Private Equity Insights

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

The European economy, challenged by pandemic, inflation, interest rate rises, and geopolitical tensions, has created an uncertain environment, reminiscent of the post-Global Financial Crisis era. In this context, private debt and in particular asset-backed lending (ABL) and real estate debt have emerged as prominent alternative financing methods, filling the gap left by traditional banks constrained by regulatory capital limitations.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

As it turns out, the rumors first floated last week are true: Walmart (NYSE: WMT) is acquiring Vizio (NYSE: VZIO). The $2.3 billion deal was confirmed on Tuesday. The purchase brings a respectable consumer electronics brand into Walmart's fold. The thing is, the acquisition may be even more brilliant than it seems to be on the surface. Vizio brings four distinct things to the table that will make Walmart even more investment-worthy once the deal goes down. 1.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

Rivian 's (NASDAQ: RIVN) financials are a mess. The company is burning billions in cash and can't sell vehicles profitably. Within a year, it will need to raise money to build its next manufacturing facility and still won't be generating cash. A company flush with cash is General Motors (NYSE: GM) , which has struggled in the EV market. In this video, Travis Hoium shows why these are a perfect match for a merger.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

Image source: Getty Images We're already two months into 2024, and many travelers are ready to plan their next trip. Cruises have long been popular because of their all-inclusive packages. You can travel to multiple destinations and enjoy various offerings on board, like food, entertainment, and activities. If you're considering taking a cruise this year, choosing one that offers exceptional value can be a smart move for your personal finances.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

Warren Buffett has made his dislike for Bitcoin known over the years. "In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come to a bad ending," he said in 2018. At the time, Bitcoin was priced at about $15,000. Today, Bitcoin's value has soared above $50,000. Yet Buffett hasn't changed his tune. Even if someone offered him all the Bitcoin in the world for $25, Buffett said, he wouldn't take it.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

Fool.com contributor Parkev Tatevosian discusses the latest comments from Intel 's (NASDAQ: INTC) CEO and what they could mean for investors. *Stock prices used were the afternoon prices of Feb. 20, 2024. The video was published on Feb. 22, 2024. Should you invest $1,000 in Intel right now? Before you buy stock in Intel, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Intel wasn’t one of them.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

According to research by The Motley Fool, the average U.S. household has $87,000 saved for retirement. Suppose you want to retire with a million-dollar nest egg. Round that average to $100,000, and you need to grow your savings tenfold between now and retirement. That can seem intimidating, especially with how hard it feels to get that first $100,000.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

Rivian Automotive (NASDAQ: RIVN) stock is falling off a cliff -- it was trading 10% lower as of 10:30 a.m. ET Friday. The electric vehicle (EV) stock has now lost a whopping 33% in just two days and has fallen 55% already in 2024, as of this writing. Ouch. The markets believed Rivian would be able to turn things around in 2024 and ramp up production swiftly, but the EV maker just confirmed its struggles are far from over yet.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

There wasn't much good news for the solar industry this week, as earnings season brought bad report after bad report. Residential solar companies are suffering most because of policy changes in Europe and California, just as higher interest rates were making it harder to economically build solar projects. The three most impacted companies this week were Sunrun (NASDAQ: RUN) which fell 27% for the week; SolarEdge Technologies (NASDAQ: SEDG) , dropping 21.4%; and Sunnova Energy (NYSE: NOVA) , whic

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) stock is off to a terrific start in 2024, gaining 19%. That's the good news. The bad news is Disney stock did significantly worse last year, and has underperformed the S&P 500 by more than 17% over the past 52 weeks. Can returning champion CEO Bob Iger pull Disney stock out of its funk, and get the stock price moving higher again?

