Weekly: Market overview March
Weekly 13 2025 + planned transactions Doubler Portfolio
The downturn in the U.S. is already showing up in the Buffett Indicator. Where it was predicting a negative return of -0.2% just a month ago, it's now pointing to a positive return of 0.8% based on current valuations.
Of course, the market still remains significantly overvalued, and we shouldn’t overestimate this decline: we're still higher today than we were a year ago, and even above the peak from August 2021. And we all remember how things turned out after that.
So far, this drop doesn’t amount to much. The S&P 500 is currently down 2.88% compared to the start of the year, after a pretty impressive climb. The NASDAQ is down 7.31%, which is a steeper drop, but that index had seen an even stronger rally led by the Magnificent Seven.
It’s only natural that some of the extremely expensive stocks are giving up a bit of ground. But that's still nowhere near enough to talk about fair valuations—no matter how loudly social media insists these are buying opportunities.
Tesla down 30% this year? True, but it's still 50% more expensive than a year ago—and back then it was already absurdly overpriced.
Nvidia down 15% since January? Yes, but still 23% higher than a year ago. And that wasn’t a cheap entry point either. You could go down the whole list like that.
Let’s be clear: there’s nothing major going on yet. Which makes the overreaction on social media even harder to understand—it’s much ado about nothing.
As for the supposed shift back to investing more in Europe, I think that’s premature.
The FTSE 100 is up 5.5% so far this year, the French CAC 40 by 8%, the AEX by 3.8%, and the BEL20 by 4.7%. Only the DAX has shown a significant gain at 13.4%. Because of the overlap, the Eurostoxx 50 added 10%.
To me, this still doesn’t look like a European comeback. It’s more a case of index investors lightly shifting their money around. This is not yet a market for stock pickers analyzing companies on their merits.
And the rush into European defense companies? I don’t get it. Rheinmetall is trading at 75 times earnings—what kind of return are you expecting as an investor?
Jumping from one hype to the next isn’t a new phenomenon, but I wonder if social media is amplifying it. Or worse: whether some hypes are being deliberately created, with a select few cashing in big.
Since I deal with investing daily and am active on social media, I sometimes spot these hypes early on. And every now and then I wonder if I’m just being naïve by not taking advantage of them.
But it goes against my nature. I don’t invest in stocks—I invest in businesses. And that makes it hard for me to take part in these kinds of bets.
Articles and updates this week
Tuesday I posted Lesson 7 – Generating Stock Ideas – from our Introduction to Value Investing.
In terms of earnings, we’re seeing a real end-of-quarter sprint this week:
Hornbach Holding and Trigano shared brief trading updates, which can be found under Short News.
Tessenderlo, Sofina, and Exor also published results. I’ll discuss those in the coming days. I want to take my time with Tessenderlo. I want to make sure that I don’t look at it through rose-tinted glasses.
In short: it’s a busy period. Meanwhile, I’m still on the lookout for new stocks to add to our selection. This month I took a look at Peugeot Invest. But as long as we hold Stellantis directly in the portfolio, I won’t be adding this holding. Alongside Exor, that would make things a bit too repetitive.
My personal goal is to introduce one new stock each month. A goal, not a promise.
We’ve now reached the point where adding a new stock means one will have to go. If the selection grows any further, I won’t be able to follow the companies in enough depth. And that would hurt the quality of the portfolio.
As I’ve said before, I’m an investor first, a publisher second. From a publishing point of view, it would make more sense to introduce a new stock every two weeks, that drives sales, after all.
But this month, I’m hitting that limitation as an investor: which stock am I willing to let go of to make room?
Smartphoto seems like the logical candidate, given its limited upside potential. But that low takeover bid still doesn’t sit right with me.
So for now, the conclusion is clear: I’d rather add to our existing positions. And that’s exactly what we’ll be doing in the Doubler Portfolio