environment

The Best College Towns in Maine

No matter your student status, you’ll appreciate these towns.

The post The Best College Towns in Maine appeared first on The Rent.com Blog : A Renter’s Guide for Tips & Advice.

What Is Momentum Trading and How Does This Strategy Work?

Momentum traders use technical indicators and buy and sell signals to make quick profits from the movements in the market. Learn more here.

Salesforce.com (CRM): Slowdown Worries Ease Ahead of Earnings

While the bulk of S&P 500 companies have already unveiled earnings, there are still several noteworthy components of the broad-market index left to report. Among those on this week’s earnings calendar are cloud company Salesforce.com (CRM, $207.08), discount retailer Dollar Tree (DLTR, $139.96) and chipmaker Broadcom (AVGO, $585.02).

  • SEE MORE The Pros’ 10 Best S&P 500 Stocks to Buy Now

“The numbers this earnings season have been great even without considering that the bar has been raised consistently throughout the pandemic,” says Jeff Buchbinder, equity strategist for independent broker-dealer LPL Financial. “S&P 500 earnings per share are tracking to a 31% year-over-year increase, roughly 10 percentage points above the consensus estimate when earnings season began.”

This will likely fall short of the 12 percentage points of upside S&P 500 companies posted in the third quarter, Buchbinder adds. Still, it’s well above the long-term average and is pretty impressive considering the pandemic-related challenges that hit during Q4. 

If that 31% is the final number, “it will mark the fourth straight quarter of earnings growth above 30% for the index,” says John Butters, senior earnings analyst at FactSet Research Systems. 

According to Butters, the last time the S&P 500 index reported four consecutive quarters of earnings growth above 30% was in the final quarter of 2009 through the third quarter of 2010. 

This time around, the “unusually high growth rate is due to a combination of higher earnings in Q4 2021 and an easier comparison to lower earnings in Q4 2020 due to the negative impact of COVID-19 on a number of industries,” he adds.

Analyst: Salesforce.com Demand Remains “Healthy”

Salesforce.com is one of the last remaining Dow Jones stocks left to report its quarterly results. The enterprise software solutions firm will unveil its fourth-quarter results after the March 1 close.

In the months that have passed since CRM’s late-November report (in which the company reported top- and bottom-line beats, but gave lower-than-expected Q4 earnings guidance), there has been some debate about a potential slowdown in digital transformation spending by global firms, says Stifel analyst J. Parker Lane (Buy). 

  • SEE MORE 10 Stocks Warren Buffett Is Selling (And 7 He’s Buying)

But in recent weeks, it seems those concerns have dissipated, with the Salesforce partners Lane spoke to “all striking an optimistic tone around the growth of their Salesforce practices in 2022 and beyond.”

This optimism is echoed by Oppenheimer analyst Brian Schwartz, who has an Outperform (Buy) rating on CRM. “Takeaways from recent field checks and enterprise CIO surveys reveal good business activity and healthy overall demand for Salesforce in the fourth quarter and a strong pipeline in fiscal 2023,” he writes in a note.

However, Schwartz warns of “cloudy parts” in the CRM story. Among them is the company’s inclusion of MuleSoft, a systems integration firm that was acquired by Salesforce for $6.5 billion in 2018, which the analyst calls “a work in progress.”

For CRM’s fourth quarter, analysts, on average, expect earnings to arrive at 75 cents per share, a 27.9% year-over-year (YoY) decline. Revenue, meanwhile, is forecast to land at $7.2 billion, up 24.4% from the year-ago period.

Dollar Tree’s Price Hike in Focus Ahead of Q4 Earnings

Like many other consumer staples stocks, Dollar Tree has held up well during the recent market turbulence. Shares of the discount retailer – which has been a frequent target of activist investors – are up more than 5% in the past month, compared to a roughly 1.2% drop for the broader S&P 500. 

Can DLTR’s fourth-quarter earnings report – due out ahead of the March 2 open – keep the wind at the stock’s back?