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

It's no secret that interest and, more importantly, investment in artificial intelligence (AI) are booming. That creates growth opportunities for companies and enhances value for shareholders in companies with exposure. One such company is diversified industrial Honeywell International (NASDAQ: HON). It's not just a user of AI to add value to its solutions; it also has a significant stake in a quantum computing business that management plans to monetize.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

Fool.com contributor Parkev Tatevosian takes a closer look at QuantumScape (NYSE: QS) stock to update investors. *Stock prices used were the afternoon prices of Feb. 19, 2024. The video was published on Feb. 21, 2024. Should you invest $1,000 in QuantumScape right now? Before you buy stock in QuantumScape, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and QuantumScape wasn’t one of them.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

All stocks require research before buying. But sometimes after research, I conclude that a company isn't ever worth an investment -- no need to circle back in the future. Some businesses simply burn cash, will burn more cash with scale, and continually dilute investors to pay the bills. I believed Uber Technologies (NYSE: UBER) was going to be one of those companies after I researched it in 2019.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

In today's rip-roaring stock market, it's easy to get caught up with what's hot and overlook the milestones of consistent stalwarts. Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) , one of the most well-known dividend-paying companies, just raised its dividend by 5.4% to a record high of $0.485 per share. The dividend is payable on April 1 to shareholders of record as of March 15.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

Last week marked one of the most important days of the first quarter for the investing community. Feb. 14 was the deadline for institutional investors with at least $100 million in assets under management to file Form 13F with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Put simply, a 13F provides professional and everyday investors alike with an under-the-hood look at what Wall Street's smartest and most successful money managers bought and sold in the latest quarter (in this instance, the qua

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

Rivian 's (NASDAQ: RIVN) earnings report was a disappointment to a lot of investors. The company doesn't expect to increase shipments in 2024 and will burn through billions more in cash. In this video, Travis Hoium shows why this is a worse report than it appears on the surface and that Rivian is now in serious trouble. *Stock prices used were end-of-day prices of Feb. 21, 2024.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

The U.S. stock market saw an impressive surge in late 2023, with the S&P 500 ending the year with a stellar gain of 24.2%. This upward trend continued in early 2024, and the S&P 500 already achieved nine record closing highs in 2024. Since the S&P 500 has risen over 20% from its October 2022 bear market trough and surpassed its prior peak from January 2022, it is now firmly within a bull market phase.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

The main attraction of British American Tobacco (NYSE: BTI) is the stock's huge 9.7% dividend yield. That's a shockingly high number for a consumer staples maker. It's understandable that income investors would find the yield attractive -- or at least attractive enough to dig into the cigarette maker's backstory. Here's the thing -- in a year, the story won't change all that much.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

Shares of Peloton (NASDAQ: PTON) have dropped like a rock since their pandemic peak, and the company has shifted strategies. This is no longer a hardware-first company; Peloton wants to be the fitness anywhere company. In this video, Travis Hoium shows how the transition is going and why patience is the key for investors in this fitness stock. *Stock prices used were end-of-day prices of Feb. 20, 2024.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become the hottest investment theme, thanks to the technology's potential to improve everything from people's daily routines to the way business is done. It can be applied to all areas -- helping automakers boost factory efficiency and pharma companies develop drugs more quickly, to cite just a couple of examples. The great thing about AI is that companies that create the technology or use the technology both can win, and this offers investors many opportunities

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

Reaching a $1 trillion valuation is one of the most prestigious milestones a company can achieve, and it usually takes decades of consistent operational excellence. That's why a mere six U.S. companies have valuations of $1 trillion or more right now: Microsoft Apple Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) Alphabet (Google parent) Amazon Meta Platforms However, Apple and Microsoft are the only two companies to have valuations north of $2 trillion at the moment.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

With the S&P 500 hovering around an all-time high, some investors might be looking for safer investments that generate passive income without the stock market needing to go higher. The S&P 500 has long been a source of passive income. But investing in an S&P 500 index fund yields just 1.5% right now, far lower than the risk-free 10-year Treasury rate at 4.2%.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 23, 2024

Nvidia 's (NASDAQ: NVDA) development of high-end data center GPUs for processing machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) tasks has turned it into a hypergrowth stock over the past couple of years. All of the world's leading AI companies -- including ChatGPT's developer OpenAI, Microsoft , Alphabet 's Google, and Amazon -- use Nvidia GPUs. Nvidia's first-mover advantage and its lack of meaningful competitors made it one of the easiest ways to profit from the expansion of the AI market.

