Research

Level Set: The Times They Are A-Changin’

Making short-term calls on the market is a fool’s game. Anyone who does it regularly will spend meaningful time in all four quadrants of the 2×2 grid (bullish and right, bullish and wrong, bearish and right, bearish and wrong). However, right or wrong, all investors should incorporate and evaluate data as it changes, to avoid

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Semiconductors: The Triple-Breaking Putt?

In many ways the semiconductor industry is a microcosm for the broader market. The stocks have rallied meaningfully despite deteriorating fundamentals because they had underperformed so dramatically last year.  History would suggest estimates could be 10-20% too high for many stocks, as there really is not a lot of ample precedent for a “soft-landing” in

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Level Set – Style Envy, Marriage Material, and Pause Is the New Cut

With a backdrop of an “eroding but not imploding economy”, we contend there are two ways to outperform. One, we recommend owning cheap cyclicals with low expectations where there can be substantial balance sheet repair even in a slowing economy. Two, we like stocks that can grow through this declining part of the economic cycle,

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Level Set – Availability Heuristic, International Consensus and US Ideas

Several investors in our meetings last week seemed surprised that the market did not sell off harder after the jobs report nine days ago. Our initial thought was that the clearly strong report would cause a big market pullback and be interpreted as hawkish. But earlier last week, the relatively muted response (the S&P500 was

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Initiating a Dividend Is a Good Idea

Over the last two decades, an average of 20 companies initiate a dividend each year, though fewer have initiated dividends over the last decade.  Following annual meetings and board authorizations early in the calendar year, far more dividend initiations occur in February than any other month during the calendar year.  Hence, we thought analyzing dividend

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VIDEO – Do You Have The Energy?

Click here to watch the video We have recommended that our clients overweight their exposure to energy stocks since we started Trivariate Research in 2021. After a huge run of outperformance, many of the investors we speak to are wondering if it is time to take profits. The recent disconnect between energy stocks and oil

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Level Set – Industry Ideas and What We Are Watching

We have been communicating our year-ahead outlook to dozens of investors around the country over the last few weeks and wanted to summarize our top ideas, pushback and what we are watching in today’s Level Set. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, our view is that the economy, and therefore corporate earnings,

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