“We think DLTR’s shares are compelling,” writes UBS Research analyst Michael Lasser (Buy). “The market has not fully reflected the benefit of DLTR’s pricing actions in the stock.”

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Lasser’s referring to the company’s announcement in late November that it was hiking prices on the bulk of its inventory to $1.25 from $1.00, which he believes “should provide meaningful lift.”

And even if the shift in strategy doesn’t benefit sales, the retailer should still see a notable expansion in gross merchandise. Specifically, the analyst expects merchandise and supply-chain costs to remain stable. 

Consensus estimates among Wall Street pros for Dollar Tree’s Q4 are for earnings per share (EPS) of $1.77 (-16.9% YoY) and revenue of $7.1 billion, a 5.2% improvement from the year prior.

Strong Growth Expected in Broadcom’s Earnings Report

Broadcom will unveil its fiscal first-quarter earnings report after Thursday’s close. 

Oppenheimer analyst Rick Schafer sees an “upside setup” relative to consensus estimates due to core networking, which is expected to be 30% higher than it was in the year-ago period.

“Management has been exemplary in a tight supply environment,” Schafer writes. And while lead times remain stretched at 50 weeks, “We believe AVGO has nearly ~100% backlog coverage for 2022. We see upside potential as supply eases through the year.”

As for the semiconductor stock’s fiscal first-quarter, Schafer expects the tech name to report earnings of $8.15 per share and revenue of $7.6 billion. For the sake of comparison, consensus estimates among analysts are for EPS of $8.08 (+22.2% YoY) and revenue of $7.6 billion, a 14.3% improvement over last year’s number.

  • SEE MORE The 12 Best Tech Stocks to Buy for 2022

Pest Control Apartment Laws: Is a Landlord or Tenant Responsible?

Knowing pest control apartment laws will help you determine the responsibility when there’s an infestation.

The post Pest Control Apartment Laws: Is a Landlord or Tenant Responsible? appeared first on The Rent.com Blog : A Renter’s Guide for Tips & Advice.

Guide to Jade Lizards

A Jade Lizard is an advanced options strategy that requires taking three different positions. It is a slightly bullish strategy typically used by traders who want to profit from high levels of market volatility. Traders who use the Jade Lizard strategy must monitor their position and have a plan for exit to avoid the potential […]

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3 MLPs Throwing Off Massive 8%-9% Yields

If you’ve had to fill up your gas tank or heat your home lately (so, most of us), you might have noticed that your wallet is a lot lighter than usual. That’s because oil and gas prices have been surging over the past few months amid a perfect storm of supply-demand imbalances and rising geopolitical tensions.

But while these pressures have been miserable for consumers, they have been a boon to energy stocks, including energy master limited partnerships (MLPs).

  • SEE MORE 66 Best Dividend Stocks You Can Count On in 2022

MLPs, which first began to form in the 1980s, are a type of “pass-through entity.” That’s because their income isn’t taxed at the corporate level, and is instead “passed through” directly to owners and investors via dividend-esque “distributions.” This system typically results in much-higher-than-average yields, often in the 7%-9% range.

Better still, because of what they own – most energy MLPs hold midstream infrastructure such as pipelines and storage facilities – depreciation and other deductions tend to greatly exceed taxable income. That means much of an MLP’s cash distributions will be tax-deferred. There is one downside: You’ll typically have to deal with complicated K-1 tax forms each year. But for many, the income is worth it.

Here, we will look at three MLPs currently yielding between 8% and 9%. Thanks to recent changes to the tax code, the MLP world has been shrinking threw corporate reorganizations. These three partnerships represent some of the top choices among the remaining options.

  • SEE MORE 9 High-Yield Stocks Doling Out 5% or More

Data is as of Feb. 23. Distribution yields are calculated by annualizing the most recent distribution and dividing by the unit price.

Stock Market Today: Russian Invasion Sparks Roller-Coaster Day for Stocks

News of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine sent stocks plummeting out of the gate today.

