Author: The INO.com Team

The Port We Need In This Market Storm

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Editor’s Note: Our experts here at INO.com cover a lot of investing topics and great stocks every week. To help you make sense of it all, every Wednesday we’re going to pick one of those stocks and use Magnifi Personal to compare it with its peers or competitors. Here we go…

When markets turn as volatile and uncertain as they’ve been this week, it’s a good idea to look for sectors you’d want to be invested in no matter where the markets go.

Healthcare is one such sector.

It encompasses two contrasting types of businesses. The first is boring, large-cap stocks in the pharmaceutical and healthcare services sectors. These traditionally provide some defensive qualities if the economy starts to slow. That’s true because a lot of healthcare spending is not dependent on cycles in the economy. People get sick no matter the economy.

The more exciting part of the healthcare sector is very growth-oriented, with high valuation multiples. This is the biotechnology sector, with exciting fields like genomics, CRSPR gene-editing machines, and cures for cancer.

And even beyond biotech, there are also other growth segments in this healthcare sector, including medical data businesses and medical equipment suppliers. All of these are riding long-term trends such as aging and increased healthcare spending, along with big data and AI.

The safer pharma sector looks especially enticing for more conservative investors. Vincent Deluard, strategist at StoneX, has run numbers showing pharmaceuticals have maintained 15% to 20% margins over the past 40 years. He told the Financial Times: “They have almost no exposure to energy and basic material costs: their main expenses are research and development, marketing and lobbying… Inflation in drugs prices and medical services has been twice that of the broad consumer price index in the past 40 years.”

But for the adventurous among you, putting money into the more exciting biotech small caps may be the way to go. Valuations are cheap, with a substantial upside.

So, I asked Magnifi Personal to compare an ETF from each healthcare segment - pharma and biotech. I didn’t even have to find the right ETFs. Continue reading "The Port We Need In This Market Storm" →

How to Steer Clear of the Silicon Valley Bank Meltdown

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Editor’s Note: Our experts here at INO.com cover a lot of investing topics and great stocks every week. To help you make sense of it all, every Wednesday we’re going to pick one of those stocks and use Magnifi Personal to compare it with its peers or competitors. Here we go…

Bank stocks have dropped and markets are still spooked after last week’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, and it’s unclear how far the fallout will reach.

But amid all the talk of how many other banks are in trouble, the effects on a related industry has gotten very little attention.

We're talking about the mortgage-backed bond markets. See, according to an article from the Financial Times' Alphaville team, Silicon Valley Bank is still sitting on a $50 billion book of MBS (mortgage-backed securities). It is likely government regulators that have taken over Silicon Valley Bank will need to dump those bonds to help cover the cost of giving depositors all of their money back.

That possibility caused mayhem in the U.S. mortgage market on March 10, as investors rushed to get ahead of getting squashed by the bank’s potential MBS dump. Therefore, mortgage spreads sharply widened on that day as Silicon Valley Bank circled the drain.

So today, we're going to use the Magnifi Personal investing AI to compare the most important MBS-trading companies and see if there are any opportunities here - or if the risk is too high.

Doing this was simple. we asked Magnifi Personal to “Compare AGNC, STWD, and BXMT” and it did all the work.

To have the investing AI run similar comparisons for you, or to dive deeper into this one and compare other banks or REITs, we’re offering 90 days of free access to Magnifi Personal - just click here!

This ability to have an investing AI pore over reams of data for you in seconds and spit out an easy-to-understand comparison of two or more stocks is an invaluable tool in deciding where to invest next.

I highly recommend you try it out. Click here to see how you can do it today, free-of-charge.

Here’s what Magnifi Personal showed me after we asked it to in “Compare AGNC, STWD, and BXMT”: Continue reading "How to Steer Clear of the Silicon Valley Bank Meltdown" →

Semiconductors Are Heating Up - Here's The Best One

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Editor’s Note: Our experts here at INO.com cover a lot of investing topics and great stocks every week. To help you make sense of it all, every Wednesday we’re going to pick one of those stocks and use Magnifi Personal to compare it with its peers or competitors. Here we go…

The never-ending demand for more technology creates long-term growth trends for semiconductor businesses. In the short term, however, they are vulnerable to wider economic pressures – demand for chips will fall off as the economy slows down.

