John Dorfman Columns category
John Dorfman: After big falls, PayPal, TaskUs look like bargains
No one wants to go to the hospital. But sometimes it’s the best thing for you. That’s the notion behind my quarterly Casualty List. It contains stocks that have been roughed up in the latest quarter, and that I think can recover and thrive. My Casualty List picks from a...
Analysts’ darlings often fizzle, but they soared in ’25
Don’t buy the stocks analysts love. Don’t buy the ones they hate, either. Those are conclusions from my 27-year study of the four stocks analysts most adore at the beginning of each year and the four stocks they most despise. The average return on the analysts’ darlings has been 8.2%....
A high-risk, potentially high-reward way to pick stocks
“There are simple answers, just not easy ones,” Ronald Reagan once said. In stock investing, a simple, risky but surprisingly effective technique is to buy the cheapest stocks out there. That’s the point of my Robot Portfolio, a hypothetical portfolio in which the stocks are chosen by a computer, not...
John Dorfman: What my father taught me about investing
My father, Isaiah Sol Dorfman, was a World-War-II spy, a labor-relations lawyer, and a lifelong stock-market investor. His interest in the market was contagious. When I started buying stocks, he examined my portfolio and said, “I think you’ve done well in picking your stocks. Too bad you didn’t have enough...
John Dorfman: An X-Ray view of the Magnificent 7
For the past three years, a huge share of the stock market’s action has been in the Magnificent Seven, a small group of super-successful, super-popular stocks. There are signs of fatigue in this leadership group, but the Magnificent Seven remain mainstays in many people’s portfolios. They are Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL),...
John Dorfman: 5 flattened stocks — Biggest losers of 2025
Every December, I scrutinize the biggest losers in the stock market year-to-date. My thought is there might be gold in the rubble. In 2025, here are the five worst performers (through Dec. 12) among all U.S. stocks with a market value of at least $5 billion. • Trade Desk Inc....
John Dorfman: Insiders buy at Carrier, Hershey and T-Mobile
A few corporate chieftains bought their own company’s stock in November. Numerous studies, most notably at the University of Michigan, have shown insiders do better, on average, than regular investors. Trades by chief executive officers generally do better than those of other insiders. Let’s glance at a quintet of insider...
John Dorfman: Deckers, Pinterest candidates for January bounce
It’s not only the moon that makes people do strange things. It’s taxes. Every year around this time, investors unload their losing stocks. By doing so they get a tax deduction. Sometimes the mass tax-motivated selling pushes stocks below their intrinsic value. That’s why frequently we see a “January bounce”...
John Dorfman: 5 dividend aristocrats I recommend now
Should you go aristocratic? A dividend aristocrat is a company that has raised its dividend every year for the past 25 years. At the moment, there are 68 of them. These companies are obviously, in a sense, elite. They have demonstrated staying power and a willingness to share the wealth...
John Dorfman: Conagra, Beazer Homes look good based on book value
A classic stock-picking technique that has fallen into disuse is the price-to-book-value ratio. Ben Graham, widely considered the father of value investing, liked stocks selling “below book.” I still do, although they are rarer today than they were in Graham’s Day. Book value is a company’s net worth — its...
John Dorfman: Hedge-fund favorites rose 23% in past year
A bright young intern just left my firm to work for a New York hedge fund. That was bad news for me, but not unusual in the financial world. Hedge funds are magnets for talent, partly because in good years they can pay handsome bonus checks. Gurufocus.com maintains a screen...
John Dorfman: Step into the shadows and take a peek at my Purloined Portfolio
Do you keep an eye on your competition? Of course you do. Competition research is common sense. When you think a competitor has a great idea, adopt it or adapt it. In that spirit, once a year I compile a Purloined Portfolio, consisting of one stock from each of five...
John Dorfman: Hormel, Amdocs hit the Casualty List
Stocks that have been banged up, and that I believe have underlying strengths, are some of my favorites. They are also fodder for my quarterly Casualty List. I’ve compiled this list since 2000, and it has beaten the Standard & Poor’s 500 Total Return Index by a decent margin. The...
