We don’t currently own Nike; however, this is not due to some patriotic position for or against the company’s recent ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick. Instead, it is based upon an unprejudiced review of Nike’s valuation, financials and its paltry 1% dividend payout.
On more than one occasion in recent years clients have written us about investing in Starbucks, the trendy coffee chain with locations in seemingly every city and town across the United States. Though Starbucks is the coffee shop of choice for some of us at Altrius, we believe that mistaking a company for the products it sells can trap investors into overpaying for its shares (for more on this, head over to our McDonald's vs. Shake Shack blog post) and have thought it expensive until recently. Previously trading at over 30 times trailing earnings with a dividend yield of around 1.5% - less than half that of our Disciplined Alpha Dividend strategy - Starbucks has remained outside of our value discipline in past years. However, the company caught our attention after a recent selloff and we added it to our portfolios in early August.
Topics: Investing, Long Term Investment
Charlatans and unethical scam artists don’t come right out and tell you they are attempting to make you part with your money while providing absolutely no value. The most skilled will tell you they are doing something altruistically and that they want to simply teach you what they’ve learned – for the small price of a subscription service or enrollment into their more intensive (and more expensive) classroom lessons.
Topics: financial media, scam artists
The past week has continued the recent pattern of extreme volatility this year with major indices again moving into negative territory year-to-date. Though I will publish the more comprehensive market and economic quarterly newsletter soon, I thought I'd share a portion of the chapter on Media Madness from the book I'm currently writing. I hope you find the snippets from the chapter more useful than the "experts" shouting advice encouraging you to take rash action.
Topics: market forecasts, volatile markets, financial media
I'm in the only business in which no one wants to purchase something when it is 25% lower in price!
This past week, a client asked the good question of why we would purchase a company such as Mattel which has declined in value and sell or trim our positions in companies which have risen in price - particularly when the company doesn't pay a dividend which is generally at the core of our philosophy and critical to our client's future retirement success. Because this question goes to the core of our investment process, I thought I would share my answer with our friends, clients and investors. My reply email is enclosed as follows: