Report
Dave Nicoski ...
  • Ross LaDuke
EUR 233.53 For Business Accounts Only

Vermilion Compass: Weekly Equity Strategy

Market activity, both bonds and stocks, has been all about realigning expectations. Wednesday's Fed announcement was more dovish than expected, and the market is now pricing in roughly 25bps of cuts by the end of 2019. Stocks reacted positively on Thursday, but then reversed (and then some) on Friday as global growth concerns became a little more serious. We continue to maintain our positive outlook and highlight below several observations which lead us to this conclusion.

• Broadening yield curve inversion. A more pronounced yield curve inversion (3M/10Y and 1Y/10Y) is certainly unsettling and remains a concern of ours, however (1) inversions say very little about the timing of a recession, (2) there can be false signals, and (3) the 2Y/10Y spread remains in positive territory... see page 3.

• Strength in defensive bond proxies. Declining interest rates has investors seeking Utilities, Consumer Staples, and Real Estate. While strength in these areas is a concern, we believe recent RS improvements may be short-lived... see page 4.

• Things we would NOT expect to see if a correction/recession was on the horizon: (1) Equal-weighted semiconductors (XSD) and Technology (RYT) hit new price and RS highs last week; (2) EM equities (EEM, VWO) and bonds (EMB, LEMB) are bottoming, (3) Crude oil is trending higher and copper prices are bottoming; (4) Homebuilders (ITB, XHB) are bullishly inflecting topside downtrends; (5) S&P 500, Russell 1000 A/D lines are hovering in new high territory; and (6) High yield spreads remain fairly benign and are not flashing recession warnings... see page 5.

• Pullback complete? We highlight a number of important indexes (equal-weighted S&P 500, S&P 600, Financials/Banks, equal-weighted Transports, and global autos) that suggest the recent pullback may be nearing its end... see chart below and page 6.
In today's report we highlight attractive Groups and stocks within Consumer Staples, Materials, and Services: CS-10 Meat & Poultry, MA-29 Gold, South Africa, SV-01 Data Processing & Outsourcing Svcs., Large-Cap, and SV-04 IT Consulting, Gov't/Global, Large-Cap... see pages 12-28.
Underlyings
AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. ADS

Automatic Data Processing Inc.

Automatic Data Processing is a provider of cloud-based human capital management (HCM) solutions to employers, providing solutions to businesses of various sizes. The company's two reportable business segments are Employer Services, which provides a range of technology-based HCM solutions, including payroll services, benefits administration, talent management, HR management, workforce management, compliance services, insurance services and retirement services; and Professional Employer Organization, which provides clients with employment administration outsourcing solutions through a relationship in which employees who work for a client are co-employed by the company and the client.

CGI
CGI

CGI Group is engaged in managing information technology services, including outsourcing, systems integration and consulting, software licenses and maintenance, as well as business process services to help clients realize their strategies and create added value.

Darling Ingredients Inc.

Darling Ingredients is a global developer and producer of natural ingredients from edible and inedible bio-nutrients. The company's segments include: Feed Ingredients, which includes the collection and processing of beef, poultry and pork animal by-products in North America and Europe into non-food grade oils and protein meals; Food Ingredients, which includes the purchase and processing of beef and pork bone chips, beef hides, pig skins, and fish skins into collagen in Europe, China, South America and North America; and Fuel Ingredients, which converts animal fats, recycled greases, used cooking oil, inedible corn oil, soybean oil, or other feedstocks into renewable diesel.

Fidelity National Information Services Inc.

Fidelity National Information Services is a provider of technology solutions for merchants, banks, and capital markets firms globally. The company's solutions include merchant acquiring solutions; payment solutions; global eCommerce solutions; processing and ancillary applications solutions; digital solutions; fraud, risk management and compliance solutions; electronic funds transfer and network services solutions; card and retail payment solutions; wealth and retirement solutions; item processing and output services solutions; securities processing and finance solutions; global trading solutions; asset management and insurance solutions; and corporate liquidity solutions.

Fiserv Inc.

Fiserv is a provider of financial services technology. The company provides account processing systems, electronic payments processing products and services, internet and mobile banking systems, and related services. The company's segments are: First Data, which provides merchant acquiring, e-commerce, mobile commerce, and other business solutions; Payments and Industry Products, which provides electronic bill payment and presentment services, internet and mobile banking software; and Financial Institution Services, which provides financial institutions with account processing services, item processing and source capture services, loan origination and servicing products, and cash management, among others.

FLEETCOR Technologies Inc.

