John Dorfman Columns category, Page 7
John Dorfman: Quidel, Logitech candidates for January Bounce
Punished for their sins, real or imagined, a few hundred stocks are down this year despite a rising market. Investors are busily selling these unfortunate stocks, establishing tax losses that can offset their gains elsewhere. In effect, the losers get kicked while they are down. Some have fallen to what...
John Dorfman: Loews, Graham Holdings are selling below book value
Sure, the stock market’s on the expensive side. But some stocks still are selling for less than book value (essentially, corporate net worth). Why should you care? Because, despite skeptics who say book value is an obsolete measure, buying stocks below book value can be a highly profitable strategy. Beginning...
John Dorfman: AMC may be ugly, but it’s winning Keynesian beauty contest
John Maynard Keynes, a canny investor as well as a famous British economist, wrote in 1936 that the stock market resembles a beauty contest, with a twist. The goal, he said, is not to select the contestants who are “really the prettiest,” but rather those whom the other judges will...
John Dorfman: Purloined Portfolio aims to steal from managers I respect
If you’re going to steal, steal from the best,” Woody Allen once said. Once a year, I try to do that. My annual Purloined Portfolio features ideas I lift from other money managers. My Purloined Portfolio from last year returned 45.9%, thanks mostly to gains in Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL, idea...
John Dorfman: Ethan Allen, Snap-on have dividend appeal
When clients ask me to emphasize dividends, they usually mean dividend yield. The yield is a stock’s dividend divided by its price. A $50 stock paying a $2 dividend annually has a yield of 4%, and dividend-conscious investors often look for a yield in that zone or higher. I gently...
John Dorfman: Micron and ViacomCBS are on the Casualty List
The stock market came in like a lamb and went out like a hyena in the third quarter. Gains in July and August were followed by a slide in September. When the dust settled, some stocks had been knocked down to what I consider attractive levels. Identifying such stocks is...
John Dorfman: My buy-sell ratings on the 20 largest stocks
You won’t find Facebook or Procter & Gamble in the portfolios I run. But that doesn’t mean I never think about them. Once a year in this column, I give my “buy” or “avoid” opinion on the 20 largest stocks. Here are my latest ratings, from the very largest (Apple)...
John Dorfman: A 97% gain wins my short-selling contest
Providing after-school online tutoring to students in China used to seem like a good business. Not anymore. For much of 2020, Gaotu Techedu Inc., one of the companies in this field, had been dogged by allegations that it had inflated its financial results. Then in July 2021 came the final...
John Dorfman: Insiders buy at Terminex, Westlake
Ever have a problem with mice or termites in your house? If so, there’s a decent chance you called Terminex. Terminex Global Holdings Inc. (TMX), based in Memphis, Tenn., is the largest pest control company in the U.S. It has 2.8 million customers in 47 states and 22 countries. Brett...
John Dorfman: My fat profit margin stocks returned 78% in 2020; here’s another 5 to try
It’s been a great year for stocks with fat profit margins. Five fat-margin stocks that I recommended on September 7, 2020 have returned 78.6% through September 3 of this year. Gamco Investors Inc. (GBL), Mario Gabelli’s investment company, led the way with a 136% return. A year ago, I wrote...
John Dorfman: Lab Corp., 4 other stocks boast value, momentum
Twice a year in this column, I hunt for stocks that seem to possess both value and momentum. Even though the market has hit records lately, it’s still possible to find stocks that have both qualities. Here are five I recommend. Each of them has beaten the Standard & Poor’s...
John Dorfman: 5 stocks that look good based on cash flow
If you were invisible, the perfect industrial spy, you could lurk in a company’s headquarters and watch every dollar coming in and going out. That would give you an excellent fix on the company’s cash flow. And cash flow, many investors believe, is a great measure of a company’s health....
John Dorfman: Ben Graham might favor these 4 stocks if he were alive
Eighty-seven years after he published his seminal work, Benjamin Graham remains the patron saint of value investors. Graham – a hedge fund manager, Columbia University professor and author – believed that a stock’s price orbits its “intrinsic value” the way a planet orbits the sun. It may get further away...
John Dorfman: Sane Portfolio advanced 47% last year
Most of my clients want medium-risk portfolios. A few tilt more to the conservative side. To find stocks for the more conservative ones, a tool I use is the Sane Portfolio. This is a hypothetical collection of a dozen stocks that seem solid to me from several vantage points. To...
John Dorfman: Allstate, PulteGroup show value plus growth
In a romantic partner, would you prefer good looks or intelligence? Silly question. Of course, you’d like both. Yet in the stock market, investors often feel they can go for value or growth but not both. Sometimes you can find both in a single stock. And once a year, I...
John Dorfman: The market is expensive, but some stocks aren’t
Clients and prospects often say to me, “With the market at all-time highs, isn’t this a bad time to invest?” They are worrying about the wrong thing. If you don’t invest when the market is at an all-time high, you will miss some excellent returns. A study by J.P. Morgan...
John Dorfman: Netgear, AutoNation appear seemingly cheap based on this ratio
Suppose you had the opportunity to buy a big, lumbering company with huge sales but slender profits. Would you do it? You would if you thought you could turn the company around. Perhaps you could improve the product, raise prices, cut expenses or find other ways to improve those puny...
John Dorfman: The Perfect 10 Portfolio returned 69% last year
To call a beautiful woman a “Perfect 10” these days would be considered chauvinistic and outdated. But my Perfect 10 Portfolio is still looking good. This is a hypothetical portfolio of stocks, each of which sells for 10 times the company’s earnings per share. Historically, most stocks sell for about...
John Dorfman: Thor and KB Home are on the casualty list
You might think only a bumbling company could see its stock decline in the second quarter. After all, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index returned 8.55% for the three months through June. But it isn’t so. About a third of all stocks were down in the quarter. Some are good...
John Dorfman: What Edson Gould would say about stocks, if he were alive
People who are fretting about the Federal Reserve’s latest comments probably never heard of Edson Gould. Gould, a famed stock analyst from the 1940s into the 1970s, tried to devise an answer to investors’ perennial question: When should you take defensive measures if the Fed is tightening credit conditions? He...
John Dorfman: Gentex, Logitech show high profit, low debt
Your neighbor is playing stock-market roulette by buying the stocks he hears about on Reddit’s “Wall Street Bets” forum. You know he may double his money – or lose half of it – in a matter of days. But perhaps frenzied speculation isn’t your style. Is there a sounder way?...
John Dorfman: These are the stocks I own for my clients
Once a year, I devote this column to a rundown on the stocks I own. Here are the stocks in the model portfolio of Dorfman Value Investments. I own each of them personally and for the majority of my clients. Infrastructure Bipartisan cooperation sometimes seems no more real than the...
John Dorfman: Where the insiders are buying stock lately, you might want to, too
“Eating your own cooking” is a good sign in the stock market. When a company’s executives are buying its shares, it often pays for investors to follow suit. Lately, there’s not a lot of buying, and it’s happening at companies you might never have heard of. Here’s a peek at...
John Dorfman: 6 stocks I would shun
Wall Street issues about eight buy recommendations for every sell recommendation. But at times, knowing when to sell is the most important skill in the stock market. Here are six stocks I think you should sell now, if you own them. If you don’t own them, I’d avoid them. And...
John Dorfman: Regeneron, Weis Markets head up the Do Nothing Club
Stocks that soar or plunge get all the attention. But sometimes the best buys are in stocks that have done nothing for a while. That’s why, each year around this time, I write about my Do Nothing Club. Members of this club are stocks that are not far from where...
