Category Archives: Technology

March Madness: Final Four Investing Bracket 2024

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Dear Mr. Market:

If your alma mater or favorite college team did not make the tournament on Selection Sunday, we’ve got another option for you!

Even if you don’t like or follow college basketball, we think you’ll enjoy what we pioneered and have put together.

My Portfolio Guide, LLC was the first investment firm to publish a March Madness investing bracket where we share our picks and match them up against each other.  We break down and assign each of the four “regions” with an asset class and then pick teams (stocks) that we think have the best chance at doing well relative to others. 

Not only is this “exercise” a way for us to share our ideas from a macro perspective, but it offers a fun platform to dig into a couple specific investments and themes we are following or excited about in the year ahead.

Click here or below to see or enlarge the entire bracket for 2024. 

Our Final Four Investing Bracket slots 48 positions against each other and we mainly want to show why we see one investment doing better than another over the course of the next year. One caveat to keep in mind is that while there are 48 total investments within our bracket, it does not mean we like them all; some are there for illustrative purposes or to discuss a certain theme playing out in the stock market. Lastly, the way these are initially “seeded” does not reflect our current confidence in them. For example, a #1 seeded investment could lose right out of the gate just as a #12 could potentially win it all. In other words, these investments (or “teams”) are ranked and seeded on a number of factors but one of the main drivers is how hot they recently performed within the past few months or recent year.

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Going Long in Two Fields: Why TLT Could Be Your MVP During Recessions

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Dear Mr. Market:

First off, if you want to know how amazing Artificial Intelligence is, the following list of article titles were generated for this article in the matter of four seconds! (we picked the first one and the rest of this article is typed with regular human toiling!)

FYI: If you’ve never used ChatGPT, before try it! Much of its delivery is on what and how you ask things and in this case here is the prompt/reply that we asked of it:

Certainly! Here are a couple of article title ideas that play on the “going long” football reference while discussing extending bond allocations, especially in a recessionary context and using the TLT ticker symbol:

  1. “Going Long in Two Fields: Why TLT Could Be Your MVP During Recessions”
  2. “Huddling Up for Stability: TLT’s Game Plan for Going Long in a Recession”
  3. “Scoring Big in Bonds: Going Long with TLT Amidst Recession Signals”
  4. “Touchdown for Investors: TLT’s Playbook for Going Long in Uncertain Markets”
  5. “Bonds and Touchdowns: TLT’s Strategy for Going Long in Recessions”
  6. “From Gridiron to Portfolio: Going Long with TLT’s Defensive Play”
  7. “Executing the Long Game: TLT’s Endurance in a Recessional Season”
  8. “Tackling Recession Risk: Going Long with TLT’s Defensive Line”
  9. “The Bond Field Advantage: Going Long with TLT Amid Market Turbulence”
  10. “Scouting for Opportunities: Going Long with TLT’s Recessional Defense”

Now…on to business and what we’re talking about today, which is not related to football but rather recession worries, market strategy, and in our opinion how one should consider adjusting the bond piece of their allocation to hedge what we see coming. If you’re in the growing and increasingly popular camp of preparing for a stock market crash or just a general recession, here’s one adjustment and hedge that you may want to consider.

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Halfway to the Most Terrible Recession Ever Telegraphed!

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Dear Mr. Market:

It is with a sense of awe and intrigue that we find ourselves reflecting upon the first half of 2023. In the world of finance and investment, prognostications and predictions often hold sway, shaping the decisions of market participants. However, it seems that the experts and pundits who were convinced of an impending recession this year may have misjudged the situation. Indeed, we are witnessing what could be deemed as the most telegraphed recession that never happened, at least not yet.

Throughout the past year, a chorus of voices emerged, proclaiming that the global economy was teetering on the edge of a precipice. They cited various factors, including rising inflation, geopolitical tensions, and lingering effects of the pandemic, as harbingers of an impending economic downturn. The warnings were dire, and many investors began bracing themselves for the storm.

Yet, as the months unfold, the predicted recession has remains elusive. Economic indicators have displayed some resilience and even showed signs of strength in certain sectors. Employment numbers continued to improve, consumer spending remained robust, and corporate earnings surprised to the upside. It became evident that the narrative of a looming recession is not unfolding as expected.

So why did so many experts and pundits get it wrong? One could argue that the very nature of predictions is inherently flawed. The global economy is a complex system influenced by countless variables, and attempting to distill its trajectory into a neat forecast is a formidable challenge. The interconnectedness of markets, the intricate dance of supply and demand, and the psychological aspects of investor sentiment all contribute to the unpredictability of the economic landscape.

