Bill Cara

A discussion of ‘value’ stocks

If it were up to me — and it’s not — there would be much less promotion of value stocks because a value stock at one point becomes a momentum stock another time.

In any case, CNBC’s Kelly Evans blogged about it today: https://link.cnbc.com/public/22324981

To keep investing simple, I look for Growth or Income. A mixture of the two in a portfolio might be called a ‘blended’ portfolio.

Too often a growth stock is defined as such simply because it happens to be on a high momentum run in the market rather than, as it should be, the stock of a company that has growing assets, earnings, cash flow, and dividends. At times, when those companies have declining stock prices, the moniker is switched from growth to value.

Is any of this meaningful? I think not.

What is meaningful is if a company is high-quality based on a strong balance sheet and operating fundamentals relative to its industry peer group, and then offered in the market at a substantially lower price to what it had been trading for during recent times.

Really, that’s all that matters. The rest is just a part of an ongoing discussion of people who are paid to entertain you or sell stocks to you.

It’s up to you to ignore the sales and entertainment discussions and stick to what is meaningful.