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☕️ Buy Eli Lilly?

Aug 07, 2025

Howdy! 👋

All three averages are higher again this morning as I type. One of these days there’s gonna be a short sharp shakeout … but evidently not just yet.

Cool beans!

I know I sound like a broken record at times but that is VERY deliberate on my part.

Most investors worry incessantly about everything that could go wrong while the world’s best investors constantly focus on what could go right. Then, invest accordingly.

This isn’t rocket science.

Buy the best, ignore the rest.

Here’s my playbook.

1 – How I pick stocks when I expect higher highs, earnings and more

It was great to be on The Watch List with the super sharp Nicole Petallides who asked me what must happen to hit my year end S&P 500 target of 7,000. And, of course, about earnings and more.

We also spent a moment talking about how I select stocks, especially with the markets running higher in case that’s of interest. (Watch)

Volatility – which I expect to increase btw - is an opportunity, not something to fear.

Keith’s Investing Tip: “Must have” stocks make “must have” products the world can’t live without. “Nice to haves” not so much. Don’t ever confuse the two.

2 – A new “old” dividend choice gets better

Most investors dramatically underestimate the impact dividends can have on your financial well-being and wealth building.

I, on the other hand, will be the first to admit that I like my dividends. I am kinda funny that way about cold, hard cash. So, I pay attention every time a good company gets “better.”

That’s the case with T-Mobile where subscriber acquisitions/additions are up, as is the average revenue per customer. The company has its sights on 12 million subscribers by 2028, just 3 short years from now.

Structurally, I like the fact that the company has better 5G coverage than competitors and is easily using excess network capacity to offer home internet via fixed wireless modems which makes it an increasingly viable competitor to traditional internet service providers AND cell phone providers alike.

The TSY – True Shareholder Yield – an important metric in my stock selection criteria – is 4% versus the 1.37% listed on most websites so that’s a plus as well.

Hmmm. 🤔

3 – Intel, a real life “Manchurian Candidate?”

That didn’t take long.

U.S. President Trump is calling for newly seated CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s resignation, citing conflict of interest concerns tied to China. (Read)

Serious stuff.

There are reportedly connections to companies fronting for the PLA and other “concerning” entities in China. There are also reported references to a past criminal case involving Cadence Design where Tan was CEO.

I have never been more glad to be out of and away from a stock.

This is starting to feel like a real-life Manchurian Candidate scenario — except instead of covert mind control, we’re watching a once-great American tech icon potentially sleepwalk into strategic vulnerability. Or – and I hate to say this – but go blindly and deliberately.

How low can Intel go?

I don’t know but I’m thinking about buying shares.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine Intel getting nationalized or some sort of strategic government investment a la MP Materials recently.

Call options might do the trick nicely, too.

At what price?

That’s unknown because if a deal like that surfaces, it’ll probably come outta left field, so the question is how to build a position using the right tactics – a completely different thought for most investors and traders who think in terms of $.

Trade Idea: A series of progressive LowBall Orders or call options purchased as prices drop.

4 – Lilly puts up the numbers, buy it?

I am delighted to see Eli Lilly hiking guidance and posting strong numbers. (Read)

And I agree with CEO David Ricks who said he felt “good about the value of the company” to CNBC.

I simply prefer other pharma choices with what I think are higher, better and more consistent profit potential. Not to mention risk-adjusted upside.

Lilly has declined a skosh to ~$600B with investors betting heavily on GLP1 and Alzheimer’s breakthroughs – both of which are promising but still unproven longer term.

Meanwhile, the stock I prefer in this space has absorbed a patent cliff yet still delivered double digit EPS growth AND has an expanding neuro/oncology pipeline which has vastly better “zero to one” upside imho. And, not for nothing, also has a materially better and far longer history of dividend increases/stability.

Keith’s Investing Tip: Investing is as much about what you own and why as what you don’t and won’t. The sooner you know the difference, the sooner your portfolio can thank you.

Many investors think they’ve got this covered only to find out too late that they don’t. You’re not alone if you’re one of ‘em – and I’ll be here if you’d like a nudge in the right direction.

5 – Peloton reminds me of GoPro 📉🤦‍️

Wow.

Peloton and profit in the same sentence… I had to read the story several times to be sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me.

Peloton finally pulled off a surprise: profitability. (Read)

EPS came in at $0.05, smashing the expected –$0.06 loss. Revenue hit $607 million, also ahead of forecasts. That’s a hard pivot from the $30.5 million loss posted this time last year — driven by aggressive cost cuts and slightly less terrible hardware sales.

Some green shoots, to use a very over-used phrase:

$320 million in free cash flow for the year — a genuine win.

Gross margin up to 54.1%, nearly 6 points higher YoY.

Hardware gross margin finally in the black at 17.3%, thanks to better product mix and less bleeding from services.

Operating expenses down 20%, with marketing, R&D, and G&A all trimmed.

So… time to buy?

Not a chance, at least for me anyway.

Peloton is still an n+1 company — meaning a business that’s tweaking the status quo, not inventing the future. There are dozens of exercise bike brands with little or no differentiation.

Try as they might, odds are that Peloton will never have Palantir-like results. Or Nvidia-like stability. Or Tesla’s Dojo-like profit potential – all of which are “zero to 1” choices.

Peloton, in fact, reminds me of GoPro which traded at over $90 a share in 2014 (and which I explicitly and repeatedly said avoid like the plague, btw). GoPro closed at $1.31 yesterday, down –98.54% since then.

Peloton’s just pushing pedals.

Pass.

Or buy putskies – a bet the stock falls – but at ~$7… meh. I can think of better, more compelling choices.