cagkansayin/iStock via Getty Images The bullish case for USA Rare Earth ( USAR ) is easy to understand. USAR is positioned as an early stage innovator in one of the most strategically important industrial categories - critical minerals, domestic rare earth supply chains and permanent magnet manufacturing. The strategic importance theme comes from the requirement to reduce dependence on China, whic...
cagkansayin/iStock via Getty Images The bullish case for USA Rare Earth ( USAR ) is easy to understand. USAR is positioned as an early stage innovator in one of the most strategically important industrial categories - critical minerals, domestic rare earth supply chains and permanent magnet manufacturing. The strategic importance theme comes from the requirement to reduce dependence on China, which means USAR will be supported actively by the government (increasing odds of reaching a successful steady end state). The demand side is going through its own multi-year or even multi-decade tailwind from EVs, AI infrastructure, industrial automation and defense systems - each a hot demand source on its own. USAR is attempting to position itself at the center of that narrative by building a vertically integrated domestic rare earth platform spanning mining, processing and magnet manufacturing capacity across the US and allied supply chains. That's a very valuable positioning at the right time. But what has a strategic position got to do with shareholder economics? My analysis walks beyond the narrative of how rare earths matter (they clearly do) and into what portion of the future value created is likely to accrue to current shareholders, at current prices, after accounting for capital intensity, dilution, execution complexity and time. Viewed from that lens, I find current prices prohibitive in terms of creating long term value. I rate USAR as a Hold , fully expecting the strong narrative to potentially make shorting difficult and near term moves could even reward the narrative handsomely. The cautions lens is more long term, where the intrinsic long term value appears to have been overpriced by the markets currently. Treat the Hold rating as an "Avoid" recommendation because any drop in the market's appetite for narratives and long duration assumptions could mean sharp corrections - buying for long term value does not look appealing in that scenario. Debating Obvious Sup...
If you are looking for investing discussion a little more sophisticated than what you typically find on Reddit, I would suggest checking out the Bogleheads forum. It is populated largely by adherents of John C. Bogle and his philosophy around low-cost index investing. While individual portfolio implementations differ, the core principles tend to stay the ... The Dividend ETF Bogleheads Won’t Stop ...
If you are looking for investing discussion a little more sophisticated than what you typically find on Reddit, I would suggest checking out the Bogleheads forum. It is populated largely by adherents of John C. Bogle and his philosophy around low-cost index investing. While individual portfolio implementations differ, the core principles tend to stay the ... The Dividend ETF Bogleheads Won’t Stop Recommending — and Most Retirees Have Never Heard Their Advisor Say the Ticker
Andrzej Rostek/iStock via Getty Images AGNC ( AGNC ) delivered solid earnings for the last quarter in April, despite headwinds from inflation that is making federal fund rate cuts less likely in the short term. However, the REIT improved its asset yields on a sequential basis and grew its interest income significantly faster than its interest expenses, allowing for a sharp up-tick in net interest ...
Andrzej Rostek/iStock via Getty Images AGNC ( AGNC ) delivered solid earnings for the last quarter in April, despite headwinds from inflation that is making federal fund rate cuts less likely in the short term. However, the REIT improved its asset yields on a sequential basis and grew its interest income significantly faster than its interest expenses, allowing for a sharp up-tick in net interest income, a key measure of performance for a heavily leveraged mortgage-backed securities REIT. Shares of AGNC continue to trade at a large premium to book value, mainly because investors see current inflationary trends as transitory. I firmly believe that the Federal Reserve is going to lower interest rates later this year, and likely more aggressively in 2027, which would benefit AGNC's significant MBS holdings. Therefore, I am not going to sell a single share until the Fed is finally starting to lower interest rates! Seeking Alpha Previous rating I rated AGNC a ‘Strong Buy’ in January 2026 -- Strong Investment Setup --mainly because of a MBS revaluation catalyst related to falling federal fund rates. With inflation rebounding in March and April, amid higher energy prices in the context of the U.S.-Iran conflict, rate cuts in the short term have become less probable. In the long run, however, rate cuts will be unavoidable and therefore ultimately benefit AGNC's mortgage-backed securities portfolio. Stable MBS portfolio, drastically rising NII Mortgage securities are the bread and butter of specialized REITs like AGNC as they deliver predictable interest income, though their prices can fluctuate widely based off of interest rate changes. AGNC maintained an overall stable investment portfolio in the first-quarter, with total investments of $94.6B, down only about $0.1B sequentially. The majority of investments are 30-year mortgage-backed securities which are the core of the mortgage REIT's portfolio: 30-year agency MBS which accounted for a massive 85% investment securities s...
