John Dorfman Columns category, Page 9
John Dorfman: 2 Intel executives bought shares in February
The chief executive and chief financial officer of Intel Corp. (INTC) both bought Intel shares last month. Robert Swan, chief executive officer, bought more than 27,000 shares, shelling out $1.5 million. His total shareholdings now amount to almost $30 million. George Davis, the CFO, bought a little more than 9,000...
Should you sell short favorites on Wallstreetbets?
Can you make money going against the Wall Street Bets crowd? Yes, but you can also lose a lot — and fast. Investors and traders who frequent the Wallstreetbets forum, part of the website Reddit, have rammed up stocks with questionable fundamentals such as GameStop Corp. (GME) and AMC Entertainment...
John Dorfman: Nebraska residents sweep Derby of Economic Forecasting Talent
Residents of Nebraska earned a clean sweep of the honors in my 19th annual Derby of Economic Forecasting Talent (DEFT). Contestants entered from Pennsylvania, Virginia, Iowa, Kentucky and even Poland. But none of them won. It must be something in the Nebraska water. Oh yes, Warren Buffett, widely considered the...
John Dorfman: Lunacy of chasing stocks at 100 times sales
Is any price too high to pay for a sizzling stock? The denizens of Wall Street Bets (a hot-stock group on the internet), might say no. They’re wrong. Price still matters, no matter how sexy a stock’s concept. My favorite example of stock market lunacy is chasing stocks that sell...
John Dorfman: Alphabet, Dolby lead the Balance Sheet Powerhouses
While many individuals and governments have fallen deeply into debt during the pandemic, many companies have strengthened their balance sheets. Each year (2001-06 and 2011 to the present), I’ve compiled a list of companies that qualify as Balance Sheet Powerhouses. Until now, the largest number of companies that made the...
John Dorfman: Value or momentum? How about some of both?
You might think, in the aftermath of Tesla and GameStop’s huge recent gains, that momentum investing has gone crazy. Maybe so, but momentum stocks were popular even before the Reddit “Wall Street Bets” frenzy. There have always been folks who like to jump onto a speeding train, but they have...
The January effect is alive and well in 2021
So far, this January looks the way Wall Street folklore says it should. Stock traders talk about the “January effect” and the “January barometer.” The January effect is actually a confluence of three effects. The market in general tends to rise in January. Small stocks usually do better than large....
Homebuilders hit a downdraft, land on Casualty List
Not every stock that gets whacked deserves it. Stocks may fall because of bad news that’s real but temporary. They may fall because a company sacrifices short-term profits for long-term benefits. They may fall because investors, moving as a herd, take a dislike to a particular industry. That’s why I...
Most-hated stocks trounced most-loved ones in 2020
As a new year gets underway, the four stocks Wall Street analysts love most are Amazon.com, Microsoft Corp., Burlington Stores and Valero Energy (VLO). Should you run out and buy them? No, according to my 22-year study. Analysts’ favorites frequently flop. For example, at the beginning of last year, 15...
John Dorfman: My favorite stocks for 2021
Pfizer, Walt Disney and D.R. Horton are among my favorite stocks for the coming year. As you tune up your portfolio for the coming year — a year that hopefully won’t be dominated by a pandemic, as this year was — here are 10 of my favorite stocks to consider....
John Dorfman: Can the Bunny come roaring back?
Perhaps you’ve seen the Energizer Bunny in a battery commercial. It is “still going” long after you’d expect it to fade. That bunny is the namesake for my Bunny Portfolio, a hypothetical stock portfolio I created in 1999. These are stocks that have shown rapid earnings growth (25% or better)...
John Dorfman: 3 CEOs who have stepped up to the plate
Very few chief executives have been buying their own company’s stock lately. In a computer search this weekend, I could find only three who bought shares in a significant quantity since the beginning of October. Biogen Michel Vounatsos, CEO of Biogen Inc. (BIIB), shelled out $748,061 on Nov. 30 to...