FleetCor Technologies is provider of commercial payment solutions. The company's five primary product lines are Fuel, which provides fuel payment solutions to businesses and government entities who operate vehicle fleets, as well as to main oil companies;Lodging, which provides lodging payment solutions to employees who travel overnight for work purposes; Tolls, which provides an electronic toll and parking payments product; Corporate Payments, which include virtual cards, purchasing cards, travel and entertainment cards; and Gift, which provides gift card product management and processing services. Additionally, the company provides other payment products including fleet maintenance and employee benefits.

Gartner Inc.

Gartner is a research and advisory company. The company's principal products and services are delivered through its three business segments: Research, which provides insights and advice across various functional areas of the enterprise through research, briefings, proprietary tools, access to the company's research personnel, peer networking services and membership programs; Conferences, which provides business personnel across an organization the opportunity to learn, share and network; and Consulting, which helps chief information officers and other senior executives driving technology-related strategic initiatives move from insight to action.

Global Payments Inc.

Global Payments is a pure play payment technology company providing payments and software solutions to merchants and financial institutions. The company has three segments: Merchant Solutions, which includes authorization services, chargeback resolution, and payment security services; Issuer Solutions, which provides solutions that enable financial institutions and other financial service providers to manage their card portfolios and reduces technical difficulty and overhead on a single platform; and Business and Consumer Solutions, which provides general purpose reloadable prepaid debit and payroll cards, demand deposit accounts and other financial service solutions through its Netspend? brand.

Gold Fields Ltd. ADS

Golden Star Resources Ltd.

Harmony Gold Mining Co Ltd (ADR)

Hormel Foods Corporation

Hormel Foods is primarily engaged in the production of meat and food products and the marketing of those products throughout the United States and internationally. The company's segments are: Grocery Products, which consists of the processing, marketing, and sale of shelf-stable food products; Refrigerated Foods, which consists of the processing, marketing, and sale of branded and unbranded pork, beef, chicken, and turkey products; Jennie-O Turkey Store, which consists of the processing, marketing, and sale of branded and unbranded turkey products; and International and Other, which includes Hormel Foods International Corporation that manufactures, markets, and sells the company's products internationally.

Infosys Limited ADS

MASTERCARD INCORPORATED

Mastercard is a technology company in the global payments industry. The company's solutions enabling consumers to use electronic forms of payment instead of cash and checks. The company provides a range of payment solutions and services using its brands, including Mastercard?, Maestro? and Cirrus?. The company is a multi-rail network that provides customers one partner to turn to for their domestic and cross-border payment needs. The company has additional payment capabilities that include automated clearing house transactions. The company also provides offerings such as cyber and intelligence products, information and analytics services, consulting, loyalty and reward programs and processing.

Paychex Inc.

Paychex is a provider of integrated human capital management (HCM) solutions for payroll, benefits, human resource (HR), and insurance services for small- to medium-sized businesses. The company's portfolio of HCM and employee benefit-related services include: payroll processing services; payroll tax administration services; employee payment services; regulatory compliance services (new-hire reporting and garnishment processing); HR Solutions Administrative Services Organization; retirement services administration; HR administration services, including time and attendance; other HR services and products; business services; Professional Employer Organization services; and insurance services.

PayPal Holdings Inc

PayPal Holdings is a technology platform and digital payments company that enables digital and mobile payments on behalf of consumers and merchants worldwide. The company's combined payment solutions include its PayPal, PayPal Credit, Braintree, Venmo, Xoom and iZettle products and services. PayPal's payment solutions enable the company's customers to send and receive payments. PayPal helps merchants and consumers connect, transact, and complete payments, whether they are online, on a mobile device, in an app, or in person. The company provides proprietary payment solutions accepted by merchants that enable the completion of payments on the company's Payments Platform on behalf of its customers.

Pilgrim's Pride Corporation

Pilgrims Pride is primarily engaged in the production, processing, marketing and distribution of fresh, frozen chicken products to retailers, distributors and foodservice operators. The company's primary product types are fresh chicken products, prepared chicken products and export chicken products. The company's fresh chicken products consist of refrigerated (nonfrozen) whole or cut-up chicken, either pre-marinated or non-marinated and prepackaged case-ready chicken. The company's case-ready chicken includes various combinations of freshly refrigerated, whole chickens and chicken parts in trays, bags or other consumer packs labeled and priced ready for the retail grocer's fresh meat counter.

Sanderson Farms Inc.

