Investing General Discussion

For those who don't follow non-financial news, Russia has called the UN Security Council to session at 10am to discuss "US Bio-warfare labs" in Ukraine. No one knows what, if anything, they may or may not have discovered in Ukraine but be prepared for possible volatility around this.

Jysin said:

The entire Q1 earnings + forward guides are going to be a real wake-up for companies with Russia exposure. JPM had a report out listing various company exposures to Ukraine / Russia based on digging through financials. Most I glanced were anywhere from 2-10% earnings. Now, we are also talking about physical asset write-offs as Russia has said they are going to sieze anything that is left by foreign business leaving Russia.

We are basically going to have to look at repricing on many stocks. Some will have limited if any exposure, others are going to be eating multi-billion losses.

This, coupled with exploding energy prices, runaway inflation, and the seemingly endless Ukraine conflict leaves me far more bearish than most in this market.

Time will tell.

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Or... this all gets settled next week and we all go back to singing kumbaya. Its a crap shoot right now.

That being said, some companies are more exposed to Russia than others. It is worth investigating.

Blazin and I were discussing portfolio design (among other things the other day) and I wanted to share some of that convo. I am in a unique position in that I manage more than just my own finances. My mom's accounts are not designed the same as my own as she is in a different life stage. Same with my daughter's Custodial account (different as well). Balancing risk with return is quite visible when contrasting the two. My personal accounts are down over 13% from their peak back on Jan 3rd. By contrast FTEC (my largest holding) is down 18% from that date. My use of industrials as a counter to my high growth positions helped mitigate some of those losses. Over the same period my mom's accounts (heavier in fixed income and industrials with some blue chip growth) is only down 6% from its peak.

This shows that portfolio design does work and lower beta stocks which give up some growth are also less susceptible to market downturns. Not immune, but less impacted. And at the same time are continuing to provide dividends as the market goes sideways and down over the last couple of months.

Even if you are 100% indexes, there is nothing wrong with mixing up the indexes a bit. Something like JEPI is down about 10% from the high back at the end of the year, but it mitigates that stop price drop by paying close to a 7% dividend yield.



HDV is another high dividend ETF that actually hit a new high on Monday (due to its XOM/CVX positions) while paying over a 3% dividend yield. HDV is my Mom's largest single holding.





Portfolios are like talent builds in WOW. There is definitely room for customization.

Jysin said:

Even if Putin did a 180 and said "Ooopsie, my bad!" and turned Russian troops back home today, I highly doubt foreign business is just going to jump back into Russian markets. The PR optics are bad enough, let alone the risk associated with Putin still in power.

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Greed > Optics is my bet.

FB now trading with an EPS higher than its PE. $190.21 is the price where PE and EPS are equal ($13.79)

Jysin said:

And just like that, NASDAQ flips red.

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Kamala and friends beating the war drums hard this morning right ahead of the UN Security Council meeting. They are trying to distract from it.

FB bouncing off long term support. That PE below EPS is grabbing some bids. See if the 1% bounce can hold up.

Jysin said:

Old man Biden supposed to be speaking again vs Russia. He is late (as always).

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Supposedly announcing the removal of most favored nation trade status from Russia. Of course, China still keeps theirs.

edit: Not the thread for it.

/wsb ahead of the curve again...