Most retirees own a passive bond index fund without thinking twice. The PIMCO Multisector Bond Active ETF (NYSEARCA:PYLD) is the alternative that has quietly pulled in $8.07 billion in net flows over the past year and now sits near $20 billion in assets, offering a yield of roughly 5.9% against a 10-year Treasury at roughly ... PIMCO’s $20 Billion Bond ETF PYLD Just Posted 10% Returns While Index ...
Most retirees own a passive bond index fund without thinking twice. The PIMCO Multisector Bond Active ETF (NYSEARCA:PYLD) is the alternative that has quietly pulled in $8.07 billion in net flows over the past year and now sits near $20 billion in assets, offering a yield of roughly 5.9% against a 10-year Treasury at roughly ... PIMCO’s $20 Billion Bond ETF PYLD Just Posted 10% Returns While Index Funds Flatlined
Key Points Rivian Automotive builds high-utility adventure vehicles and maintains a significant commercial vehicle partnership with Amazon. Lucid Group focuses on ultra-luxury performance and battery efficiency, backed by substantial investment from Saudi Arabia. Which electric vehicle stock is the better addition to your portfolio for 2026? 10 stocks we like better than Rivian Automotive › The el...
Key Points Rivian Automotive builds high-utility adventure vehicles and maintains a significant commercial vehicle partnership with Amazon. Lucid Group focuses on ultra-luxury performance and battery efficiency, backed by substantial investment from Saudi Arabia. Which electric vehicle stock is the better addition to your portfolio for 2026? 10 stocks we like better than Rivian Automotive › The electric vehicle (EV) market remains a battleground of innovation and scale, with legacy makers and newcomers vying for dominance. Choosing between Rivian Automotive (NASDAQ:RIVN) and Lucid Group (NASDAQ:LCID) requires looking at their distinct paths toward profitability. Rivian builds rugged trucks and SUVs for the outdoors, while Lucid specializes in ultra-luxury sedans with record-setting range. Both companies are scaling production during a pivotal period for the automotive market while facing intense competition for market share. The case for Rivian Automotive Rivian Automotive focuses on the production of high-end electric adventure vehicles, including the R1T pickup and the R1S SUV. The company also operates a commercial division that sells delivery vans directly to business clients like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN). Customer concentration like this adds a layer of risk to the business, as a significant portion of its future success is tied to a single buyer. Rivian builds vehicles for the adventure-oriented segment of consumer discretionary stocks and hopes to expand its footprint in global markets. For FY 2025, revenue reached nearly $5.4 billion, which was 8.4% higher than the previous year. Despite this growth, the company reported a net loss of approximately $3.6 billion for the period. This resulting net margin of roughly -67.7% was narrower than the loss reported in the prior fiscal year, showing a trend toward improving annual deficits. As of its December 2025 balance sheet, the debt-to-equity ratio is approximately 1x, which is a measure of total debt relative to shar...
The Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF (NYSEARCA:VYM) addresses a specific retirement problem: drawing income from stocks without concentrating the outcome in any one company. VYM holds roughly 540 dividend-paying companies, which makes it a natural anchor for a multi-fund income sleeve. Paired with two complementary dividend ETFs, a $200,000 allocation across VYM and its peers ... VYM, SCHD, and SP...
The Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF (NYSEARCA:VYM) addresses a specific retirement problem: drawing income from stocks without concentrating the outcome in any one company. VYM holds roughly 540 dividend-paying companies, which makes it a natural anchor for a multi-fund income sleeve. Paired with two complementary dividend ETFs, a $200,000 allocation across VYM and its peers ... VYM, SCHD, and SPHD Generate $7,300 Yearly Income From 690 Stocks With Zero Single-Company Risk
Derick Hudson/iStock Editorial via Getty Images Investment Thesis Meta ( META ) has been one of the most frustrating stocks to wrap our heads around. This is a mega-cap company, growing topline at a healthy level, holds a monopolistic position in the social media space, but its EBITDA multiple trades at mid-teens, while its closest peer ( GOOG ) trades at 28x. This low multiple is due to the fact ...
