30 Year Treasury Investment No Longer an Alternative for Portfolios: What Now?

April 10, 2019

Brian Shepardson, CFA, CIC, has been with James Investment Research, Inc. since 1999, and he is First Vice President and Portfolio Manager, and serves as an investment committee member. In addition, Mr. Shepardson is the Secretary and Assistant Treasurer of the James Advantage Funds.

Mr. Shepardson has many duties, including the analysis of equities, fixed income and mutual funds. He obtained his Bachelor of Business Administration in finance from the University of Cincinnati in 1996.

In this 3,314 word interview, Mr. Shepardson details his firm’s devotion to investors and suggests some themes for current investment strategies:

“Right now, I would say one of the stocks that I’ve been watching has been Micron (NASDAQ:MU). I think what I find most interesting about Micron at this point is that there was a pullback in the stock price during much of 2018. So it had lost over 50% of its value only to bottom out right around Christmastime, and it has rallied back since then. And as you look at that fall in price, it really compressed the p/e ratio to where it’s now down below four.

When you look at the potential for a value stock, this is one that really stands out, especially when you look within the technology arena. A lot of times those stocks trade up at much higher multiples. When you look at Micron, it shows up very favorably.”

Overall, Mr. Shepardson sees a growing value to portfolio management:

“…There’s probably a little bit more attention paid to the Federal Reserve considering, if you go back just a couple years, we had been in a 30-plus-year bull market for fixed income more or less. So if you think back to the 1980s, and you had bought a 30-year Treasury, and you could have bought it with a 15% yield to maturity, that’s a pretty good return if you could just buy and hold…”

Get the full 3,314 word interview, only in the Wall Street Transcript.