In fact, as far as the chip industry is concerned, the world is already in a recession.

For the past three decades, a globalized production model has created a series of semiconductor giants across the world. In other words, in this sector, bigger has been better. Despite recent struggles, the stocks of all the semiconductor companies market caps have at least doubled in the past five years.

Many on Wall Street believe investors are already starting to look beyond the prospect of a recession. The market is becoming more desensitized to negative estimate revisions, as the focus begins to shift towards signs of recovery.

So let’s look past the possible coming recession, and see what semiconductor designer stocks are the most attractive right now. To do that, we used Magnifi Personal’s Compare function to compare Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia (NVDA).

All we had to do was type in “Compare AMD and NVDA.”

To join in, ask for more details, or expand the search by asking something like “Compare AMD to its competitors,” just click here to get a free trial of Magnifi Personal.

Instead of having to pore over financial statements and earnings reports yourself, Magnifi Personal can do this kind of research for you. Here’s what it showed me when I asked it to “Compare AMD and NVDA.” Continue reading "Semiconductors Are Heating Up - Here's The Best One" →

Investors: Beware the Ides of March!

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Please enjoy this updated version of weekly commentary from the Reitmeister Total Return newsletter. Steve Reitmeister is the CEO of StockNews.com and Editor of the Reitmeister Total Return.

Click Here to learn more about Reitmeister Total Return

January offered a rip roaring start for stock investors. The +6.2% result for S&P 500 (SPY) barely scratches the surface on how Risk On the month was versus the generous gains for many of 2022’s most beaten down growth stocks.

The party continued when the calendar first flipped to February. But then investors got served a series of far too hot inflation reports that reminded them the Fed’s fight was far from over. From there stocks headed lower with a -5% drop from the February peak to the current valley.

This sets up for a very interesting month of March with many potential catalysts on the calendar that could have stocks racing higher again… or more likely breaking back into bearish territory.

Let’s dig in deeper on the current market landscape to get our portfolios ready for what lies ahead.

Market Commentary

The best way to set the backdrop for the February sell off is by reminding everyone of this equation:

Higher Rates on the Way (5%+)

+

Higher Rates in Place til at Least End of 2023

+

6-12 months of lagged economic impact

+

Already weak economic readings

=

Fertile soil to create recession and thus extension of the bear market with lower lows on the way. Continue reading "Investors: Beware the Ides of March!" →

Why Warren Buffett Just Made a Huge Mistake

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Editor’s Note: Our experts here at INO.com cover a lot of investing topics and great stocks every week. To help you make sense of it all, every Wednesday we’re going to pick one of those stocks and use Magnifi Personal to compare it with its peers or competitors. Here we go…

Sometime in the third quarter of last year, legendary investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK-A) took a $4 billion stake in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSM), the Taiwanese contract chipmaker.

With TSM being the world’s largest and most valuable semiconductor fabricator with chips in most high-tech equipment the world over, and with Warren Buffett’s reputation for making extremely savvy investments, lots of people took notice.

But just a few months later, Buffett seems to have said “never mind” and sold more than 85% of his stake.

We have no insight into Buffett’s thinking, but it does seem odd for a buy-and-hold value investor to sell a great company that is so cheap. TSM is a well-run business with wide competitive moats and big profits. Yet, the stock is at a discount to its peers, at 17 times forward earnings.

By comparison, its rival Intel Corp. (INTC) — thanks to its crashing profits — has a price-to-earnings ratio (p/e) in excess of 60 times. And the company just slashed its dividend.

So, we thought it would be interesting to compare TSM to INTC using the Magnifi Personal compare function. Comparing two or more stocks has never been easier than with Magnifi Personal. All you had to do was type “Compare TSM and INTC” and Magnifi Personal showed us this:

Compare TSM and INTC

This is an example of a response using Magnifi Personal. This image is not a recommendation or individual advice. Please see bottom disclaimer for additional information, including INO.com’s relationship with Magnifi. Continue reading "Why Warren Buffett Just Made a Huge Mistake" →