One of my great God-given talents is comparing investing to almost anything. So, I was cleaning my cat's litter-box, and it hit me... Investment portfolios are a lot like a cat's digestive system! My cat Louie eats food, gets nutrients from it, and removes what his body doesn't need. That's exactly what we should do with our investments! We "eat" stocks by buying them, "digest" them by holding them and maybe getting dividends, and sometimes, we need to "expel" the ones that aren't helping us...
6 days ago • 3 min read
During the last major prolonged stock market crash in late 2008—early 2009, I had a conversation with my freaked-out and pissed-off mom. The continual drops freaked her out, and she was thinking about pulling her money out of the market to save what little was left. Even though I wasn't an active investor then, I questioned this and said, "But if you sell out now, you'll guarantee losses. How will you know when to get back in?" She told me she couldn't take watching her money evaporate every...
13 days ago • 3 min read
You know what they say: opinions are like elbows; everyone's got them And after the week we've had, you're probably drowning in opinions, predictions, and free advice Facts are cool, though, so here are a few factual things: There are two types of people: Those who DON'T KNOW they can't predict the future and those who KNOW they can't From the WSJ: "...45% of U.S. imports are inputs that go into our own manufacturing production. An import tax on these inputs hurts domestic manufacturing." You...
20 days ago • 4 min read
Unless you've lived under a rock, I'm sure you've seen the news about Tesla lately. Their European sales dropped a whopping 49%, even while the overall EV market is growing! And all this backlash against Elon because of his role in the Trump administration. This reminds me of what fund manager Pulak Prasad has been saying for years: discounted cash flow analysis is tough. Who could have predicted two years ago that Tesla would face this kind of situation? Not a single analyst had "Elon runs...
27 days ago • 4 min read
They say if you want to own a great company at a bargain price, you'll have to wait until it looks like it could be broken. Three examples of companies that looked broken but recovered: In 1997, Apple (AAPL) was nearly bankrupt, and its stock declined 80% before Steve Jobs returned and transformed it into one of the world's most valuable companies. Starbucks (SBUX) in 2008 saw its stock collapse by 80% during the financial crisis but rebounded after Howard Schultz returned as CEO and...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
The stock market has been dropping faster than amateur drinkers on St. Patrick's Day, and the media is predicting doom and gloom. From what I can tell, only two people should be worried: fixed income retirees and traders. Those with long investing horizons ahead of us, get excited because the stock market is less expensive than it was six months ago. 0.28% less expensive to be exact. Will it pop or drop from here? I have no idea, nor does anyone else. But we do know that over time, companies...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
So I did something potentially stupid last week that you might get a kick out of. Also, there's a lesson in it somewhere. You probably know I've been holding Nexstar Media (NXST) stock for a while now and it's my #1 individual position. On March 3rd, I was staring at Nexstar's stock chart and thinking I could predict the future. The indicators I use were screaming "overbought!" after their earnings report. I convinced myself that $180 was this short-term magical ceiling the stock would have...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
A dividend investing forum will be held on March 5th, 2025, and you can attend for FREE. Details are below. I was listening to Howard Marks on the "Behind the Memo" podcast about his latest piece "On Bubble Watch." It made me think about Costco (COST), a company I love, with its sky-high P/E ratio of 61.72. Yahoo! Finance Then Marks explained something that grabbed me: buying a stock at a P/E of 16 (the historical average since WW2) means you're paying for 20+ years of a company's future...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
A dividend investing forum will be held on March 5th, 2025, and you can attend for FREE. Details are below. Warren Buffett just released his 2024 annual letter, and one big takeaway was how the United States and Berkshire Hathaway became incredibly wealthy—and how you can, too. Fun fact: From 1965 to 2024, Berkshire paid only one cash dividend. On January 3, 1967, it disbursed the sole payment – $101,755 or 10¢ per A share. Warren said of the dividend payment, "I can’t remember why I...
2 months ago • 5 min read
This Valentine's Day was a very special one! My wife, Jena, and I don't exchange gifts for Hallmark holidays because we'd rather spend money on random nights out together. But this year, I bought something special: more passive income! Like the Jelly of the Month Club, it's the gift that keeps giving the whole year. On Valentine's Day, we received a $56.76 dividend check from Realty Income (O), "The Monthly Dividend Company" and in a historic first, with that dividend check, we bought a full...
2 months ago • 4 min read