TEF

Fave Five (6/8/2018): Deep Discounts

expectingalpha Stocks , , , , ,

Fave Five (6/8/2018)

Our Fave Five essentially represents a listing of stocks with favorable short term total return forecasts (1 year, according to Analyst Consensus Estimates, or ACE) combined with strong long-term return forecasts and good/excellent quality rankings. The median 1-year ACE total return forecast is 12.0%.

Three weeks ago we went “bottom fishing.” This week, we’ll do the same thing but stop before hitting bottom. In this case, as we stacked up the companies with the highest 52-week total return expectations (ACE) and required a minimum MANIFEST Rank of 80, audits on a number of the leaders crushed them. Stocks that we’ve previously featured tanked and the 5-7 highest ranked stocks failed to make the list on further scrutiny.

The Long and Short of This Week’s Fave Five

Long & Short Term Perspectives. (June 8, 2018) Projected Annual Return (PAR): Long term return forecast based on fundamental analysis and five year time horizon. Quality Ranking: Percentile ranking of composite that includes financial strength, earnings stability and relative growth & profitability. 52-Week Position: Position on scale between 52-week low price and 52-week target price. VL Low Total Return (VLLTR): Low total return forecast based on 3-5 year price targets via Value Line Investment Survey. Morningstar P/FV: Ratio of current price to fundamentally-based fair value via www.morningstar.com S&P P/FV: Current price-to-fair value ratio via Standard & Poor’s. 1-Year ACE Outlook: Total return forecast based on analyst consensus estimates for 1-year target price combined with current yield. The data is ranked (descending order) based on this criterion. 1-Year S&P Outlook: 1-year total return forecast based on S&P 1-year price target.

Fave Five Legacy (Tracking Portfolio)

The relative/excess return for the Fave Five tracking portfolio is +2.8% since inception.

The absolute annualized rate of return is 18.2%.

Tracking Dashboard: https://www.manifestinvesting.com/dashboards/public/fave-five

Value Line Low Total Return Screen (6/21/2013)

expectingalpha Stocks , , , ,

Companies of Interest

Both CVS (CVS) and Walgreen (WAG) have low total return forecasts of 8.5% during this week’s update. But this week’s nod/tribute is to those of you who have suggested that it was feasible that Rite-Aid (RAD) with its lowest-in-field quality ranking had a viable chance of recovering and cited a change in management that has steadily been working to improve conditions over the last few years. Although still a work in progress, profitability appears to have found thin black ink. Rite-Aid is now at $3.00 up from lows of $0.20 (+1400% since 2009) and some turnaround speculators have been rewarded.

The three companies with the highest fundamental and technical rankings are; Telefonica (TEF), Gentex (GNTX) and Qualcomm (QCOM).

Materially Stronger: Arris Group (ARRS), LKQ (LKQ), Rite Aid (RAD)

Materially Weaker: F5 Networks (FFIV), Nokia (NOK), Frontier (FTR), Cincinnati Bell (CBB), Telephone & Data Systems (TDS), U.S. Cellular (USM)

Market Barometers

The median Value Line low total return (VLLTR) forecast is now 6.2%, down from 6.3% last week.

In a normal distribution, the mean plus or minus one standard deviation covers 68.2% of the data. If you use two standard deviations, then you will cover approx. 95.5%, and three will earn you 99.7% coverage. The median low total return forecast since 1999 is 8.5% with a standard deviation of 3.5%. This means that approximately 70% of the time the low total return forecast will be between 5-12%. 96% of the time, the overall low total return forecast will be between a low of 1.5% and a high of 15.5%.

The excursions “north” of 20% (i.e. March 2009) lie outside the 99.5% probability range, because a three standard deviation swing to the upside would be 19%. This is one of the reasons that March 2009 was a back-up-the-truck, perhaps once in a lifetime buying opportunity.