Market Froth Abates: Lessons from a Historical Speculation
KCR is not surprised at the amount of Wall Street shills claiming they can predict the Federal Reserve Chairman’s next moves. Equally unsurprising is the market’s overwhelming interest in how market conditions might shift based on a leveling off or outright reduction in interest rates. The thinking goes like this: the stock market bubble that drove low-quality stocks to unsustainable levels could come roaring back to life if only the Fed would pivot. Our piece ARKK vs. QQQ in the Dot.Com Bust a few weeks ago tried to put this idea to rest. In that work, we highlighted the uncanny analog between the low-quality collapse of the dot.com bubble and the collapse today.
KCR Equity’s Best Charts from 2022: All Charts Updated!
We recently posted a year end piece summarizing KCR’s work from 2022. There were so many blistering charts that we broke the recap into two parts. The first, Short Term Stock Speculators Beat a Hasty Retreat, and A Basic Industries Boom & the Return of the Real Economy as the follow-up. When we posted our 2022 year-in-review we highlighted the charts as they were when originally published. We thought it interesting simply because they made the empirically inevitable seem obvious with the benefit of hindsight. We failed to appreciate that our wonderful readers would ask “well where are those charts now?”
A Basic Industries Boom & the Return of the Real Economy
Last week’s piece Short Term Stock Speculators Beat a Hasty Retreat, walked through the blizzard of work we did on the continued collapse of speculatively priced stocks in 2022.Today, we present the best charts on the bullish material we highlighted last year.
Short Term Stock Speculators Beat a Hasty Retreat 2022 Year in Review: Part I
At the end of last year, we posted a piece reviewing our research from 2021. We explained that after a brutal 2020 where we were bombarded by skeptics, ‘21 had been a terrific year for KCR and we expected more in ‘22 based on the data. Thankfully, fortune favors the patient, disciplined, and empirically inclined.
Small Cap Quality Stocks: The Gift from the Index Fund Complex
Our team believes in inefficient markets, behavioral finance, empirical evidence, and common sense. Having penned brutally simple pieces explaining the risks large cap, large-cap, and small cap index fund owners are taking, our recent exchange with an advocate of index funds was inevitable. The caller was upset.
Large Cap Growth Index Funds & the Path to Poverty
A Quick Peek at the Russell Large Cap Growth Index - Understandably smitten with low fees and a long bull market, index fund promoters appear to have the data on their side. A collection of financial heretics, the authors of this investment newsletter have highlighted what we believe are the defects endemic to index funds today. In the interest of simplicity, we have used single factors to highlight just how these popular and heavily promoted products are ripe for disaster.
S&P 500 Calculator: Warren Buffett Valuation Spreadsheet
This Tool Can Bring Calm to Chaos - Reverse inquiries looking for our Buffett 10-Year Returns Estimation Tool suggested another post was in order. We’ll explain where the tool came from, how to use it and why it is so important.
S&P Energy ETF vs. Apple
The Case for Investing in What you Need vs. What you Want Made Simple - Since 2020, this newsletter has used historical data to explain the case for investing in companies that make what you need while shelling overpriced companies that make what you want. KCR’s research has demonstrated that the market’s valuation structure has, and continues to, favor firms that provide popular discretionary goods and novelty technologies over companies that make essentials to human life.
Nabors Investor Relations Has a Terrific Story to Tell
Profiting from the Reckoning with Reality - KCR readers know we have been long-term bulls on energy stocks and have relentlessly panned the high-priced promises of so-called clean-tech energy stocks. While others read the IEAs’ path to net-zero emissions and forecasted the end of oil, we read the work and wrote our piece, Net Zero Emissions: The Possible vs. the Plausible, which explained how their research read, to us, like a powerful bull case for energy.
Large Cap Core Funds: Growth Funds in Hiding?
US Large Cap Core Funds: Historical Weights at Various Levels of Valuations - To summarize, historically, investors in large cap core index funds had the bulk of their money invested in stocks with reasonable valuations with negligible exposure to stocks valued over 10x price to sales.
“Enroned” an Update On High Prices & Low Quality Stocks
The phrase “I got Enroned” has entered the investing lexicon recently. KCR believes the term is slang to describe the losses being incurred by investors in stocks with indefensible valuations and low-quality accounting. This piece updates our January work identifying the stocks most like Enron today.
MO Stock PE Ratio Offers Cash Backed Income
Beginning in March of 2021, KCR’s quantitative research has provided consistent evidence that Staples and Energy stocks present investors with the opportunity to buy companies of high quality for unusually low prices. Subsequent to our evidence-based models’ endorsement, we engaged in a fundamental review of both sectors and the specific stocks our models favored. Steeped in academic research done by the most respected names in behavioral finance, our models continue to advocate for select securities in both sectors. Our fundamental overlay continues to validate those findings.