Six surprise winners in this year’s stock market
The New York Lottery might lend its old slogan to the stock market: Hey, you never know. Several stocks have beaten the market this year that might surprise you. Take General Motors Corp. (GM) for instance. It’s up 19% this year through Sept. 26, even though U.S. car sales are...
Contestants turn in terrific short-selling performance
I am impressed. Contestants in my annual Short Sellers Don’t Have Horns competition scored terrific results in the 2024-25 running of the contest. Short selling is a technique to profit from a stock’s decline. The goal in the contest is to pick a stock that will collapse. Of 16 contestants...
Dorfman: Company execs remain skittish about buying own shares
This column frequently tracks insider buys by companies’ chief executives. Lately, they are scarce. Executives normally sell more shares than they buy because their cup is periodically refilled via stock-option grants. Over the past 21 years, according to Gurufocus.com, dollar volume for buys has usually run about 34% of the...
John Dorfman: Adobe, Applied Materials stand out for fat profit margins
High profits are the engine that can drive pleasant returns for shareholders. Beyond that, on a societal level, profits provide the signals that make the capitalist system work. These signals are the reason capitalist economies have fewer gluts and shortages than centrally planned (Communist) economies. High profits lure new competitors,...
John Dorfman: Value stocks showed some life in August: 5 to consider
Maybe, just maybe, the moment that value investors have been waiting for has arrived. In August, value stocks were up more than 3%, while growth stocks returned a little over 1%. The value revival, if it’s real, has been a long time coming. Growth has outperformed value in eight of...
Dorfman: Comcast, Allstate look good on price-to-cash flow ratio
“It’s my way or the highway.” That’s the attitude of some investment professionals toward stock-selection methods that differ from their own. If astronomers had a narrow view like that, they might spot Jupiter but miss the beautiful rings of Saturn. The price-to-cash flow ratio isn’t my favorite measure, but I...
John Dorfman: Are you benefiting from wave of share buybacks?
July set a record for companies buying back their own shares. They did it to the tune of $166 billion. Are the companies whose stocks you own buying back their own shares? It’s worth checking. Buybacks aren’t a magic panacea for raising shareholder value, but they often help. When there...
John Dorfman: A 12-stock Sane Portfolio for crazy times
In today’s higher-tariff world, where political and geopolitical clashes are harsh, you might want to take your stock portfolio’s risk level down a notch. Perhaps the Sane Portfolio can be of some help. This is a theoretical portfolio, intended to be slightly on the low-risk side of the risk spectrum....
John Dorfman: Don’t give up hope, value investors
The numbers are stark. In the 12 months through June, growth stocks returned 19.9%, while value stocks managed only 9.6%. Alas for value investors, the two previous years tell the same story. In 2023 the scorecard showed a return of 30% for growth and 22.2% for value. In 2024 the...
John Dorfman: Perfect 10 Portfolio has averaged 18% return
Darn! Missed by a whisker. My Perfect 10 Portfolio returned 14.6% in the past year, a hair behind the Standard & Poor’s 500 Total Return Index at 14.7%. That doesn’t damper my enthusiasm for this portfolio. In 22 years, it has averaged more than an 18% return, while the index...
John Dorfman: CVS, Archer-Daniels look good on this ratio
There are many ways companies can manipulate their reported profits. Fudging sales (also known as revenue) is more difficult. That’s one reason why I always check the price-to-sales ratio when I’m considering a stock. It’s simply the stock’s price divided by sales per share. For example, CVS Health Corp. (CVS)...
John Dorfman: Kraft Heinz, Helmerich & Payne hit the Casualty List
Give me your battered, your cheap, Your wounded stocks that crave a second chance, The wretched refuse of the market’s heap. They’ve stumbled, yet they soon again may dance. That little poem (with apologies to Emma Lazarus) sums up the idea behind my Casualty List. It’s a roster of stocks...
