John Dorfman Columns category, Page 5

So far this year, the stock market is doing exactly what market lore says it should. According to tradition, four things are true about January: • The market is likely to rise. • Small stocks will excel. • Last year’s losers will rebound. • As January goes, so will go...

Get ’em while they’re down. Buying stocks on bad news that is real but temporary is a time-honored technique, used in the past by investment masters such as Jonathan Neff and Sir John Templeton. It’s the idea behind my quarterly Casualty List, containing stocks that have been knocked down in...

When 2022 began, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) was Wall Street analysts’ favorite stock. Thirty-one analysts said to buy it, with nary a “hold” or “sell” to be heard. The stock fell nearly 50% last year. This is not an anomaly. The other stocks the analytical corps adored when the year began...

Give that Robot some new polish! The Robot Portfolio is a hypothetical collection of 10 stocks I have compiled each year beginning in 1999. In 24 years, it has achieved a cumulative 915% return, compared with 373% for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. The 10 stocks are picked by...

Coinbase Global Inc. leads this year’s list of stock-market disasters. Here are the stocks down the most through Dec. 16, among all stocks with a market value of $5 billion or more. • Coinbase Global Inc. (COIN) 85.5% • Snap Inc. (SNAP) 82% • Twilio Inc. (TWLO) 81.8% • Lucid...

What do you call a stock that has a great earnings-growth history yet sells for modest price? You might call it a paradox. I call it a candidate for the Bunny Portfolio. I invented the Bunny Portfolio in 1999 and have written about it almost every year since. It’s named...

Company executives usually talk an optimistic game. When they put their money where their mouth is, that’s when I pay attention. Align Technology Joseph Hogan, president and chief executive officer of Align Technology Inc. (ALGN), spent about $2 million to buy his own company’s stock in November. Hogan had sold...

People can argue all day about whether book value is a good gauge of a stock’s value. I say it is, and I believe the results from this column tend to prove it. Book value is a company’s net worth – the sum of its assets minus its liabilities. It...

A company with a market value of about $1 billion is small enough to grow fast, yet large enough so that it can begin to appeal to institutional investors such as pension funds. I define large-capitalization stocks as those with a market value of $10 billion or more, mid-capitalization stocks...

A politician would be silly not to do opposition research. A baseball team would be goofy not to use scouting reports. By the same token, an investment manager would have to be singularly incurious not to check out what other managers are buying and selling. Once a year in this...

A time-honored investing method is to buy stocks that have rising dividends. In my opinion, it’s a sensible method. A dividend increase acts as a sincerity barometer, showing that management believes earnings progress is sustainable. Right now, with a bear market raging, I think it is especially sensible, since dividend-paying...

Investors suffered their third unpleasant quarter in a row in the quarter that just ended. After this pounding, quite a few stocks look attractive to me. I’ve highlighted a few of them on my Casualty List. This list, which I compile each quarter, contains stocks that have been smacked down...

The largest stocks dominate the headlines — and investors’ wallets. So even though I’m fond of off-the-beaten-path stocks, once a year I give my buy-or-avoid ratings on the 20 largest stocks. Today’s the day. • Apple Inc. (AAPL, $2.4 trillion market value). Buy. The company’s iPhones and Mac computers have...

Laurent Condon, a professional trader in France, won my Short Sellers Don’t Have Horns short-selling contest — his second triumph in the annual competition. Condon won the contest in 2017-2018 and finished third the following year. He also has excelled in some of my other contests. In addition to the...

In the past few weeks, insiders have been buying their own shares at Intel Corp. (INTC) and Fox Corp. (FOX). Patrick Gelsinger, the chief executive officer at Intel, spent just over half a million dollars to buy shares in August, bringing his stake to a bit more than $7 million....

He wasn’t kidding. Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said Friday that the Fed’s Open Markets Committee will “use our tools forcefully,” and keep raising interest rates until inflation comes down. This is “no place to stop or pause,” he said. Investors winced, and stocks tumbled. The so-called...

Suppose you run a successful food-delivery business. Two years ago, you spent $1 million on a fleet of a dozen new trucks. On your books and tax records this year, you will subtract $200,000 from your earnings (profits) reflecting depreciation on those trucks. But you aren’t actually laying out any...

Value investors speak in reverential tones about Benjamin Graham. A hedge-fund manager, Columbia University professor and author, Graham (1884-1976) is widely considered the father of value investing. Once a year, I attempt to guess what stocks the maestro would buy if he were alive today. Graham Method I use a...

Stock market sayings often have a core of wisdom — and sometimes a grain of falsehood. Here are some market quotations you’re likely to hear. Buy on the cannons, sell on the trumpets. This saying often is attributed to Nathan Rothschild, a London financier in Napoleon’s time (around 1810). Scholars...

After a drop of about 20% in the first six months of this year, investors feel nervous even though July has been good. This might be a good time to look at my Sane Portfolio. It is a hypothetical portfolio of 12 stocks. I started compiling it in 1999 and...

In my experience, stocks that display both growth and value characteristics are often promising stocks to hold. Right now, I believe that Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.B), Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT), Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. (REGN) and Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings (LH) fit the bill. Should you buy these stocks now,...

Stock-market bargain hunters are a little like baseball scouts, trying to find talent that other teams have overlooked. A scout might find a pitcher who is wild (walks a lot of batters) but has a thunderbolt of a fastball. An investor might find a stock with a low price relative...

Summer is upon us, and after pandemic weight gains, few people will rate a “Perfect 10” on the beach this year. But my Perfect 10 Portfolio is ready to show off. This hypothetical portfolio contains 10 stocks, each of which sells for 10 times earnings. For example, MKS Instruments earned...

While most stocks have nosedived this year, a few have gained altitude. Many, but by no means all, are energy stocks. And not all of them are expensive, either. Here are five stocks that are bucking the downtrend. Exxon As I write this, the market is down about 20% for...

Suddenly, investors are looking for companies that can survive a possible recession. Corporations with high profitability and low debt seem a pretty good bet. Most corporate chief executives, in a recent Wall Street Journal poll, said a recession has either already begun or will begin in the next 12-18 months....