under the radar

Donald Trump made this a centerpiece of his campaign for a second term, suggesting that he could get oil and gas producers to turn on the spigots and drive the prices of gasoline below $2. Judging by last week’s address to Congress, it is not an idea the President seems likely to drop. A lot...

Wall Street and the financial media love to hype certain stocks. When a company is firing on all cylinders, you'll hear about it everywhere—every analyst has a buy rating, hedge funds are loading up, and the media can't stop singing its praises. It seems like an easy trade. But if you've been in...

Our purpose here at Under the Radar is to bring companies, ideas, and strategies to your attention before Wall Street uncovers them. We do not want to find ourselves in a situation like Yogi Berra once described a New York hangout—a place that no one goes to anymore because it is too crowded. We...

Several academic studies have recently examined buying undervalued stocks using tools like the Piotroski F-Score, Joel Greenblatt’s Magic Formula, and profitability factors. I have written about these studies in this column and in my weekly e-letter. Rather than bore you with all the detailed...

I am a bit of a geek and a nerd. I freely admit it. I read academic research like spy novels. I spend hours testing ideas to validate or destroy approaches to markets that appear to have merit. Very few ideas or theories stand the test of scrutiny. Fewer still withstand the test of popularity and...

As the old saying goes, “There are different strokes for different folks.” I like to put both ketchup and mustard on my hot dogs. Those who choose to engage in this practice in the Wrigley Field Bleachers should expect to be met by waves of hostility at the ill-mannered treatment of the...

Investing in companies with high revenue growth rates that are under-owned by institutions is a tried-and-true way to score big returns. Institutional ownership often signals that a stock is already on the radar, but the real money is made when you spot it before the big players do. These...

Last month, two European quants, one working for Robeco and the other for Allianz, published a paper asking (and answering) whether formulaic investing is possible. Marcel Schwartz of Allianz and Matthias X. Hanauer of Robeco are also associated with the Technical University of Munich. The pair...

Investors love high-growth stories, and they should. Companies that are growing rapidly have the potential to deliver massive gains. The problem is that Wall Street and most observers are not always using the right metrics to determine growth. The most used metric is earnings per share growth....

Wall Street enters 2025 singing the same song it has sung for the past few years: Artificial Intelligence! Quantum Computing! FinTech! Tesla! (Ticker: TSLA) Crypto! Tech! More tech! That is where the action is; as we know, these things can grow forever, and nothing could go wrong. The business...

If all goes as expected, you will receive this on New Year’s Eve. By now, if you are like me, you are a little tired of the holidays and beginning to wonder just how much dieting and exercise will be required to make the last few weeks’ excesses disappear. I stopped going out on New...

Price-to-book value is irrelevant, according to conventional wisdom. The common argument states that all that matters is Central Bank liquidity and the total addressable market. It has been a powerful story with massive tailwinds from technology and politics. Today, intangible assets, like...

As a rule, I pay almost no attention to Wall Street analysts. I do not give much of a whoop about their opinion of a stock. Most of my biggest winners have been underfollowed or not followed by mainstream Wall Street firms. Much of the research produced for individual investors by the big Wall...

Allow me to reiterate one very important point: I have no idea where markets will close next year. I cannot tell you which stock will be the top performer. I do not know how many times the Fed will cut interest rates. I may have an opinion about what interest rates will do next year, but I would...

As we head into the New Year, it is usually customary to look ahead and make all sorts of confident predictions about how the stock market will do, how the economy will fare, and exactly what investors should do. I cannot imagine a greater waste of my time or yours. Especially this year. We have a...