Always trying to take the investing road less traveled

I didn't write on yesterday's jobless claims data because year end seasonal adjustment issues always tar the figures. And, I'll resume with the weekly Friday summaries next Friday.

When it comes to investing client money I prefer to look off the beaten path down the road less traveled by investors on hopes of course that eventually it is more traveled. As we enter 2025, here are a few investments of ours of note that I will mention. We remain long oil and gas stocks with gas finally getting some love, via the European majors like Shell and BP, along with one in Canada, Canadian Natural Resources. In the US, our go to gas name is EQT along with some pipeline names like Williams and TC Energy. We remain long the beaten up fertilizer stocks like Nutrien and Mosaic on expectations of a lift in corn, soybean and wheat prices that have badly lagged some of their other soft commodity peers like cocoa, coffee and orange juice. Gold mining stocks have terribly underperformed the rally in gold and silver prices and we are long some of them. The new commodity I'm bullish and long of is platinum as it seems that hybrid vehicles are winning the VHS/Betamax battle over full EVs. Hybrids use as much and sometimes more platinum in the catalytic converters than an ICE vehicle. Uranium remains attractive and we are still long but the trade is much further along in its maturation.

Outside of the commodity space, the food stocks have gotten pummeled as volumes slow, pricing power wanes and we don't know what comes of the RFK food initiatives. That though has left some of them very attractive and cheap like Nestle (about half their business is coffee and pet food) and Conagra (the largest US frozen food maker along with a nice snack business), and each paying generous dividends, something you don't find often now in the S&P 500 having a dividend yield approaching 1%. I'll finish up some other holdings we own and like on a sports/live entertainment theme, Under Armour, the turnaround story we believe in, Manchester United and Madison Square Garden Sports each trading at about half the value of the iconic teams they own and Madison Square Garden Entertainment, the owner of that iconic building, along with others.

Internationally, I just spent a week in Vietnam and am pretty bullish on their economy and long stocks there with the Ho Chi Minh index trading at just 10x 2025 earnings estimates. We continue to like stocks in Singapore and love the theme of the growing middle class in Asia generally via AIA Group, one of the largest life insurance companies in the region and still bullish on travel/leisure via the Macau casino stocks where visitation levels in 2024 got to almost 90% of its 2019 peak.