What we’re reading (12/6)
“Doesn’t Anyone Do Due Diligence Any More?” (Financial Times). “Doesn’t anyone do due diligence any more? The boring process of checking that potential investments can live up to their promises has fallen completely by the wayside. Due diligence once meant sending bankers to check that a mining company really had a working gold mine, hiring accountants to scour the books and asking lawyers to identify contracts that could prove troublesome in a bankruptcy.”
“Small-Cap Stocks Are Really Cheap” (Morningstar). “For smaller-company stocks, price/earnings ratios—a widely used measure for determining the value of a stock relative to its earnings—have reached their lowest levels in two decades. Lower ratios generally represent more attractive values and with a greater potential for price gains.”
“9 Dividend Aristocrat Stocks To Buy Now” (U.S. News & World Report). “[T]here's a special breed of dividend stock that takes reliability, consistency and dependability to another level. The ‘dividend aristocrats’ are a group of 65 S&P 500 stocks that have somehow managed to raise their dividend payments each year for at least 25 consecutive years.”
“Europe Can’t Count On U.S. Shale To Make Up For Russian Crude” (OilPrice.com). “U.S. oil production growth is slowing down. The shale revolution, as we knew it until a few years ago, is no longer in full-growth mode. And it may never return to it.”
“Major League Baseball Used Two Balls Again This Year, And Evidence Points To A Third” (Insider). MLB has some questions to answer: “according to a new analysis of more than 200 balls used in games during the 2022 season conducted by Dr. Meredith Wills, a Society for American Baseball Research award-winning astrophysicist, that's [MLB’s claim that all balls used in 2022 were produced under the new manufacturing process] not true. Major League Baseball did not settle into using a single, more consistent ball last season, Wills' research suggests: It used three.”
