long-term investing

The S&P 500 Has Been Draining Investors Since 2005

 

When people buy shares in an Index Fund, they assume that they are buying shares in the largest companies available in the United States. You look at Apple, see its $700 billion market capitalization, compare it to the 4% allocation in the S&P 500, and figure it sounds about right. And for much of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, this was true. But in 2005, the S&P 500 shifted from selecting stocks based on market capitalization to selecting stocks based on a market capitalization with a formula that takes into account the free float of the stock.

The consequence is this: Those precious businesses with high insider ownership do not become nearly as represented in the S&P 500 as the market cap of the stocks should suggest. There are 38 stocks that are underweighted in the S&P 500 compared to what the weighting would be if the … Read the rest of this article!

Investing On The Eve Of Crisis

 

Lately, I’ve been doing some back-testing to try and find good answers to the following: (1) What if someone invested a lump sum in 2007 right before the financial crisis, and (2) what if that investor paid an unusually high premium for the stock even during a period of high valuations? It’s been my way of challenging the Benjamin Graham thesis that investors should focus on getting the price above all else. I wanted to test scenarios to see what happens if treated quality as your primary concern, and regarded price as a secondary matter (you can never truly get past “price matters” because paying something like 50x earnings for Coca-Cola in 1998 will take 25 years to burn off, but you can test what happens when you pay 25x earnings for a high-quality stock instead of 20x earnings.)

My testing gave me renewed appreciation for the likes of Hershey, … Read the rest of this article!

Blue-Chip Stocks With Low Dividend Yields

 

Hershey stock has come down 15% since the Christmastime period when I wrote about it being overvalued. The price currently sits at $93 per share (down from the January high of $111). I would classify the current price as high end of fair value. Many people will look to the 2.3% dividend yield and conclude that it is too low to meet their needs.

I certainly get that. If you have a plan to live off dividend income within the next ten years, you are going to receive much higher checks if you buy Chevron at $105 per share, lock in a starting yield of 4%, and reinvest those dividend payments until the time comes when you need the cash.

But, over super long periods of time, companies like Hershey will have the best dividend growth rates of all because people eat chocolate in bad times, ordinary times, and good … Read the rest of this article!