Happy and Healthy New Year As we write our 50th and last Level Set for 2024, we want to pause and wish all of you a Happy and Healthy Holiday Season and a Prosperous New Year. The late, great Bryon Wien, former US Equity Strategist at Morgan Stanley and later at Blackstone, annually published his
While the historical performance of spin-offs are mixed, there is no doubt that management teams are increasingly being advised by law firms and investment bankers about the potential to unlock or create value through spins. Some high profile recent successes, like GE Vernova spun from GE earlier this year can certainly help convince boards and
While the historical performance of spin-offs are mixed, there is no doubt that management teams are increasingly being advised by law firms and investment bankers about the potential to unlock or create value through spins. Some high profile recent successes, like GE Vernova spun from GE earlier this year can certainly help convince boards and
Over the last few weeks, we have analyzed the risk of several investor portfolios and ETFs. One metric we constantly use to assess risk is beta. At Trivariate we use the median of four beta horizons as an attempt to marry near-term conditions with the longer-term market sensitivity of each stock. Nonetheless, betas can change
Two weeks ago, we wrote a note about Costco (Ticker: COST), as it eclipsed 50x price-to-forward earnings (Link). We studied all companies that first eclipsed 50x as a proxy for becoming optically expensive and analyzed subsequent multiples and returns. The odds increasingly become stacked against their success. Today, we studied the opposite – stocks whose
For Healthcare investors, the last few years have been particularly difficult to navigate. Less than 20% of Healthcare stocks have beaten the market over the last two years, the lowest percentage of winners in at least two decades. In fact, on a rolling two-year basis, the equally-weighted Healthcare sector has now experienced its worst performance
Trade Ideas Following the Red Sweep There has been an unbridled risk-on tape over the last few months. In today’s Level Set, we offer buy ideas based on where see recent optimism as likely to continue to be supported by potential catalysts in the first half of 2025, and sell ideas where we are dubious
Optimistic Sentiment We hosted a dinner with several investors last week. The first discussion topic was the view we put forth in last week’s Level Set (see here), where we posited that the market could sell off when Trump is inaugurated on January 20th, 2025. We were curious about sentiment, and found the dinner crowd
There’s Nothing Worse than a Wrong Consensus Bear Nothing is worse than being a consensus bear when the market keeps rallying. Most people know that September is typically a volatile month, and the average September returns are the worst of any month of the year. We flagged it, and so did everyone else. With it
