With vaccines flowing globally, case numbers down, mortality numbers improving, and YOY economic indicators screaming “BOOM!” the stock market’s ‘recovery’ stocks are must have holdings for all investors. Airlines?  Cruise ships?  Banks?  Restaurants?  Oil companies?  Take your pick and buy! Doesn’t matter what the business was, if it was hurt by the pandemic, then it’s rallying now. So that’s what this DRI article is about right? Nope. Today we’re looking at a company that sells masks and other PPE.   You’re gonna buy a PPE company at the end of the pandemic ..read more

Well, here’s the sentence I never thought I would write: today you are going to be reading a value investor’s review of Bitcoin as a credible part of a portfolio.   First a proud disclaimer   I’ve been value investing for 15 years. In that time I’ve always prioritized risk-avoidance, fiscal conservatism, and easily understood businesses. I’ve never bought gold.  I’ve never bought a company with no revenue, I’ve never bought a SPAC, and I very rarely buy companies that don’t have positive net income. Heck, I don’t even like buying companies with debt (although sometimes I break t ..read more

CVS health is a huge American retailer and health care services provider. They operate pharmacies, convenience stores, walk-in medical clinics and through Aetna they have a very large health insurance business.   Huge eh?  How huge is huge?   CVS ranks number 7 on the list of biggest US retailers by revenue.  On top of that, Aetna (which merged with CVS at the end of 2017) ranks number 6 on the list of biggest US health insurance companies. The CVS name is ubiquitous in the US.  With almost 10,000 locations, no matter where you are, chances are you are within walking d ..read more

“They say you never grow poor taking profits. No, you don’t. But neither do you grow rich taking a four-point profit in a bull market.” -Jesse Livermore in Reminiscences of a Stock Operator The dislocation between economic reality and the stock market is growing wider and wider everyday. No matter where you turn there are pundits posting the Schiller CAPE ratio or the Buffett Indicator all of which are loudly screaming that THIS IS THE MOST RIDICULOUSLY OVERVALUED MARKET WE’VE EVER SEEN. Investors have done away with P/E ratios because…well…they’re hard to calculate when E = 0.  And inste ..read more

The true hero of our story…you’ll read about him later…   On January 2nd this year I did a review of Bed Bath and Beyond with an eye to doing this write up at the end of the month. I really liked what I found when I researched BBBY and as a result I bought into the retailer on January 4th and 7th. Then BBBY released earnings the next week, the market didn’t like what it saw but I really did so I added again on January 13th. As a result of all this, as of the middle of January I had a very good sized position in BBBY. Little did I know that this would put me right in the middle of one of t ..read more

Our wood burning fireplace got a lot of action this year with more time at home than ever before.  Welcome to the Donkey Rocket 2020 Year in Review   It’s that time folks. It’s time for us to enter that online confessional and post our % numbers so our peers and readers can either salivate with jealousy over our results or laugh at us for our incompetence. Which will it be for us this year?   First, the 2020 Broader Market Review   2020 was a year unlike any other.  But it didn’t start that way… In January we were all talking about wildfires and Harvey Weinstein and th ..read more

In case you haven’t noticed yet, we here at DRI are not shy about relying heavily on our R+D department to generate stock ideas (R&D = rip-off and duplicate). When we see a good idea from someone else online, we’re not shy about jumping on it. So much so that actually of the 10 holdings we have right now, 6 of them are ideas from other investors that we’ve investigated and loved enough to add to the family.  Thanks internet! But most of those ideas come from contributors to this blog, or from some of our other favorite online blogs like this one. Never before have we actually ripped o ..read more

I have a secret trick to extreme wealth. I know that I’ve told you many times before that there’s no tip or trick that can make you instantly rich overnight, but I was lying. There is one…and I’ve finally decided to share it with the world…or at least with the 14 random people who read this blog. All you need to do to be extremely wealthy is…   Stop giving a &#(%@ about so much useless stuff   Simple eh? You see, giving a #)%*! about stuff is expensive.   You spend your time thinking about it…you spend your energy worrying about it…you spend your money buying it…and the ..read more

“Genesis Kirk…Genesis!” The S&P 500 rocketed up another 10% in November putting this year’s gains for the index at 16.2% (including dividends).  While this has been going on many countries around the world are entering ‘wave 2’ of the pandemic with case numbers that are higher than wave 1 by a magnitude of 10x or more. 10x?  Who cares! (say the optimists). Death rates globally are falling fast, perhaps because infections seem to be spreading among a younger crowd in wave 2 or perhaps because treatments have progressed and improved outcomes significantly.  Either way wave 2 s ..read more

This storage locker has about the same annual return as 30yr T-bills.   It’s a tough world for bond investors right now.  Mostly anyway… Well, I mean if you already owned bonds before this whole Pandemic thing then you’re sitting pretty because bond prices have gone to the moon lately due to the fact that central banks have been cutting interest rates like it was going out of style. But what if you’re just starting out on retirement and you were thinking of maybe buying some bonds?  Then the picture isn’t so pretty. Maybe you just turned 65, you’ve saved up your money, you ..read more