) +63%
- 100 (minimax ai) +37%
- BE (after it had already gone parabolic) +72%
- PAAS / WPM (silver miners after silver had topped $100) +1-4%
So I’m channelling my inner Cramer. Let’s see how it goes. Rather annoyingly all the hype stocks are well up even after I bought them at high prices. Doing far better than my ‘value picks’.
Obviously, I should have ignored dividends, value etc and just YOLO’d on hype stocks for the last few years.
EDIT: added unrealized gains/losses for the ‘bets’. They actually did better than I thought (esp. since many also pay dividends), I guess this is a bias: you feel the pain of ‘losers’ more so remember them.
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I think you know what you do.
A quick look at your charts shows a nice picture for some of your holdings:
The only one I hold is KMB, but I probably sell soon. Seems they are diworsifying, too bad. Hold it for like 12 years and thought I could hold forever. After all that time I’m now like 6% in the red, but of course without dividends. They should literally “stick” to paper and just continue to pay a nice dividend instead of selling paper factories all over the world and buying Kenvue, that not even JNJ (that I own too) wanted any longer…
Investing is always a compromise. I would go crazy without my mechanical rules. Value is important in one strategy, momentum in the other. So I try to pick the best of two worlds…
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Ah! Interesting. I didn’t know about this feature!
Here’s a picture of my top 20:
Looks better than the turnaround bets:
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Yep. Such situations always look to me that the management has found a way to rob the money of their stockholders and give it away to a friend.
Lucky for us all that leaves traces in the balance sheet. I would never touch such a company, and I think anyhow I never made money with any advertising agency. Isn’t that business completely in google’s hand today? What will they do if Trump makes cocaine expensive again?
Actually my rules are sacred, so for me it is always and never. It is only about risk and never buying such a company never led to bad outcomes.
If a company took on a lot of debt and did spend this money, all its equity and the debt, to buy another company, your (the stockholders) money is in the pocket of the ex owner of that company. That is a situation I don’t like… never.
Let’s say it is an additional risk that doesn’t pay out in additional performance. That is never a good idea.
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Inorganic growth can be very attractive for investors, e.g. if the right competitor is eliminated.
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Actually google has the cash for it while OMC had not. Goodwill gives hints, then check how it is financed.
Sorry, stock picks. Don’t have one at the moment, didn’t find one since December for my momentum strategy. Let’s check the divi strategy, there is always something around. At the moment I cannot buy more industrials or health stocks.
Wow, the capt’n says The Buckle is first on the list. Hmmm, strange. 8.42% dividend says Finviz, but they are often wrong, would need to check. Clothes, fashion is always cheesy.
Please do me a favor and don’t buy it up with your billions, I may need to sell something and then need to buy it for myself. And it is earnings season…
All of my trades are usually published near-time in my mechanical investments thread.
Yahoo says the dividend is only 2.68%. Never trust anybody… I’ll check.
OK, solved. Special dividend in January, so trailing was $4.40, current price 52.43, that is like 8.4%, so finviz wins over yahoo…
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Even better is organic growth when a competitor is eliminated.
I remember buying PWR Holdings Ltd back in 2017/2018. Their competitors left the niche market leaving them with the whole market for themselves.
The stock did 5x in 5 years. Even more strange was that there was hardly any stock price reaction for 2 years even though a key market had fundamentally changed.
Oh yeah stock prices can remain decoupled from fundamental realities far longer than we can stay solvent as Keynes knew…
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Anthropic raised today at 27x revenue multiple! 
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Actually doesn’t sound that unreasonable. 80% of its $14bn revenue run rate comes from enterprise customers with 500 of them spending >$1mn. Revenue has grown 10x in each of last years (granted from a low base) but nonetheless impressive. Question is if / when it will be profitable in a winner takes most market.
Z.ai managed to sneak into the top 20:
| Before | Today |
|---|---|
| AMLP | AMLP |
| BTI | BTI |
| NEM | NEM |
| AEM | AEM |
| VICI | KAP |
| KAP | VICI |
| WDS | WDS |
| B | CHTR |
| GLDM | GLDM |
| MO | NESN |
| NESN | MO |
| GDX | B |
| NANR | NANR |
| URNM | O |
| O | Z.AI |
| PFE | PFE |
| FDS | XOM |
| UEC | GDX |
| XOM | URNM |
| GLD | NNN |
Even after the failed buy order:
(illustration from ‘The Limit Order that didn’t Hit and other Sad Stories’)
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