Idle Rambling Regarding The US Equity Market -- Not Ready For Prime Time -- July 12, 2019

An e-mail I sent to someone much more knowledgable about the market than I am:

It would be interesting to see an analysis of the type of stocks that folks bought this week.

To some extent, one wonders if folks are finally getting tired of their returns in savings accounts at banks, money market accounts, bonds. Are folks finally throwing in the towel?

Even very, very conservative investors can find very, very good companies with little volatility paying great dividends.

It would be interesting to see if the majority of money that went into the market bought growth stock (little to no dividend but hopes for great appreciation) or value stock (little volatility but safe dividends). [And, yes, I'm using an incorrect definition for growth/value stocks but one gets the idea of what I'm asking.]

The recurrent buzz seems to be that we are headed into a recession; if so, money going into the market this week should have favored value stock (or "safe" stock vs "more speculative" stock).

One way to sort that out, I suppose is to find some "value" mutual funds and some "growth" mutual funds. And see how they did this week.

If both "value" and "growth" did equally well, then it appears everyone simply threw darts at a dartboard.

Let's see what google has to say? The google phrase that was searched:

stock market this week "value" vs "growth" stocks

A screenshot:

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here.  I'm writing a bit more about the market today a) because all-time highs are being reached; b) for the archives to help put the Bakken into perspective; and, c) because I'm bored at the moment.

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Relevant? 

If I had a dime for every time I heard that US shale operators are struggling for free cash flow, I would have a lot of dimes.

To put that in perspective, Netflix has never, never, never had free cash flow. At least that's what I've heard. Next time someone asks whether I would invest in a particular stock, the first question I'm going to ask: what's the free cash flow. NOT!

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Utility Dividends

This is pretty cool.

COP's dividend: 2% ($1.22 annually for a $61-stock); 1.22/61 = 2%

If CVX dividend was 2% of its price, CVX would be trading at: $238/share. CVX annual dividend of $4.76 divided by $238/share = 2%.

CVX closed at $125 today.

A talking head said that COP was the "cheapest" Big Oil stock out there.

My retort: compared to what?

Yes, the P/E for COP is 10 and the P/E for CVX is 17, but if one looks at the dividend ...

Disclaimer: see above.