Over the last month or so, market fears and uncertainty have centered primarily around global trade. In July and August, one of the most affected pockets of the economy was the tech sector, with particular bearishness bearing down on semiconductor stocks. As measured by the iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX), that industry is down about 5.5% since peaking in early June. More →
The Trump administration’s aggressive trade policies with its partners have had global markets on edge for months. And even as headway is being made with Mexico, and pressure is intensifying on Canada to sign the agreement to redo NAFTA by the end of the month, and talks continue with the European Union, concerns and worries persist in particular over how quickly any kind of deal can or will be made with China, America’s largest trade partner. Those concerns have kept pressure on global markets, which also means that stocks in industries that are the most directly impacted by tariffs have experienced the greatest volatility. Stocks in the auto industry, or related to it, for example are among the ones that have seen the biggest swings in price.
BorgWarner Inc. (BWA) is a good example. While the stock is down about 13.3% year-to-date, it’s actually down a little over 28% since reaching an all-time high in mid-January. I first wrote about this stock a month ago, with the stock at practically the same price it is at right now. That is one of the things that makes the stock interesting right now; while trade war fears have persisted since early spring, the stock has stabilized since July in the mid-$40 range. That has opened an interesting technical opportunity on a fundamentally very solid stock, since the longer the stabilization range holds, the more likely it is to break out of it and rally back to the upside.
BWA’s fundamental profile is better than many of its brethren in the Auto Components industry, with good cash flow, conservative debt levels and operating margins that have actually improved over the last year despite increasing price pressures. Those pressures include exposure to foreign trade risk, but that is an element that up to this point has yet to be actually be felt. It is true that the stock isn’t immune to the potential long-term effects of trade conflict, but it is also true that most of those effects for now are inferred. If Canada yields as many seem to expect to pressure from the U.S. and from Mexico to join their agreement, look for the market to respond positively, with momentum swinging in favor of the Trump administration versus the E.U. and China. Either way, at its current prices, BWA offers an incredibly attractive value proposition right now.
BorgWarner Inc. is engaged in providing technology solutions for combustion, hybrid and electric vehicles. The Company’s segments include Engine and Drivetrain. The Engine segment’s products include turbochargers, timing devices and chains, emissions systems and thermal systems. The Engine segment develops and manufactures products for gasoline and diesel engines, and alternative powertrains. The Drivetrain segment’s products include transmission components and systems, all-wheel drive (AWD) torque transfer systems and rotating electrical devices. The Company’s products are manufactured and sold across the world, primarily to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of light vehicles (passenger cars, sport-utility vehicles (SUVs), vans and light trucks). The Company’s products are also sold to other OEMs of commercial vehicles (medium-duty trucks, heavy-duty trucks and buses) and off-highway vehicles (agricultural and construction machinery and marine applications. BWA’s current market cap is $9.4 billion.
Here’s a look at the stock’s latest technical chart.
To some people, Mad Money host Jim Cramer is an investing guru. And he certainly draws a fair amount of attention; not only does he host his own show on CNBC every weeknight, but he is also a regular on the station during the early pre-market and opening hours of each trading day, holding forth on his view of current events and their effect on the market. More →
If you pay much attention to market news, most of the focus revolves around the segments of the economy that are performing the best right now. It’s a classic “follow the herd” mentality that can actually work pretty when the economy is healthy and growing, but it also has its drawbacks. More →
Over the last several years, one of the biggest benchmarks the Fed has used to evaluate the need to raise, lower or maintain their interest rate policy has been the employment rate. Every month, the market seems to hold its breath as a new set of unemployment and salary data is made available and everybody gets to wonder what the information means for the current economic climate and, therefore for interest rates. More →
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Oshkosh Corporation (OSK), a mid-cap stock in the Heavy Machinery industry that is trading at a steep discount right now, and that I think looks like a pretty interesting value-based opportunity. The entire industry is pretty depressed right now, and you don’t have to look much further than the biggest names in the industry More →
Since mid-July, I’ve written twice previously about Western Digital Corporation (WDC). The first time I wrote about them, the stock was priced around $75 per share, and my analysis showed that was a nice price for a good company that had hit an all-time high at around $107 just a few months before. On August 9, I wrote about them again, because the stock had dropped even lower, to around $66 per share, but now also had its most recent earnings report to add to the mix. At a price that was about 12% lower than just a few weeks before, and with a terrific fundamental profile, what had been a “nice’ price for the stock was now looking like a “great” price. Fast forward a month, and as of this writing the stock is now below $58 per share. The fundamentals haven’t changed in four weeks, but in the last week or so the stock picked up some more negative momentum and is pushing to even deeper lows.
So what’s been driving the latest plunge, which has driven the stock down a little over 23% since my first post in July? Sometimes, the stock market makes sense – or at least, you can tie what a stock is doing at a given time to specific news, or to something about the underlying company that has some semblance of logic to it. Often, though, it’s downright maddening. I’ll admit that when I first saw WDC drop below $70 I struggled to tie it to anything concrete. I’ve kept digging, and while I think I’ve found a couple of threads to tie the decline to, the logic behind one of them makes me shake my head.