Sanderson Farms is a poultry processing company engaged in the production, processing, marketing and distribution of frozen chicken products, including processed and minimally prepared chicken. The company sells ice-packed, chill-packed, bulk-packed and frozen chicken, in whole, cut-up and boneless form to retailers, distributors, and casual dining operators, and to customers who resell frozen chicken into export markets. The company operates through: Sanderson Farms, Inc. (Production Division), which is engaged in the production of chickens to the broiler stage; and Sanderson Farms, Inc. (Processing Division), which is engaged in the processing, sale and distribution of chicken products.

Seaboard Corp.

Seaboard is an agribusiness and transportation company. The company's divisions include: Pork, in which the company engages in the business of hog production and pork processing; Commodity Trading and Milling, which sources, transports and markets wheat, corn, soybeans, soybean meal and other commodities; Marine, in which the company provides cargo shipping services in the U.S., the Caribbean and Central and South America; Sugar and Alcohol, in which the company operates a sugar and alcohol production facility; Power, which owns and operates a power generating barge to produce electricity; Turkey, which produces and processes turkey product; and other businesses, in which the company processes jalapeno peppers.

Sibanye Stillwater

Square Inc. Class A

Square is a commerce ecosystem that combines software with hardware to enable sellers to turn mobile devices and computing devices into payment and point-of-sale solutions. With the company's offering, a seller can accept payments via magnetic stripe, Europay, MasterCard, and Visa, or Near Field Communication; or online via Square Invoices, Square Virtual Terminal, or the seller's website or app. Also, sellers can gain access to reporting and analytics, next-day settlements, digital receipts, payment dispute and chargeback management, security, and Payment Card Industry compliance. The company's Cash App enable individuals to send and receive money electronically to and from individuals and businesses.

Tanzanian Gold

Tanzanian Royalty Exploration is a mineral resource company which engages in the acquisition of interests in and the exploration of natural resource properties in the future and the possible development of those properties where warranted. Co. commits its own resources to the initial evaluation of mineral properties and in select situations, Co. enters into joint venture agreements with other corporations to further the exploration of such properties, in exchange for annual rental/option payments and post-production royalty payments or with a view to direct development of a mine for the purpose of earning income from the sale of gold and other mined materials.

Tyson Foods Inc. Class A

Tyson Foods is a food company. The company's operations consist of breeding stock, contract farmers, feed production, processing, further-processing, marketing and transportation of chicken and related allied products, including animal and pet food ingredients. Through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Cobb-Vantress, Inc., the company is engaged as poultry breeding stock supplier. The company also processes live fed cattle and hogs and fabricates dressed beef and pork carcasses into primal and sub-primal meat cuts, case-ready beef and pork and fully-cooked meats. The company produces a range of fresh, frozen and refrigerated food products. The company operates in Beef, Pork, Chicken and Prepared Foods segments.

Visa Inc. Class A

Visa is engaged in digital payments. The company facilitates payments between consumers and businesses. The company is focused on its proprietary network, VisaNet, to provide products and services. The company provides a portfolio of business payment solutions, including small business, corporate (travel) cards, purchasing cards, virtual cards/digital credentials, non-card cross-border business-to-business payment options and disbursement accounts, covering various main industry segments around the world. The company also provides several capabilities and services, including fraud prevention and security, processing, loyalty, merchant and digital solutions, consulting and data solutions.

Worldpay Inc. Class A

Worldpay is a holding company. Through its subsidiaries, the company provides electronic payment processing services to merchants and financial institutions. The company operates two segments: Merchant Services, which provides merchant acquiring and payment processing services to national merchants, regional and small-to-mid sized businesses; and Financial Institution Services, which provides card issuer processing, payment network processing, fraud protection, card production, prepaid program management, automated teller machine driving and network gateway and switching services that utilize the company's proprietary Jeanie debit payment network to a set of financial institutions.

Provider
Vermilion Research
Vermilion Research

Vermilion Research delivers timely, actionable, and unique research inputs to professional investors. Our research strategists highlight securities which we believe are at major inflection points, based on our various proprietary technical indicators, and offer asymmetric risk/return profiles. We believe our research methodology, which is not limited by industry sector or market capitalization, enables us to deliver superior investment recommendations.

Our process begins by organizing all actively traded stocks into coherent sectors, then into logical industry groups. We then apply our proprietary relative strength tools to identify developing price trends. Once attractive trends are identified within a selected sectors or groups, we screen for individual stocks which we believe offer the best risk/reward profile. Vermilion offers U.S. and global equity market research products. Vermilion’s research team, which has received numerous awards and accolades, has a combined 70 year of experience in the analysis of investment securities.

Analysts
Dave Nicoski

Ross LaDuke

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