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Goodbye "T-Bill and Chill," Hello Dividend Stocks
The “higher for longer” interest rate environment is nearing its end. The Federal Reserve is widely expected this week to join other central banks, including the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, in cutting rates after generational high US inflation has receded back toward the Fed’s 2% target.
Great Expectations
Narratives have always had the power to drive markets. For stocks, few narratives are more compelling than those about new technologies, innovations or business models that can produce tremendous profits growth for the foreseeable future.
A Q&A with Portfolio Manager Daniel Kane
Dan, happy 16-year Artisan anniversary. You joined Artisan during the ’08-’09 financial crisis. I’m sure you have some great stories to tell from those days. What was it like to start your Artisan career at that time?
Vroom, Vroom, Vroom!
Did you hear that sound? That was the sound of Vroom’s engine shutting down. If you’re not familiar with the name, Vroom, was, an online-only used car retailer, which along with Carvana and several other upstarts, aimed to disrupt the incumbent “old-school” auto retailing model. With the announcement that Vroom is winding down its e-commerce operations, we looked back at our Q2 2021 portfolio letter. In it, we compared the business of Vroom to one of the incumbents, AutoNation, through the lens of our three margin of safety investment criteria: business economics, financial condition and valuation.
At the time, both businesses were valued at roughly the same market value, approximately $5.5bn, so we posed the question: if you had to pick one of these two businesses to buy, which would you choose?
The Case for a Dedicated Allocation to Mid Caps
In our previous blog post “Narrow Leadership Creates Opportunity”, we highlighted the attractive valuations of US mid-cap stocks, which are at their cheapest levels relative to large caps in over 20 years. As value investors, we distinctly understand the importance of starting-point valuations for forward returns, however you don’t have to be a value investor to appreciate the asset class’s appeal.
Since 1979, the Russell Midcap® Index has outperformed both the Russell 1000® and 2000® indices (Exhibit 1) on an annualized basis by 0.8 percentage points and 1.9 percentage points, respectively. While that may seem small, the power of compounding can result in large differences as one’s time horizon expands.Read More
Narrow Leadership Creates Opportunity
The US equity market’s narrow leadership in 2023 is well chronicled, but it’s nearly impossible to overstate. The “Magnificent Seven”, as the largest seven US stocks have been dubbed, have dominated YTD equity returns—contributing, in effect, 100% of the S&P 500 Index’s total return (through October).
These seven stocks have returned on average 84%, compared to -3% for the “S&P 493”, and more than half of S&P 500 stocks have generated negative returns. In fact, the equal-weight S&P 500® Index is lagging the market-cap weighted S&P 500 by the most since 1998 as the S&P 500 Index is up over 10%, while the equal-weighted S&P 500 was down ~2% through October.Read More
The Folly of Forecasting
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future”
—Yogi Berra
Given it’s that time of year when Wall Street’s market strategists trot out their year ahead outlooks, we thought we might share our thoughts on the value of forecasting or perhaps the lack thereof. If the following sampling of prior year outlooks for CY2022 are any gauge, we doubt next year’s predictions are worth the paper they’re printed on.
Got Dividends?
If you’re of a certain age you’ll probably recall those Got Milk? commercials that were omnipresent in the mid-1990s. It was one of the all-time greatest ad campaigns, becoming a cultural touchstone. Seeing as milk consumption per capita in the US has been decreasing for at least 20 years, the milk producing industry might want to consider dusting off its old playbook. Though not entirely clear why Americans are drinking less milk, the decline is at least partially explained by an aging population.
Demographics might be hurting milk consumption, but aging populations in the US and other major economies are a distinct tailwind for income-producing securities, including dividend-paying stocks.
Finding Value in Disruption
Disrupted. Is there a better word to describe the past 12 months? Disrupted lives. Disrupted routines. Disrupted travel. Disrupted work. Disrupted education. Disrupted supply chains. Disrupted markets.
Investing Amid a Rising Range of Outcomes
The Q1 market selloff was broad-based and intense, fueled by deep uncertainty about the pandemic’s true threat. In our view, the market did little to discriminate among individual firms, preferring to re-rate sectors given the short timeframe, rapid price action and lack of information.
Of course, our process is built to capitalize on market dislocations, when fear and uncertainty dominate, as is the case in our current environment. But we are also vigilantly risk-aware. This is where a thoughtful and repeatable process makes all the difference.