Shortly after my July post, WDC published its latest quarterly earnings report. The numbers were good across the board – every fundamental measurement I use in my analysis remained very healthy or improved, including the company’s Book Value. It was right after that report, however that the stock started to drop. At the same time, WDC’s only real competitor in the HDD space, Seagate Technology Plc (STX) released their own earnings report. STX’s report reflected a reality that seems to be scaring investors about either company, because sales of HDD storage continues to decline. In the consumer space, in particular, HDD clearly looks like a dying breed.
The picture for NAND and SSD storage – memory that is built on solid-state technology, and what has increasingly become the preferred storage type in the consumer market, including for personal computers of just about any type, tablets, and pretty much any type of mobile device – also appears murky, and that is another element that is working against the stock’s price right now. Multiple recent reports from industry analysts indicate that pricing for NAND memory is dropping amid concerns about oversupply as well as increasing competition in the space. That puts pressure on the second tier of WDC’s business strategy; the first tier continues to provide HDD storage to the enterprise and cloud storage market (where the larger capacities available from traditional drives is needed), while the second included the 2016 acquisition of SanDisk to put them at the front of pack in the consumer-driven NAND and SSD market.
The truth, of course is that with more companies like Micron Technology (MU), Intel Corporation (INTC) and others making forays into the space, it isn’t a given WDC will maintain their leadership position in this segment. Intensifying competition, along with high supply clearly is also playing a role right now in the stock’s decline and is a major centerpiece of every argument I’m finding against paying attention to this space right now. That is actually one of the biggest reasons that i continue to think the opportunity with the stock is even better today than it was a month ago.
Competition in any business segment is a normal thing, and while that increases the pressure on any company, a good management team doesn’t shy away from it. I really like WDC’s strategy, and I think that in the long run they’re doing the right things to keep their business growing. I’m even willing to concede that pricing pressures in the NAND and SSD space could impact the company’s earnings in the near term; but I think the market is over-selling that risk to the point that the stock’s incredibly deep discount now – more than 46% below its March high – is making the stock an undeniable bargain. Even the analysts that are writing scary predictions right now are putting the stock’s long-term target price at around $75, which is about 30% above the stock’s current price, and not too far from my own target, as you’ll see below.
Western Digital Corporation (WDC) is a developer, manufacturer and provider of data storage devices and solutions that address the needs of the information technology (IT) industry and the infrastructure that enables the proliferation of data in virtually every industry. The Company’s portfolio of offerings addresses three categories: Datacenter Devices and Solutions (capacity and performance enterprise hard disk drives (HDDs), enterprise solid state drives (SSDs), datacenter software and system solutions); Client Devices (mobile, desktop, gaming and digital video hard drives, client SSDs, embedded products and wafers), and Client Solutions (removable products, hard drive content solutions and flash content solutions). The Company develops and manufactures a portion of the recording heads and magnetic media used in its hard drive products. WDC’s current market cap is $16.8 billion.
Here’s a look at the stock’s latest technical chart.
Over the last four years, one of the most interesting segments of the economy to pay attention to has been the energy sector. That doesn’t mean following the biggest players in the the oil industry, although there have been some really interesting investing opportunities among those companies over the last couple of years. It also means keeping track of “energy-related” stocks. Like the smart entrepreneurs during the California Gold Rush More →
Last week the Trump administration announced it had made a deal with Mexico to rework the two countries’ two-and-a-half decades long trade agreement. There is a third party in that agreement, of course, since NAFTA originally included the U.S., Mexico and Canada. The move has clearly put more pressure on the Canadian government to compromise, although to this point it doesn’t appear much more progress on that front has been made.
Tensions between the U.S. and Canada have revolved primarily around tariffs on autos, although other goods have been involved as well. Concern around trade issues between the two countries have weighed on Canadian stocks that rely heavily on partnerships with U.S. business. Magna International (MGA) is a good example; since late May, when the stock hit an all-time high at around $67.50, the stock has lost about 25% of its value. Trade issues between the U.S. and Canada aren’t over, and that means that momentum for stocks like MGA could continue to be mostly bearish; at the very least, investors who are interested in this stock should expect to see plenty of volatility in the weeks and months ahead as the market decides what direction the stock should follow.
Over the last month alone, the stock has dropped about 10%, after the company missed estimates in its latest earnings report. That pushed the stock into an even more decidedly bearish near-term profile, as the stock crossed below its 200-day moving average line. This moving average acts as an important visual indicator of a stock’s long-term trend for most technicians, and so a move below that line is usually taken as a clear sign the stock’s current trend is going to keep moving down. Over the last couple of weeks, however, the stock has shown some interesting resilience, finding support around $52 per share. Despite the market’s reaction to their latest report, the truth is that the earnings picture is actually pretty good for MGA, and the overall fundamentals for this company remain quite good.