Derick Hudson/iStock Editorial via Getty Images Investment Thesis Meta ( META ) has been one of the most frustrating stocks to wrap our heads around. This is a mega-cap company, growing topline at a healthy level, holds a monopolistic position in the social media space, but its EBITDA multiple trades at mid-teens, while its closest peer ( GOOG ) trades at 28x. This low multiple is due to the fact that the firm has been committing a lot of cash to fund its AI infrastructure build-out. While these expenses are not structural and wouldn't chokehold the operations of the firm if ever they were to be paused, they still channel a significant amount of cash away from shareholders' pockets currently. Unlike in the case of GOOG, ( MSFT ) and ( AMZN ), META doesn't have computing services like the cloud to sell to AI enterprises, instead, the GPU purchases and the data center build-outs are solely for internal use to improve the recommendation algorithm so the firm can charge more for ad impressions. In the last earnings call , the CEO Mark said, " We're also using AI to unlock more inventory by auto translating and dubbing videos into a viewer's local language, enabling us to recommend a more diverse set of content. Over 0.5 billion users on each of Facebook and Instagram are now watching AI translated videos weekly ". Even though these unlocked features are impressive, the ROI currently looks incremental and not justifying a premium valuation. Another headwind for Meta is that the firm is a net buyer of the compute shortage and not the seller. The compute shortage constantly changes form, affecting net buyers subsequently, firstly it was a GPU shortage, and now it's a memory and optics shortage. All resulting in Meta increasing its CapEx guidance to keep up with price increases, making matters worse, META even took on more debt to further the infrastructure buildout. Meta grew revenue by 26.18% on a TTM basis, while capex grew by 47% to $19 billion, resulting in a capex-to-...
Getty Images GE Aerospace ( GE ) has struggled this year, despite the ongoing conflict in Iran. Shares are down 1.5%, total return, compared to the S&P 500’s +9.6% performance. Many investors surely placed wagers on the leading aerospace & defense stock leading into and at the war’s onset, but broader Industrials sector weakness and the AI trade may be pressuring the stock. Indeed, with the SpaceX...
Getty Images GE Aerospace ( GE ) has struggled this year, despite the ongoing conflict in Iran. Shares are down 1.5%, total return, compared to the S&P 500’s +9.6% performance. Many investors surely placed wagers on the leading aerospace & defense stock leading into and at the war’s onset, but broader Industrials sector weakness and the AI trade may be pressuring the stock. Indeed, with the SpaceX ( SPCX ) IPO on tap, new ways of harnessing the skies and space above could be an emerging bearish thesis for traditional aerospace & defense companies. What’s more, with a still-premium valuation, the onus is on the bulls heading into the middle of the year. I downgraded GE to a hold in Q3 last year . Shares are up 12%, but the stock is down rather sharply since late February, all while the S&P 500 has notched record highs. I reiterate a hold rating. I’ll provide a look at the Q1, along with refreshed fundamental and technical takes. GE Lagging XLI & The S&P 500 YTD Stockcharts.com Back in April, GE reported a solid set of quarterly results. Q1 non-GAAP EPS of $1.86 topped the Wall Street consensus forecast of $1.60, while revenue of $11.6 billion, up 29% from the same period a year earlier, was a material $890 million beat. The company merely reaffirmed FY 2026 guidance, but noted that the top and bottom lines were trending toward the upper end of the previously provided ranges. Shares fell 5.6% in the session that followed, however, marking a second consecutive post-reporting fall. Looking ahead to the July Q2 report, the options market prices in a moderate 6.0% earnings-related stock price swing based on the at-the-money straddle expiring soonest after the release. Shares of the now-$315 billion large-cap Industrials company feature an implied volatility of 38%, with the next dividend date slated for July 7. Looking back on the quarter that was, GE delivered a solid start to 2026, with better-than 20% growth in both revenue and earnings. Driven by robust customer deman...
Key Points The geopolitical conflict in the Middle East has pushed oil prices higher. Long-term investors need to consider the history of energy prices, not just the current price of oil. Most investors should focus on diversified oil companies that have proven they can survive the entire energy cycle. 10 stocks we like better than Chevron › Given the importance of oil and natural gas to the globa...