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Leveraging Accounting Returns Companies 246

The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

You know what's better than delivering a blowout quarter? Raising the bar just three weeks later. Royal Caribbean Cruises (NYSE: RCL) had a strong fourth-quarter report earlier this month. On Wednesday afternoon it announced that things are going even better than its initially rosy outlook. Royal Caribbean initiated guidance for 2024 on Feb. 1. Its forecast calling for adjusted earnings per share of $9.50 to $9.70 this year was well received.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

Image source: The Motley Fool/Getty Images Capital One sent shockwaves through the credit card industry on Feb. 19, 2024 when it announced that it is buying Discover®. The deal is expected to close in late 2024 or early 2025, and would make Capital One the biggest credit card company by loan volume. This $35.3 billion acquisition could bring big changes to credit card customers.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

The short-term rental space continues to grow at an impressive pace, and travel platform Airbnb (NASDAQ: ABNB) is proving that it has a clear competitive advantage in this blossoming industry. But you would hardly know it from some of the headlines. In 2023, social media was full of anecdotal evidence aiming to prove Airbnb's imminent demise -- otherwise known as "Airbnbust.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies continue to advance at incredible speeds. Just a couple of years ago, OpenAI's DallE text-to-image platform was only capable of generating crude visuals. The program's output was an intriguing novelty and hinted at what was to come, but you probably wouldn't have wanted to hang anything it produced on your wall.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

There are easier routes to following Warren Buffett's wisdom than mirroring Berkshire Hathaway 's equity positions. Warren Buffett would be the first one to tell you to put most of your money into an index fund that mirrors the S&P 500 , and Berkshire Hathaway has money in those, too. Or you could buy shares of Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire Hathaway is a holding company, and it has a different mandate than the typical individual investor.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

In the last five years, the S&P 500 has climbed 80% (as of Feb. 16), a figure that excludes dividends. That's a respectable gain that investors can be encouraged by -- but not all businesses have fared this well. Look at Detroit automaker Ford (NYSE: F). Its shares have climbed by just 44% since February 2019. If we zoom out even further and look at the last 10 years, investors actually lost money.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Many retirees unfortunately find themselves stressed financially. And often, a big reason boils down to the fact that they're receiving less monthly income from Social Security than they expected. If you want to avoid being disappointed by Social Security once your retirement rolls around, be sure to make these key moves. 1. Get an estimate of your monthly benefit You can read up on what the average monthly Social Security benefit looks like at any given point in time.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Fool.com contributor Parkev Tatevosian decides which artificial intelligence (AI) stock is the best one to buy: Palantir (NYSE: PLTR) , Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) , or Super Micro Computer (NASDAQ: SMCI). *Stock prices used were the afternoon prices of Feb. 19, 2024. The video was published on Feb. 21, 2024. Should you invest $1,000 in Palantir Technologies right now?

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) announces its fourth-quarter and full-year 2023 results this week. It's likely to report full-year revenue in the ballpark of $60 billion. Roughly 45% of whatever revenue the chipmaker generates will roll to the bottom line. We now know more details about how Nvidia is putting some of its huge profits to work. The company revealed last week that it has invested in five artificial intelligence (AI) stocks.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

SoundHound AI (NASDAQ: SOUN) has disappointed a lot of investors since it went public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in April 2022. The audio and speech recognition software company's stock opened at $8.72 and soared to its all-time high of $14.98 less than a month later. But earlier this month, shares were trading at less than $2.

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The Motley Fool

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Investors looking for potential new stocks to buy will often take a look at previous winners to see if they will continue to outperform in the future. After all, winning stocks have a tendency to remain winning stocks. That's why Mastercard (NYSE: MA) , whose shares have surged 505% in the last decade, might be catching your attention. But where will this top financial stock be 10 years from now?

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