  • SEE MORE 10 Biggest Losers in the S&P 500 This Year

“We’re clearly in risk-off mode in the market right now given the uncertainty regarding the military operations in Ukraine,” says Brian Price, head of investment management for Commonwealth Financial Network.

“There seems to be some element of surprise that the events have escalated so quickly and I would expect that we’ll continue to see volatility in the near term.”

Indeed, after the Dow Jones Industrial Average flirted with correction territory and the Nasdaq Composite slipped below its bear-market level on an intraday basis, the major market indexes reversed course as President Joe Biden announced a new round of sanctions against Russia, including freezing trillions of dollars in Russian assets, and said he is sending additional U.S. troops to Eastern European countries that are in NATO.

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By the close, the Nasdaq – which was down 3.4% at its session low – was up 3.3% at 13,473. The S&P 500 Index also finished in positive territory, gaining 1.5% to end at 4,288. The Dow, meanwhile, ended with a 0.3% gain at 33,223, after trading as low as 32,272 earlier. 

YCharts

Other news in the stock market today:

  • The small-cap Russell 2000 joined in on the roller-coaster ride, ending the day up 2.6% at 1,995, after being down as much as 2.6% in intraday trading.
  • Gold futures gained 0.8% to settle at $1,926.30 an ounce, their highest finish in 17 months.
  • Bitcoin rose 2% to $38,466.10. (Bitcoin trades 24 hours a day; prices reported here are as of 4 p.m.)
  • Moderna (MRNA) was a big winner today, jumping 15.1% after earnings. In its fourth quarter, the drugmaker reported adjusted earnings of $11.29 per share on $7.2 billion in revenue, exceeding the $9.90 per share and $6.8 billion expected by analysts. The company also said it sold $17.7 billion of its COVID-19 vaccine and expects to sell at least $19 billion in fiscal 2022.
  • Booking Holdings (BKNG), on the other hand, slumped 7.1% after its quarterly results. The online travel reservation company reported adjusted earnings of $15.83 per share and revenue of $3.0 billion in its fourth quarter, beating out analysts’ expectations for earnings of $13.30 per share on $$2.9 billion in sales. The company also said gross travel bookings for the three-month period were up 160% year-over-year to $19.0 billion. Still, Booking CEO David Goulden warned of “a potentially volatile environment with high COVID infection rates in some part of the world and geopolitical uncertainty that could impact our business, especially in Europe,” in the company’s earnings call. UBS Research analyst Lloyd Walmsley maintained a Buy rating on BKNG. “Looking ahead, we see scope for a stronger-than-expected recovery in 2022 and into 2023 in terms of room nights and bookings which we think would flow through at attractive incremental margins,” he writes in a note.

One Way to Hedge Geopolitical Risk

One way to hedge international turmoil: commodities. This is according to a team of Goldman Sachs Commodities Research strategists.

“With news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine emerging, commodity markets have rallied aggressively, acting as the clear geopolitical hedge of first resort,” they write.

This was seen in the price action for several commodities today, most notably U.S. crude oil futures, which topped the $100 per-barrel mark in intraday trading – their first move above this level since 2014 – before settling up 0.8% at $92.81 per barrel.

  • SEE MORE 6 Sturdy Defensive Stocks to Buy for 2022

And prices are likely going to head even higher, with many experts predicting oil could hit the $125 per-barrel mark. “Uncertainty around potential sanctions is beginning to create a potential supply shock,” the team says. “In our view, until the uncertainty around the rapidly escalating situation is resolved, commodity price risk remains skewed to the upside.”

Not only would a continued rise in oil prices spell good news for traditional energy stocks and energy exchange-traded funds, but also master limited partnerships (MLPs). These firms, which are largely responsible for pipeline infrastructure and storage facilities, offer both exposure to the booming energy market and high dividend yields to boot.

  • SEE MORE 2022’s Best Mutual Funds in 401(k) Retirement Plans

Secrets of Sustainable Investing

Amy Domini is founder and chair of Domini Impact Investments. She has authored several books, most recently Thoughts on People, Planet & Profit.

