Ceasefire

Valuing stocks today looks very different than it did a few decades ago—and that shift matters for investors.

Historically, valuation was grounded in tangible metrics: price-to-earnings ratios, book value, dividends, and cash flow. Companies were asset-heavy—think railroads, banks, and manufacturers—so balance sheets told much of the story. If you bought at a reasonable multiple and held, time and earnings growth did the heavy lifting.

Fast forward to today, and the market is dominated by asset-light, innovation-driven businesses. Technology, software, and platform companies often trade at higher multiples because their value isn’t in physical assets—it’s in scalability, intellectual property, and future growth potential. Traditional metrics still matter, but they don’t tell the full story.

We’ve also seen the rise of forward-looking valuation. Investors now place more weight on future earnings, total addressable markets, and network effects. In many cases, markets are pricing in what a company could become, not just what it is today.

The takeaway for investors: valuation hasn’t disappeared—it’s evolved. Anchoring solely to old-school metrics can cause you to miss opportunities, while ignoring valuation altogether can lead to overpaying. The key is balance: understand the business, respect the numbers, and recognize that how we value companies will continue to change just as the economy does.

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Colin Symons, CIO Lloyd Financial Group

A ceasefire is making markets happy and killing oil.

Unsurprisingly, there’s concern the ceasefire won’t hold, which will help make things messy, for a bit.

What to do? For our part, we sold about half our hedges a while ago, too early. Then we sold about half the remainder, last week.

We’re selling the rest, today. It’s way down from yesterday but up even more from when we bought it.

We made a profit on all the hedges, because they were good businesses, anyway.

When to sell hedges is often agonizing, as you can see here. Is the fighting done? Often, this stuff doesn’t go in a straight line.

I think things are sufficiently contained that the oil downtrend will continue and I’m not going to wait and hope for a better exit point, later.

As usual, I don’t know what’s going to happen, just do the best with the information available.

In this case, we’re positioned well for a rebound and that’s still our stance.

My basic attitude is we can get back to business as usual, with vol calming and liquidity coming back.

That’s likely to take a while, but there’s a good chance investors will be much more optimistic in a month or two than they were yesterday, and that’s how we’re positioned.

There are definitely problems out there, and that will matter, eventually, but for now, investors aren’t well positioned for the likely future, and we’re trying to take advantage.

FOMC Minutes said many members were pricing out rate cuts further into the future.

Israel’s continued aggression against Hezbollah is putting strains on the ceasefire, but gains in oil and losses in stocks seem somewhat limited.

The WSJ says about a third of Gulf region refineries were damaged during the conflict and will take months to repair.

Everyone seems to hate the ceasefire, but markets went up and oil was crushed. I think the market is trying to tell you something, there, but you do you. I’m looking for a continued uptrend, which doesn’t mean every move has to be up.

After yesterday’s rally, SPX is roughly 3% off ATHs.

Anthropic sold some equity to investors but the amount was limited as employees were relatively unwilling to sell.

Jobless Claims, Personal income & Spending, and the final revision for Q4 GDP, today.

What does it all mean? Looks like a digestion day today, following yesterday’s big gains.

Don’t leave your financial future up to chance. Let’s build a plan that gives you confidence today and peace of mind for tomorrow. Click here to schedule a meeting — I’m here to help you take the next step toward financial freedom.

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