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The Best Worst Days Ever

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Dear Mr. Market:IMG_1253

Behind the curtain of this investment blog and our series of letters to a fictional market character (Mr. Market)…there are actual human beings. We’re certainly not hiding behind a fluffy topic, but on days like today we want to share how life can parallel with things like the stock market; it can also really put things in perspective as we look back at where we were at certain points in life. Additionally, it sometimes helps people know that unlike many other articles and financial advisors you’ll find on the internet, My Portfolio Guide doesn’t cut and paste regurgitated garbage or use a ghost writer to relay our message.

Today is March 13th…Friday the 13th! Today it’s also me, Matthew Pixa, who is writing to you and letting you know that it’s the day my daughter Isabel turns 18. Perhaps we’ll do more of these personal articles but it won’t hurt our feelings if you don’t want to read about my baby girl’s birthday when the stock market is down -25%. You be the judge, but please read on and see where I’m going with this. Continue reading →

Is Financial Engines right for you?

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financial enginesDear Mr. Market:

If you were asked to list two or three of the largest Registered Investment Advisory (RIA) firms in the country which ones would come to mind first? You’d definitely hear many of the names associated with Wall Street and the investment industry. Names like: Merrill Lynch, Charles Schwab, Fidelity and Wells Fargo – while these are certainly large firms none of them are RIA’s. We’ve written on several occasions what an RIA is and how they are driven by their fiduciary responsibility to their clients. A simple online search of RIA’s will show that the largest firm is nearly 40% larger than any its closest competitor. It specializes in assisting individuals in managing their company retirement accounts and has become a behemoth in the investment industry. Financial Engines, Inc. has risen out of relative obscurity and is quickly becoming a household name.

Financial Engines is based out of Sunnyvale, CA, is publicly traded under the ticker symbol FNGN, and currently manages over $90 billion in assets! To put this in perspective the second largest RIA firm is Fisher Investments with assets under management of just over $50 billion. Fisher Investments is a marketing machine and if you have a portfolio over $500,000 in value, you’ve most likely received one of their post card mailings or solicitation emails.

Financial Engines, on the other hand, is a relatively young company and is the creation of some of the brightest minds in the industry that made their mark in the late 1990’s. The founders of the firm are Nobel Prize winning economist William Sharpe, Stanford Law Professor Joseph Grundfest, Attorney Craig Johnson and Jeff Maggioncalda. While the firm went through some minor growing pains, they have certainly found their target market – working with individuals and managing the investments in their company retirement plans. Continue reading →

Alibaba – The next hot stock?

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Alibaba with chineseDear Mr. Market:

Every investor is looking for the next opportunity that looks like a ‘sure thing’. Throughout 2014 we’ve seen a plethora of IPO’s hit the market with the majority of them being well received. Currently there is a giant lurking out there and the markets have been licking their chops waiting to get a piece of it.   The stock is a behemoth based in China…Alibaba (anticipated to be listed as BABA).

Wall Street is expecting the IPO to hit the market sometime after the Labor Day holiday and this could certainly be an early Christmas present for the markets if it lives up to the anticipation. We have not seen hype like this surrounding a potential IPO since the dot-com era of the late 1990’s. Before you rush out in an attempt to participate in the IPO or buy through the open market, lets take a look at Alibaba to see if it warrants a position in your portfolio….

Summary:

It is challenging for the average U.S. investor to understand how large and diversified Alibaba is. Essentially Alibaba is: Amazon, eBay, PayPal, Cloud Services and much more wrapped up in one company. It has the fastest growing online commerce market in the world, last year it had transactions that totaled just under $250 billion! That is more than eBay (EBAY) and Amazon (AMZN) combined. To truly put the size of Alibaba in perspective let’s break down its largest components: Continue reading →

InvenSense (INVN) : Motley Fool’s Secret Wearable Technology Stock!?

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INVN #2Dear Mr. Market:

Technology is a bit like true love. You have to believe in it but it can also bite you in the ass.
Read through this article and you’ll see how this relates to a particular investment!

The technology Industry can be a challenging sector for investors. Perhaps the best way to describe it is with a popular saying … “the one constant is change itself.” Plenty of analysts and investment firms scour through stock ticker symbols looking for the next Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN) or Google (GOOG).

We couldn’t help but notice the Motley Fool’s recent …shall we say, “stock pitch” about a company that could be your next homerun! If you’re a die-hard Apple fan, wouldn’t you like to know who their next HUGE inside supplier is? Rewind the clock and take for example the desktop computer or the cell phone you have within inches of your hand right now…

Put Apple, Sony or IBM on the shelf for a minute and think about investing in the next company that has a stake in every sale regardless of the brand you choose? In other words, buy the “chip” or technology that’s inside of each device instead of trying to figure out which phone or computer manufacturer is going to win the battle. Continue reading →