Kiplinger: You are a pioneer in what is often called socially responsible investing (SRI). How and why did you first come to marry your sense of moral responsibility and fairness to investing?

  • SEE MORE Kiplinger ESG 20: Our Favorite Picks for ESG Investors

Domini: My first real job was as a stockbroker. I started asking clients, “Are there industries that you’d rather not invest in?” I was astonished that most people said yes. They might want to avoid tobacco companies, for instance, because their brother died of lung cancer. Over time, I saw the power in the relationship between investors and society. Do you believe that investors should be involved in this conversation? If the answer is yes, then you’re my people.

Investors today hear a lot about ESG, or environmental-, social- and governance-based investing. Is that different from socially responsible investing or values-based investing? No, it is just a battle of vocabulary. I think that ESG has a precision to it that appeals more to conventional analysts on Wall Street. But we all make selections as to what to invest in based on people and the planet.

What is the best way for investors to integrate ESG into their portfolios? The simplest way is to purchase an SRI or ESG mutual fund. You will join thousands of other investors to raise issues with a company’s management. You multiply your power when you go that route. But a lot of people enjoy getting to know companies and making decisions that suit them personally. I would urge them to focus on companies that will improve people’s lives.

The criticism of this kind of investing for years has been that you’d have to sacrifice returns. What’s your opinion? It hasn’t been borne out by the facts. Embedded in that assumption is the idea that you should try to have as big a selection of investments to choose from as possible to maximize performance and that restricting yourself to ESG choices will limit returns. But every single small-cap portfolio manager invests only in small-cap stocks and still promises to outperform. And every single value portfolio manager invests only in value stocks and still promises to outperform. So I feel that there’s a different set of rules when it comes to our investing in ESG companies.

Imagine I am comparing two companies in the same industry. The first has a lot of product safety recalls, and the second one doesn’t. By investing in the second company, I’ve avoided trouble. That’s rule number one for making money: Avoid trouble.

Looking at a company’s potential from an E, S or G lens, which of those offers the most promise from an investment standpoint today? I think the S is most important because it involves such a broad set of issues. The social lens evaluates how the company interacts with stakeholders, including suppliers, customers, employees, communities and shareholders. Does a company have problems such as child labor in the supply chain? Does it provide training for its workforce? These kinds of questions help us understand the quality of management. I think every conventional investment adviser would agree that management quality is the most difficult thing to assess when you’re analyzing a company.

What do you see next for ESG investing? Mainstreaming and better information flow. It is a majority opinion now that ESG investing has a role to play. That will put more pressure on regulators to provide a systematic framework for information that is comparable from one company to another. And with that information will come pressure to show the impact on people and the planet.

There was no such thing as a corporate sustainability report when I got started. So there have been changes, but this level of public information is the big one.

  • SEE MORE 5 Great Green Stocks Making a Direct Impact

Investors have been working for decades to define ESG criteria that best translates into corporate risk or opportunity. How can we make sense of all of the ratings and raters that are proliferating today? Years ago, I started a rating company called KLD, which has since been acquired. I think in the early stages of a new manager getting involved in this field, they want a yes or no–can I buy the stock or not? And this has driven the absolute scores from rating agencies such as MSCI and Sustainalytics. But knowing how they got that top-line score helps you make a better decision about the company.

Most investors will do well by reading the corporation’s sustainability report. Already we see some annual reports that have a fulsome discussion of how the company has addressed the customer, the manufacturing process, the supply process, the environment through an ESG lens. And there is a way to put a monetary value on some of these benefits. We can imagine a time when this integrated reporting actually puts dollar values on ESG outcomes, but that’s a decade or two away.

In general, which investment vehicles would you recommend now? I’m pretty conventional. I like stocks better than bonds. I think you can have more long-term growth with stocks, but bonds have a role as a safety net. In this stock market, I prefer active management. We are entering a phase of very strong crosscurrents, including COVID and tensions between China and Taiwan, and it is potentially very scary. At this time, then, I prefer the nimbler approach offered by active fund managers; they can react more quickly to these challenges than a passively managed fund.

