CWS Market Review – January 1, 2020
Happy New Year!
The 2019 trading year has come to a close. It was a very good year for Wall Street and for us. I’ll get to our performance in 2019 in a bit, but first let’s look at the 2020 Buy List.
The 2020 Buy List
Here are the 25 stocks for the 2020 Buy List. It’s locked and sealed, and I can’t make any changes for 12 months.
For tracking purposes, I assume the Buy List is a $1 million portfolio that’s equally divided among 25 stocks. Below are all 25 positions with the number of shares for each and the closing price for 2019. Whenever I discuss how the Buy List is doing, the list below is what I’m referring to.
| Company | Ticker | Price | Shares | Balance |
| AFLAC | AFL | $52.90 | 756.14367 | $40,000.00 |
| Ansys | ANSS | $257.41 | 155.39412 | $40,000.00 |
| Becton, Dickinson | BDX | $271.97 | 147.07505 | $40,000.00 |
| Broadridge Financial Solutions | BR | $123.54 | 323.78177 | $40,000.00 |
| Cerner | CERN | $73.39 | 545.03338 | $40,000.00 |
| Check Point Software | CHKP | $110.96 | 360.49027 | $40,000.00 |
| Church & Dwight | CHD | $70.34 | 568.66648 | $40,000.00 |
| Danaher | DHR | $153.48 | 260.62028 | $40,000.00 |
| Disney | DIS | $144.63 | 276.56779 | $40,000.00 |
| Eagle Bancorp | EGBN | $48.63 | 822.53753 | $40,000.00 |
| FactSet Research Systems | FDS | $268.30 | 149.08684 | $40,000.00 |
| Fiserv | FISV | $115.63 | 345.93099 | $40,000.00 |
| Globe Life | GL | $105.25 | 380.04751 | $40,000.00 |
| Hershey | HSY | $146.98 | 272.14587 | $40,000.00 |
| Hormel Foods | HRL | $45.11 | 886.72135 | $40,000.00 |
| Intercontinental Exchange | ICE | $92.55 | 432.19881 | $40,000.00 |
| Middleby | MIDD | $109.52 | 365.23009 | $40,000.00 |
| Moody’s | MCO | $237.41 | 168.48490 | $40,000.00 |
| Ross Stores | ROST | $116.42 | 343.58358 | $40,000.00 |
| RPM International | RPM | $76.76 | 521.10474 | $40,000.00 |
| Sherwin-Williams | SHW | $583.54 | 68.54714 | $40,000.00 |
| Silgan | SLGN | $31.08 | 1287.00129 | $40,000.00 |
| Stepan | SCL | $102.44 | 390.47247 | $40,000.00 |
| Stryker | SYK | $209.94 | 190.53063 | $40,000.00 |
| Trex | TREX | $89.88 | 445.03783 | $40,000.00 |
| Total | $1,000,000.00 |
The five new stocks are Ansys (ANSS), Middleby (MIDD), Silgan (SLGN), Stepan (SCL) and Trex (TREX).
The five sells are Continental Building Products (CBPX), Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH), Raytheon (RTN), JM Smucker (SJM) and Signature Bank (SBNY).
Disney (DIS) is our largest stock, with a market cap of $261 billion. The Buy List is mostly large- and mid-cap stocks. Four of the five new buys for this year are our only stocks with market caps less than $10 billion. That’s not a strategic decision on my part. It just worked out that way.
Only AFLAC (AFL) and Fiserv (FISV) have been on the Buy List all 15 years. This is Stryker’s (SYK) 13th year.
Here’s a brief description (via Hoovers) of our five new stocks:
It’s good to look before you leap – and even before you make. That’s why ANSYS (ANSS) helps designers and engineers see how their ideas play out even before a prototype is built by simulating designs on a computer. The company’s software analyzes the models for their response to combinations of such physical variables as stress, pressure, impact, temperature, and velocity. Ranging from small consulting firms to multinational enterprises, its 40,000 customers come from a broad range of industries and include QualComm, Ford, TechnipFMC, Medtronic, and Speedo. Pennsylvania-based ANSYS generates about 60% of revenue from outside the US, with Japan and Germany among its leading international markets. Buy below $270.