John Dorfman: Five stocks to benefit from infrastructure repair
Weather, rust and sheer age attack the nation’s bridges and tunnels. Many of them are crumbling. The Minneapolis bridge collapse in August 2007, which killed 13 people and injured 145, was spectacular evidence of the problem. But it’s not an isolated example. About 46,000 U.S. bridges, including the Brooklyn Bridge...
John Dorfman: A Thanksgiving GARP feast for investors
Most of the stocks I own for clients are value stocks, selling for 15 times the company’s earnings or less. However, there is room in my heart — and in my portfolio — for a few GARP stocks. GARP stands for growth at a reasonable price. It’s the middle ground...
Watch for a January bounce in Intel and four other stocks
Kicking someone while they’re down is unsportsmanlike. But it happens every year in the stock market. In November and December, investors often pummel the stocks that have declined in the first 10 months of the year. Why? For tax reasons. Investors sell their losers to establish tax losses, which are...
John Dorfman: Selling below book value: Photronics, 3 other stocks
Critics maintain that book value is an unreliable number, for various reasons. The reason cited most often is that it “distorts” book value when a company buys back its own stock. Buybacks are good, they say, yet they often paradoxically lower book value. I see no distortion here. Money spent...
John Dorfman: Zoom, Peloton lead 2020 stock market parade
Among all large-cap U.S. stocks, here are the five that are up the most this year through Oct. 30. Zoom (ZM) The pandemic has made “Zoom” a household word. With millions of people working from home, its group-conferencing software has made meetings possible — if sometimes interminable. No question that...
John Dorfman: The Billion Dollar Portfolio rides again
Many investors put most of their money in the largest companies. I’m fond of companies that straddle the borderline between small and mid-sized. I define large-capitalization stocks as those with a market value over $10 billion, mid-cap stocks as $1 billion to $10 billion and small-cap stocks as those under...
John Dorfman: Does stolen fruit taste better? Check out my purloined portfolio
Major League Baseball punished the Houston Astros for the way they stole opponents’ signs. But there’s no penalty for an investment manager stealing ideas from another manager. In fact, I think one would be foolish not to. I peek from time to time at the holdings of other managers I...
John Dorfman: It’s been a horrible year for dividend investing
The past year was horrible for dividend investing. Many investors these days are indifferent to dividends. They want a story, fast growth, momentum and a whiff of technology. No one buys Netflix (NFLX) or Tesla Inc. (TSLA) for the dividends — and, by the way, there aren’t any. Beginning in...
Cigna and Bank of Hawaii are on the Casualty List
A few stocks continued to take it on the chin in the third quarter, even as many other stocks recovered from the previous quarter’s pandemic-induced slide. At the end of every quarter, I go hunting for stocks that have been smashed, and that I think have better things in store....
John Dorfman: My Ratings on the Largest 20 Stocks
There are a few thousand stocks in the U.S. But a big part of the market value, the trading volume — in short, the action — is in the largest 20. Here are my ratings on the largest 20 stocks. Apple Inc. (AAPL, market value $1.92 trillion), Buy. Apple has...
John Dorfman: Top CEOs have jettisoned boatload of stock this summer
I see very few chief executives stepping up to buy their company’s stock this summer. But I see scads of sellers. Corporate chieftains usually talk bullishly about their companies’ prospects. But if they’re selling some of their shares, it’s worth thinking twice. Of course, there are many reasons to sell....
Looking for fat profit margins? Try these 5 stocks
Obscene profits. Don’t you miss them? Since the pandemic and recession began, fat profits have been hard to come by. Here are five stocks whose profit margins are still wide and whose prospects look good to me. Applied Materials Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT), based in Santa Clara, Calif., is one...
John Dorfman: My Sane Portfolio takes it on the chin
The market battered my Sane Portfolio in the past 12 months, as it posted its worst result ever. The Sane Portfolio is intended to provide investment ideas for middle-of-the-road, slightly conservative investors. I’ve been compiling this theoretical portfolio each August since 1999, with a three-year hiatus in 2007 through 2009....