Anything in particular you like right now? I am optimistic about the future of the stock market. We have tremendous energy going into products that didn’t exist 10 years ago. I mean technology writ large, in healthcare, transportation and entertainment–even service industries. I don’t think that we are even near the middle of this innovation wave, let alone the end. And it is accelerating at an incredible pace.

Home improvement and home goods have been very strong in the last year or two. We’ve been nesting. We want a new rug. We want a new roof. But over the next period, I’m moving away from that home-focused theme. I also think that we’re all desperate for experiences and travel, even if it’s 30 miles up the road to an Airbnb. These are the areas I’m looking at right now in terms of opportunity sets.

If there was one thing you’d want readers to take away from this interview, what would it be? “Triple P” investing, for people, planet and profit. It is a phrase that cuts out all the noise and gets to the heart of our approach.

  • SEE MORE 5 ‘Blue Economy’ Stocks and Funds

Get Better Sleep Tonight: 15 Experts Share Their Secrets For Dreamy ZZZ’s

It’s time to stop counting sheep!

The post Get Better Sleep Tonight: 15 Experts Share Their Secrets For Dreamy ZZZ’s appeared first on The Rent.com Blog : A Renter’s Guide for Tips & Advice.

How to Win With Game Stocks

In one of the most volatile episodes in stock market history, investors early last year took the shares of a company called GameStop (GME) on a wild ride that few would have expected for a business that’s mostly a brick-and-mortar antique, the gaming version of a chain of video stores. Its shares went on an adventure that echoed the characteristics of the video games on its shelves: fantasy, violence and a romantic quest for justice and vengeance.

  • SEE MORE The 12 Best Tech Stocks to Buy for 2022

In real life, however, GameStop has had a lousy year, losing money once again. But the rest of the gaming sector has taken up the mantle. It’s booming, becoming the backbone of the metaverse, a three-dimensional online environment that is likely the “next big thing” in consumer technology.

In 2020, partly because the pandemic kept Americans indoors, gaming revenues exceeded those of movies and sports events combined. Global gaming sales in 2021 are estimated at $178 billion and projected to rise to $269 billion by 2025. According to the consulting firm Accenture, one out of every three people in the world is a gamer. 

No wonder so many big tech players are investing in the business. In 2000, Microsoft (MSFT, $306) launched the game-playing console Xbox, and in 2014 the company bought Minecraft, a survival-themed game, for $2.5 billion; Minecraft now has 131 million active monthly users. In January, Microsoft announced that, pending regulatory approval, it will spend $69 billion to purchase ActivisionBlizzard (ATVI), which has 400 million gamers a month playing such popular titles as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft.

Trying to stay abreast, Sony Group, maker of the wildly popular PlayStation console, announced Jan. 31 that it was buying Bungie, the private developer of the Halo and Destiny franchises, for $3.6 billion. (Stocks I like are in bold; share data are as of Feb. 4.) 

  • SEE MORE 10 Metaverse Stocks for the Future of Technology

Amazon (AMZN, $3,153) entered the market in 2014 with the purchase of Twitch Interactive for $970 million. Twitch lets gamers livestream themselves to viewers, who can watch and comment. Twitch has about 8 million active users. It dominates the market, but competition is growing from such big players as Microsoft, with its entry Mixer; Alphabet (GOOGL, $2,866), with YouTube Live; and Meta Platforms (FB, $237), the former Facebook. 

Facebook, walloped by a disappointing revenue projection for the first quarter of 2022, has thrown in its lot with the metaverse. It’s an idea with roots in Second Life, a computer game Facebook created in 2003. When I was a State Department official, my avatar gave an interactive speech in 2008 with the avatars of pro-democracy Egyptian students. In the metaverse, you can go to concerts, hold business meetings where you are immersed in, say, a construction site or restaurant, or drop down onto a virtual football field and run a few plays. The key for investors is that the metaverse depends on technology developed for video games.

