From fast food to fine dining, restaurants play a vital societal role. But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows as they’re notoriously hard to run thanks to perishable ingredients, labor shortages, or volatile consumer spending. Unfortunately, these factors have spelled trouble for the industry as it has shed 4.8% over the past six months. This drawdown was discouraging since the S&P 500 held steady.
Small-cap stocks can be incredibly lucrative investments because their lack of analyst coverage leads to frequent mispricings. However, these businesses (and their stock prices) often stay small because their subscale operations make it harder to expand their competitive moats.
"You get what you pay for" often applies to expensive stocks with best-in-class business models and execution. While their quality can sometimes justify the premium, they typically experience elevated volatility during market downturns when expectations change.
Investors looking for hidden gems should keep an eye on small-cap stocks because they’re frequently overlooked by Wall Street. Many opportunities exist in this part of the market, but it is also a high-risk, high-reward environment due to the lack of reliable analyst price targets.
Software is eating the world, and virtually no business is left untouched by it. The undeniable tailwinds fueling the industry have also led to strong returns for SaaS stocks lately as they’ve gained 6.2% over the past six months. Investing here would have been wise - at the same time, the S&P 500 was stuck in neutral.
The S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Dow Jones have all plummeted since President Donald Trump took office in January.
Investors looking for hidden gems should keep an eye on small-cap stocks because they’re frequently overlooked by Wall Street. Many opportunities exist in this part of the market, but it is also a high-risk, high-reward environment due to the lack of reliable analyst price targets.
Value investing has created more billionaires than any other strategy, like Warren Buffett, who built his fortune by purchasing wonderful businesses at reasonable prices. But these hidden gems are few and far between - many stocks that appear cheap often stay that way because they face structural issues.
Growth is oxygen. But when it evaporates, the consequences can be extreme - ask anyone who bought Cisco in the Dot-Com Bubble (Nvidia?) or newer investors who lived through the 2020 to 2022 COVID cycle.
Expensive stocks typically earn their valuations through superior growth rates that other companies simply can’t match. The flip side though is that these lofty expectations make them particularly susceptible to drawdowns when market sentiment shifts.
