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Over time, the average holding period for stocks has been shrinking. At the same time, the percentage of stocks owned by individual investors has been on the rise, and individual investors now own approximately 60% of all publicly traded equities. With an average holding period of less than six months, it seems that private investors are trading stocks rapidly in an effort to earn short-term profits. This can cause many shareholders to miss out on the positive, long-term, compounding effects ...

A trifecta is an outcome where three things are achieved. This term is most typically associated with betting on horseracing, in which case the wager is to pick the first, second, and third-place finishers in a given race. Not entirely different, at Crawford we are investing to achieve an investment trifecta by selecting stocks that provide our investors with all three components of total investment return: fundamental business progress or growth, dividend yield, and valuation improvement.In ...

"Before long, my small investment had tripled in value, and I began to think differently about investing. From casual observation of the steady stock price to intense following of its daily rise, I began to say to myself, “This is good!” It is not an exaggeration to say that the Stokely-Van Camp experience opened up for me not a new can of beans, but a whole new world, and from that point onward investing and its possibilities became a larger and larger part of my life...”Listen to this episo...

In recent months, we have written about Dividend Integrity and how it might be as important now as it has ever been. An important point is that not all dividend-payers possess Dividend Integrity, and some actually exhibit what we call Dividend Hubris. These are companies that pay dividends to the detriment of their corporation. Discerning between Dividend Integrity and Dividend Hubris is where the importance of our fundamental, forward-looking, bottom-up research process and experience comes ...

To build our clients’ portfolios, we start at the company level with a rigorous fundamental, bottom-up research process. But often, industry forces can be just as important as company attributes. Competition, economic cyclicality, government regulation, and seasonality can impact portfolio returns just as much as company attributes, such as quality of management, superior products, or financial condition. Companies in the pharmaceutical industry have a history of utilizing a balanced approach...

Over our 42-year history, we have found that the most attractive investment opportunities are available in high-quality companies that succeed in investing for sustainable financial increase, while also returning substantial capital to shareholders through a steady and growing dividend. At Crawford, we prefer to invest in companies that generate higher levels of cash flow, maintain strong balance sheets, and possess established track records of high dividend payouts. We believe this balance a...