Thanks to @intercst for pointing out the efforts of Big Pharma to roll back the limits on drug prices, focusing its requests for president-elect Donald Trump and Congress on “fixing” a Biden-era law allowing the Medicare health plan to negotiate prices for its costliest medicines along with insurance changes.
@intercst mentioned that he bought LLY, MRK and PFE. I think this is a good idea but decided to investigate the companies using the BMW method (remember good ol’ BMW-Jim?). In addition to the usual factors.
LLY is on the list of potentially overpriced stocks. MRK and PFE are below their 25 year average.
AVE CUR RETURN 6-MO
TICKER CAGR CAGR FACTOR RMS PRICE CHG
LLY 9.6% 16.6% 0.21 2.60 839.96 1% Eli Lilly and Company
Fidelity Equity summary score 9.4
P/E ratio 11.69 (that’s half what it used to be)
Estimated dividend rate/yield 4.1%
Analyst rating 9.4 (Very bullish)
Based on these factors I bought MRK and PFE but skipped LLY since the market has already priced in the growth expectations.
Note: LLY MRK and PFE are 25-35 year holdings for me. My strategy is to buy a basket of large players in an industry that benefits from America’s obscene level of bipartisan political corruption and to hold for the long term. You can’t predict when a drug company will discover a blockbuster drug, or buy the rights to one from a smaller company.
And also, when people buy and sell, research shows the stuff they buy performs worse than the stock they just sold. I learned that back in 1996 when I sold 1/3 of my DELL stake to diversify into REITs. It quickly became a million dollar mistake.
You want to avoid the big mistakes and let the winners ride. As Warren Buffett counsels, “We make more money when inactive.”
I wish people well with the “BMW Screen” and “Saul Stocks”, but history says that’s a tough way to make money over the long term.
The tide has not gone out yet. I can not trust any of the current PE multiples. I get that is a very crude measure but the reality in what will hit us is real.
Unemployed people qualify for “free Obamacare”. It’s the people with high-deductible, for-profit health plans that have trouble buying their meds, if they’re not checking the GoodRx price first.
If you have chickens out of their eggs…start subtracting them.
You have not been following the narrative if you can’t see that by now.
When anything comes up and someone makes perfect sense of the government actions…and ask them to consider that none of that logic is being applied any longer.
Logic isn’t being applied, but when Big Money speaks, Trump will listen.
The one constant over the past 45 years is the “bipartisan culture of political corruption” – you can take that to the bank over the long term (at least until there’s some kind of revolution).