How to Get in on Game Stocks

The metaverse, with its promise of interconnected worlds, may be the next frontier for gaming, but for investors, gaming poses challenges. You could buy the tech giants because gaming is a growing part of their businesses, but recognize that it is dwarfed by, say, online retailing, cloud computing and advertising. And many of the best developers of video games are private firms, so you can’t invest in them. So, what are the best pure plays to take advantage of a craze that could still be in its infancy? 

Look first to the companies that make the games. Many games today are so sophisticated that they can cost as much to make as the most dazzling Hollywood films. Grand Theft Auto 5 required 250 programmers and other employees of Rockstar working for five years at a total expense of $265 million. That’s more than the films “Titanic” or “The Dark Knight Rises.” The investment paid off. GTA5 has grossed more than any movie ever made. 

Take-Two Interactive Software (TTWO, $175) owns the Rockstar label and has been gobbling up smaller developer firms, including Zynga (maker of FarmVille, a huge hit that was introduced as an app in 2009). Take-Two, with a market value of $18 billion, is solidly profitable, but shares have dropped about 20% in the past two years. With a market cap of $37 billion, well-managed, independent developer Electronic Arts (EA, $138), makes such games as Battlefield, The Sims and Madden NFL. It trades at a reasonable price-earnings ratio of 18. 

  • SEE MORE Can AI Beat the Market? 10 Stocks to Watch

Nvidia (NVDA, $243) makes semiconductors for a variety of sectors, but, as the world’s largest designer of graphic processing units, its chips are popular in video games, including those that create virtual environments for immersion in the metaverse. In its latest quarterly report, Nvidia reported that gaming revenues rose 42% and are approaching half of the company’s total sales. Still, shares fell by nearly one-third in the first three weeks of 2022, creating a buying opportunity. 

Other metaverse stocks were also caught in the undertow of fears of higher interest rates and falling valuations. With a market cap of $30 billion, Unity Software (U, $109), which operates a development platform for the software that powers complex games, fell in price by about half from November to January, despite a surge in revenues. Over the same period, Matterport (MTTR, $8), which captures the feel of interior space with its 3D cameras, dropped by two-thirds, even though analysts see revenues rising in 2022 from $109 million to $160 million. The company is still unprofitable, and its $2.6 billion valuation is lofty, but if you can tolerate risk, Matterport could be a good long-term investment. 

A few exchange-traded funds focus on gaming stocks. Global X Video Games and Esports (HERO, $27), with an expense ratio of 0.50%, was launched in 2019. Among the top holdings are NetEase (NTES, $101), a large Chinese developer, and Ubisoft (UBSFY, $12), a mid-cap French maker of such games as Rainbow Six Extraction and Just Dance. 

With expenses of 0.55%, Van Eck Video Gaming and eSports (ESPO, $63) dates from 2018, with a small portfolio similar to that of the Global X ETF. Both funds lean toward high-profile stocks such as Nvidia and Electronic Arts, but one notable highlight of the Van Eck ETF is NEXON (NEXOY, $20), a Japanese firm with an emphasis on the fast-growing Asian market. Unlike many other gaming companies, Nexon’s shares have been rising since last fall. Van Eck’s top asset is Tencent Holdings (TCEHY, $62), the giant Chinese social media company that is, by some calculations, the largest gaming business in the world through its online offerings. Tencent has suffered from Chinese government intervention, so there’s political risk to consider. 

Game stocks carry the likelihood of substantial returns – perhaps, if regulators allow, through acquisitions by giants such as Alphabet, Microsoft and Sony. And their prospects, unlike the plotlines of many of their products, are built on a real-life foundation. 

These stocks and funds stand to gain from the virtual-reality world known as the metaverse.

James K. Glassman chairs Glassman Advisory, a public-affairs consulting firm. He does not write about his clients. His most recent book is Safety Net: The Strategy for De-Risking Your Investments in a Time of Turbulence. Of the stocks mentioned here, he owns Amazon, Microsoft and Nvidia. Reach him at [email protected].

  • SEE MORE Sweet Silicon: 5 Superb Semiconductor Stocks for 2022