Founded in 1888, Middleby (MIDD) makes a slew of commercial and institutional foodservice equipment for restaurants, retailers, and hotels worldwide. Middleby operates through three segments: Commercial Foodservice Equipment, Food Processing Equipment, and Residential Kitchen Equipment. The largest, Foodservice, makes machines for most types of cooking and warming activities. Products are sold under about 50 blue chip brands – Anets, Blodgett, Southbend, and TurboChef, among them. Residential Kitchen makes ovens, refrigerators, dishwashers, microwaves, and other related products, and Food Processing makes cooking, mixing, slicing, and packaging machines. About two-thirds of sales come from the US and Canada. Buy below $120.
Silgan Holdings (SLGN) is one of the leading makers of metal containers in the world, and in North America, it holds the #1 position in metal food containers. Its containers are used by customers such as Campbell’s Soup, Del Monte, and Nestlé to package soups, vegetables, meat, seafood, and pet food. Through its Silgan Dispensing Systems business, the company supplies highly engineered triggers, pumps, sprayers and dispensing closure solutions for health care, garden, home, and beauty and food products. Silgan also makes plastic containers used by personal care, pharmaceutical, and other companies. About 80% of its revenue comes from North America. Buy below $34.
Stepan Company (SCL) makes basic and intermediate chemicals, including surfactants, specialty products, phthalic anhydride, and polyurethane polyols. Surfactants, the company’s largest business, are used in cleaning agents and consumer products like detergents, toothpastes, and cosmetics. Stepan’s surfactants also have commercial and industrial applications ranging from emulsifiers for agricultural insecticides to agents used in oil recovery. The company also makes phthalic anhydride and other polymers, in addition to specialty chemicals for food and pharmaceutical uses. The US is Stepan’s biggest market. Buy below $110.
Trex Company (TREX) is all decked out with plenty of places to go. It’s the world’s largest maker of wood-alternative decking and railing products, which are used in the construction of residential and commercial decks, rails, and trims. Marketed under the Trex name, products resemble wood and have the workability of wood, but require less long-term maintenance. The Trex Wood-Polymer composite is made of waste wood fibers and reclaimed plastic. Trex serves professional installation contractors and do-it-yourselfers through about 90 wholesale distribution centers, which in turn sell to retailers including Home Depot and Lowe’s. Trex products are available in more than 5,500 locations, primarily in the US and Canada. Buy below $97.
The 2019 Buy List
Now let’s look at how we did last year. As it turned out, we beat the market by eight basis points, or 0.08%. This was a close finish.
For 2019, the S&P 500 gained 28.88% while our Buy List gained 29.99%. Including dividends, the S&P 500 gained 31.49% while our Buy List gained 31.57%.
By August, our Buy List had a 6% lead over the market, but much of that eroded away in the final weeks of the year.
For the long-term, we’ve done quite well. Over the last 14 years, our Buy List has gained 309.61% while the S&P 500 has gained 247.13%.
Our biggest winner of the year was Moody’s (MCO) which gained nearly 70%. Fifteen of our 25 stocks were up more than 30%. Every stock except Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH) and Eagle Bank (EGBN) finished in the black.
For people who care about such things, the “beta” of our Buy List in 2019 was 0.8125. That’s pretty low for us. The correlation of the daily changes of the Buy List to the changes of the S&P 500 was 89.96%.
The chart below details the Buy List’s performance. I’ve listed each stock along with the number of shares and the starting and ending prices. For tracking purposes, I assume the Buy List is a $1 million portfolio that starts out equally divided among the 25 stocks.
Eddy Elfenbein is a Washington, DC-based speaker, portfolio manager and editor of the blog Crossing Wall Street. His