The company we’re recommending in this issue is a diversified conglomerate with investments in insurance, energy, and hospitality. The founders were modestly successful as hotel operators, but they turned out to be world-class capital allocators and business buyers, turning a $100,000+ loan into billions of dollars.
The rhetoric accompanying President Trump’s trade policy strikes some of the same notes that accompanied Richard Nixon’s New Economic Policy in the 1970s. And the effects on the stock market and the overall economy are striking similar notes as well.
On Tuesdays we turn the spotlight outside of Porter & Co. to bring you exclusive access to the research, the thinking, and the investment ideas of the analysts who Porter follows.
No matter what President Trump says, tariffs are not beautiful. They are taxes!
Even worse, they impede the most vitally important economic exchanges, where comparative advantages create tremendous wealth.
Until a few weeks ago, the stock market was trading at the highest prices (measured against earnings) that we’d ever seen before in history. More expensive than 1929. More expensive than 2000. In fact, you had to go all the way back to 1844 (during the first railroad boom) to find a time where stocks were this expensive.
No discovery in the history of science has had a larger impact than that of monoclonal antibodies (“mAbs”) – the laboratory-made proteins that act like precision-guided cruise missiles, targeting a specific molecule in the body. Last year, five of the top 10 best-selling drugs in the world were mAbs, including the number-one best-seller Keytruda, Merck’s cancer therapy that did $29.5 billion in revenue.
We’ve noticed a growing consensus in the financial media that the Big Tech giants are currently trading at cheap valuations following the recent market correction. Given this backdrop, let’s look at how “cheap” these hyperscaler stocks really are… and you might be surprised.