The company’s earnings report did include tariffs as a risk element in the third and fourth quarters of the year, and that is probably another big reason the stock has continued to drop. I think it’s worth pointing out, however that the U.S. – Mexico announcement took the market by surprise and wasn’t expected; to me that means that for all the posturing that has gone on (and continues) between the countries involved, it’s really all about what happens behind closed doors. I think Canada it’s ultimately going to be in the best interest of both the U.S. and Canada to bring all three American trading partners back together again, and so most of the bearish sentiment around stocks like MGA is really just creating good opportunities to pick up some great companies at very nice valuation levels.
Magna International Inc. (Magna) is a global automotive supplier. The Company’s segments are North America, Europe, Asia, Rest of World, and Corporate and Other. The Company’s product capabilities include producing body, chassis, exterior, seating, powertrain, electronic, active driver assistance, vision, closure, and roof systems and modules, as well as vehicle engineering and contract manufacturing. The Company has over 320 manufacturing operations and approximately 100 product development, engineering and sales centers in over 30 countries. It provides a range of body, chassis and engineering solutions to its original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers. It has capabilities in powertrain design, development, testing and manufacturing. It offers bumper fascia systems, exterior trim and modular systems. It offers exterior and interior mirror systems. It offers sealing, trim, engineered glass and module systems. It offers softtops, retractable hardtops, modular tops and hardtops. MGA has a current market cap of about $18.2 billion.
Here’s a look at the stock’s latest technical chart.
When most folks start looking for opportunities to invest their hard-earned and saved dollars, they usually gravitate to the stocks that they hear about the most. It makes sense – most of us have a limited amount of time to pay attention to the market, and so we tend rely on the brief snippets of information we can glean by catching a few minutes of market news on CNBC or Bloomberg or by surfing market headlines on the Web. That usually means that if an industry or segment of the economy isn’t getting a lot of attention from the talking heads and “experts” that dominate market media, it isn’t going to catch even the slightest whiff from the average investor.
Agriculture stocks are one of those industries that everybody seems to understand plays an important role in the ebb and flow of the economy, but that nobody really cares to pay a lot of attention to. Let’s face it: these are companies that just don’t have the same kind of buzz or cool, cutting-edge appeal of the tech industry or the wide, volatile swings of other sectors like energy, biotech, or pharmaceuticals.
Yesterday I saw an interesting report that indicated the average age of farmers in the United States is advancing in troubling ways. With an average age of 58.3 years and climbing, the implication is that as the latest generation of farmers retire or pass away, the remaining workforce isn’t going to be large enough to serve the massive need associated with being able to feed and clothe the world. That isn’t just America’s responsibility, of course, but the same study indicates that the trend of advancing farmer age is consistent in other developed countries around the world.
The interesting side note to this trend as an investor is that even if the worst-case scenario doesn’t emerge, pressure on the agriculture industry to keep up with demand should provide some good long-term opportunities for the companies that can help the entire sector stage a comeback. While agriculture has been “out of favor” with investors in general for decades, this could be on of the best opportunities to find really great value in the years ahead.
Another trend that has been gaining a lot of traction throughout the world, and that is almost sure to have an impact on the farming sector is cannabis legalization. No matter whether you’re talking about the legalization of cannabis for recreational or medicinal purposes, or both, the odds are excellent that some of the really terrific growth opportunities will come from stocks that focus a significant portion of their business on cannabis. Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (SMG) may not be exclusively focused on cannabis – they are more generally known as the company that makes the fertilizer you probably buy at Lowe’s or Home Depot – but through their Hawthorne Gardening Company, they provide products to help artisanal farmers grow cannabis. It’s a large enough portion of their current operations that a lot of the attention the stock has been drawing in the market lately has come from discussions about marijuana.
Depending on the measurement you use, the stock could be quite undervalued right now. The fact is that the stock began a strong downward trend in January of this year, falling from a peak around $110 to its current level around $75. That’s a decline of 46% over the last eight months. The stock has some fundamental elements; some that suggest a significant amount of strength in their business and management approach, and others that raise some red flags. To some extent, that means that value for this company is in the eye of the beholder. I’ll cover the numbers that I think are the most interesting and useful, and outline the parameters around the stock’s price action that I think could offer investors a good reward: risk opportunity.
The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (Scotts Miracle-Gro) is a manufacturer and marketer of branded consumer lawn and garden products. The Company’s segments include Global Consumer. In North America, its brands include Scotts and Turf Builder lawn and grass seed products; Miracle-Gro, Nature’s Care, Scotts, LiquaFeed and Osmocote gardening and landscape products; and Ortho, Roundup, Home Defense and Tomcat branded insect control, weed control and rodent control products. In the United Kingdom, its brands include Miracle-Gro plant fertilizers; Roundup, Weedol and Pathclear herbicides; EverGreen lawn fertilizers, and Levington gardening and landscape products. SMG has a current market cap of about $87.4 billion.
Here’s a look at the stock’s latest technical chart.
