UNH and HUM down 18%, CVS less than half of that.
UNH and CVS are getting into interesting dividend yield territory.
2 Likes
Paypal - falling knife or great deal?
@Your_Full_Name - 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.
1 Like
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.
2 Likes
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…
1 Like
Ah! Interesting. I didn’t know about this feature!
Here’s a picture of my top 20:
Looks better than the turnaround bets:
1 Like
My latest addition to the portfolio is Omnicom Group Inc (OMC).
It was first suggested by one of my mentors in 2024, but I didn’t like it then mainly because they had frozen their dividend in 2021. In Dec 2025 they started raising it again which renewed my interest although I remained somewhat skeptic as I associated them with just Advertising which is a market I thought was divided up between the online giants like Google, Meta et al.
While they do advertising, they have a couple of other business lines (marketing, PR, branding, etc) that (together) are as large as advertising, and – most importantly – they seem to be able to grow their business at double digit earnings growth rates which keep getting revised upwards.[$}
If they just stay at the current multiple (or even drop a bit) you’re looking at a 17% CAGR for the next couple of years.
Their debt is a little higher than I like, but it looks like their long term debt is well staggered into the future and probably manageable.
I believe their stock price is suffering from a recent acquisition (IPG – Interpublic Group), but I don’t know enough about the business to judge whether that’s good or bad. As long as they keep growing their earnings (and dividends!) I’m a happy camper.
I opened a small starting position in January and sold a long dated cash secured put after some more dipping recently.
They’ll release their latest earnings in a couple of days (Feb 18) if you’re interested in the latest numbers.
$ And their analyst scorecard is almost perfect:
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?
I refrain from simplifying with words like “always” and “never”, but of course to each their own.
That’s what makes a market!
1 Like
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.
1 Like
I’m firmly in the no-rules-are-sacred camp (with regards to investing) but I mostly respect your view.
Since you’ve cited Google and their advertising business, maybe check on their acquisition history? I bet that way more than half of their current revenue and earnings are due to their acquisitions.
Anyway, may I suggest getting back to discussing stock picks versus opining on fundamental views on capital allocation?
Inorganic growth can be very attractive for investors, e.g. if the right competitor is eliminated.
1 Like
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…
1 Like
You did hear about the the bonds they’re just about issuing as we speak? Like 100 year till maturity or something like that?
Anyways, sounds like you’re much smarter about these things than me, so please apologize for arguing with you.
Bye for now.