Key Points The geopolitical conflict in the Middle East has pushed oil prices higher. Long-term investors need to consider the history of energy prices, not just the current price of oil. Most investors should focus on diversified oil companies that have proven they can survive the entire energy cycle. 10 stocks we like better than Chevron › Given the importance of oil and natural gas to the global economy, every investor should probably have some exposure to the energy sector. I personally own one oil stock, yet I'm not the least bit worried about oil prices. That's notable because the geopolitical conflict in the Middle East has made high oil prices headline-grabbing news. If all you care about is finding a way to profit from rising oil prices over the short term, you'll probably want to buy a dedicated energy producer like Devon Energy (NYSE: DVN). Notably, its production is unaffected by the Middle East disruptions because it is U.S.-focused. But if you are a long-term investor, you'll want to take a more balanced approach to the energy sector, buying stocks like ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), Chevron (NYSE: CVX), and, in my case, TotalEnergies (NYSE: TTE). Here's why these three energy giants are my top oil stocks right now. Will AI create the world's first trillionaire? Our team just released a report on the one little-known company, called an "Indispensable Monopoly" providing the critical technology Nvidia and Intel both need. Continue » Go integrated or go home The unifying theme with Exxon, Chevron, and TotalEnergies is that they are all integrated energy companies. This means they have operations across the entire energy value chain. So they produce oil and natural gas in the upstream, like Devon or Diamondback Energy (NASDAQ: FANG). However, unlike an upstream-focused business, an integrated energy company also moves energy in the midstream, via infrastructure assets such as pipelines. And it processes these vital fuels in the downstream segment of the broader ...
Leon Neal/Getty Images News Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek ( DEEPSEEK ) announced on Saturday that it will make a 75% discount offered for its newly launched V4‑Pro AI model permanent after an ongoing promotion expires at the end of this month. Accordingly, the Hangzhou-based firm has revised pricing for the V4-Pro API to 0.025 yuan - 6 yuan (roughly $0.0036 - $0.84) per million ...
Leon Neal/Getty Images News Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek ( DEEPSEEK ) announced on Saturday that it will make a 75% discount offered for its newly launched V4‑Pro AI model permanent after an ongoing promotion expires at the end of this month. Accordingly, the Hangzhou-based firm has revised pricing for the V4-Pro API to 0.025 yuan - 6 yuan (roughly $0.0036 - $0.84) per million tokens, a unit of text processed by the AI model. During its launch last month, the pricing started at 0.1 yuan and went up to 24 yuan (roughly $0.01 - $3.48) per million tokens, depending on usage. “The deepseek-v4-pro model API pricing will be officially adjusted to 1/4 of the original price after the 75% discount promotion ends on 2026/05/31,” DeepSeek ( DEEPSEEK ) said. V4, adapted to run on Huawei Technologies’ Ascend 950 AI chips, would cost up to 12 times more for its pro version compared to its less powerful Flash version because of “ constraints in high-end compute capacity, ” limiting availability, the company said last month. It is not immediately clear if increased supplies of Huawei’s Ascend 950 chips led to the pricing cut. More on Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd. AI's threat potential prompts US, China to consider discussions on guardrails: report DeepSeek may be valued at $45B as China's Big Fund eyes investment - report Financial information for Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd.
France has decided to ban Israel’s far-right police minister Itamar Ben-Gvir from French territory, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Saturday, adding that this reflected growing anger among governments around the world over the treatment of an activist flotilla heading to Gaza. “As from today, Itamar Ben-Gvir is banned from entering French territory,” Barrot wrote on X. “Along with my ...
France has decided to ban Israel’s far-right police minister Itamar Ben-Gvir from French territory, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Saturday, adding that this reflected growing anger among governments around the world over the treatment of an activist flotilla heading to Gaza. “As from today, Itamar Ben-Gvir is banned from entering French territory,” Barrot wrote on X. “Along with my Italian counterpart, I am asking the European Union to also take sanctions against Itamar Ben-Gvir.” Advertisement Western governments expressed outrage after Ben-Gvir posted a video of himself taunting activists who had intended to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza being pinned to the ground. Some of the activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla, which was trying to get aid to Gaza, arrive in Rome on Saturday after being released by the Israeli authorities. Photo: EPA Some later alleged they had been physically assaulted in detention, allegations that Israel’s prison service denied.
Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer and burger season. Wayback Burgers President Patrick Conlin joined Christina Ruffini and David Gura on Bloomberg This Weekend to discuss changing consumer tastes, rising food costs, and how restaurants are preparing for one of the busiest dining seasons of the year. (Source: Bloomberg)
Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer and burger season. Wayback Burgers President Patrick Conlin joined Christina Ruffini and David Gura on Bloomberg This Weekend to discuss changing consumer tastes, rising food costs, and how restaurants are preparing for one of the busiest dining seasons of the year. (Source: Bloomberg)