Making Cents Sense

EQUITY RESEARCH | VALUE INVESTING | HOMEBUILDERS With mortgage rates at 7.40%, housing affordability deteriorating, and investors abandoning homebuilding stocks, PulteGroup is approaching a valuation that deserves serious attention. The question isn't whether the housing market is struggling. It's whether the market has already punished one of America's largest homebuilders enough to compensate investors for the risks ahead. Research date: October 9, 2026 12–24 month horizon PULTEGROUP, INC. (NYSE: PHM) Reference price, Oct. 7 $112.33 Base-case target $132 Base-case upside +17.5% Targets are independent scenario estimates, not analyst consensus or guaranteed future prices. Returns exclude dividends. The investment thesis: A strong balance sheet cannot eliminate a bad housing cycle, but it can change who survives it best There is a peculiar contradiction in cyclical investing. The businesses investors most want to own during a recovery are often the very businesses they beco...

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...