A roundup of what The Globe and Mail’s market strategist Scott Barlow is reading today on the Web
Credit Suisse research has released its list of top U.S. stock picks, one for each major sector.
Notable names include Stryker Corp. for medical equipment, Honeywell International Inc. for industrials, Oracle Corp. for software and Alphabet Inc. for consumer internet. Full table below,
“@SBarlow_ROB C: Top U.S. stock pick for each major sector” – (table) Twitter
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Citi U.S. equity strategist Tobias Levkovich notes that U.S earnings have met expectations (at least) but forward guidance is a problem (my emphasis),
“Fourth quarter numbers have been fine, with results topping lowered estimates by more than 3.0%. With close to 65% of the S&P 500 having reported 4Q18, sales have increased 6.7%, tailing off from better revenue gains in prior quarters, but still respectable. Interestingly, the IT and Materials sectors posted the weakest top-line pickups, and Energy reported nearly a 100.0% profits jump, beating the rest of the S&P 500 by a wide margin on easy comps. Guidance has been more crucial and unfortunately weak, with downward revisions close to recession levels.”
“@SBarlow_ROB C EPS fine, guidance ‘unfortunately weak’” – (research excerpt) Twitter
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Morgan Stanley has agreed to purchase Alberta-based Solium Capita Inc., a company that provides stock plan administration (I don’t know what that is either) for US$900-million. I don’t see any wider implications here but an influx of foreign money is always welcome,
“Morgan Stanley to purchase Solium Capital for about US$900 million” – BNN Bloomberg
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The Humble Dollar blog is U.S.–based and therefore has a different perspective than Canadian home owners. That warning is necessary because a recent post provided a list of 13 reasons why buying a home could be a bad financial idea, and this point of view will be regarded like kryptonite by most Report on Business readers. Still, it’s a worthwhile piece for those looking to enter the property market at what could be close to a temporary top of the real estate market, if only to test their optimism,
“1.Homeownership isn’t as safe as it feels. A house is a big, leveraged, undiversified bet—arguably riskier than owning a diversified stock portfolio. Yet it doesn’t feel that way. Why not? Partly, it’s familiarity. We look around our house and see the value that’s there. And partly, it’s a money illusion. If we got daily updates on our home’s value, like we do on our stock portfolio, we wouldn’t be nearly so sanguine about our huge real estate wager”
“House Rules” - Humble Dollar
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A Citi report attempts to uncover the world’s most attractive risk-adjusted yields. Domestic investors will have to be careful using this advice in case taxes take away the gains in income,
“The cheapest assets in the world on a z-score basis are equities in Germany and Japan. Cash in the US also screens well. The most expensive assets are nominal bonds in Turkey, Netherlands, and Israel, as well as FX in Brazil.”
“@SBarlow_ROB C: World's most attractive yields” – (research excerpt) Twitter
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Tweet of the Day:
Diversion: “ We mathematically identified the biggest cult movies” – Quartz
Editor’s note: An earlier story misidentified Morgan Stanley as JPMorgan
Scott Barlow