Making Cents Sense

STOCK MARKET • VALUE INVESTING • ENERGY SECTOR • FUNDAMENTAL ANALYSIS PBF Energy, Marathon Petroleum, Valero, and Phillips 66 are generating enormous profits from an extraordinary refining environment. But I’m not interested in discovering which company looks cheapest when everything is going right. I want to know which one still makes financial sense when the good times disappear. October 8, 2026 · Investment research and opinion There's a particular kind of investment opportunity that makes me simultaneously interested, suspicious, and mildly concerned about the collective intelligence of Wall Street. It usually involves a cyclical industry reporting extraordinary profits, stocks trading at apparently attractive earnings multiples, and an army of enthusiastic investors announcing that they've discovered the bargain of the century. Then the cycle changes, earnings collapse, and everyone acts surprised. Welcome to oil refining. I've been looking at four companies that deser...

I have a weakness for companies that make investors argue. Give me a business everyone loves, and I immediately start wondering how much optimism has already been stuffed into the price. Give me a business everyone hates, and I start checking whether the hatred has become a substitute for reading. Intel occupies the particularly entertaining territory where the spreadsheet sounds encouraged, the skeptics remain unconvinced, and everyone believes the other side has misunderstood something painfully obvious. That makes Intel interesting. It does not automatically make Intel cheap, safe, or destined to reward my patience. I like a comeback story as much as anyone, but the stock market has charged plenty of people admission to watch a comeback that remained permanently in rehearsal. Before getting sentimental about a familiar technology name, I want to know what is improving, what remains expensive, and how much success I am already being asked to finance. The headline needs one qualificat...

There are certain phrases in investing that immediately make me reach for my wallet. Not because I want to buy something. Because I want to make sure my wallet is still there. “This time is different” is one of them. Those four words have financed more bad decisions than casinos, sports betting and relatives with revolutionary business ideas combined. So when I hear people suggesting that Micron Technology may have finally escaped the brutal boom-and-bust cycle that has defined the memory industry for decades, my first instinct is skepticism. Memory companies are cyclical. Everybody knows this. Demand rises. Prices rise. Manufacturers expand capacity. Everybody becomes convinced that demand will remain wonderful forever. Too much capacity arrives. Prices collapse. Margins disappear. Everybody suddenly discovers religion. Capital spending gets cut. Supply tightens. Demand recovers. Then we repeat the entire ceremony. Micron has spent much of its public-market life riding that roller coa...

There is a particular kind of stock market setup that immediately gets my attention. The stock price falls. The headlines get uglier. Momentum traders begin quietly backing toward the exits. People who loved the company two months ago suddenly discover seventeen reasons they never really liked it in the first place. And meanwhile, the actual business keeps making more money. That is when I start paying attention. Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ: WDC) has become one of the clearest examples of that setup I have seen recently. The shares fell more than 30% from their 2026 high, yet the company's underlying earnings story did not collapse with the stock. Seeking Alpha's quantitative system subsequently upgraded the shares to a Strong Buy, while its sector-relative valuation grade improved dramatically from an F six months earlier to a B. That combination fascinates me because it gets to the heart of what investing actually is. A business and its stock are not the same thing. S...