Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of July 14, 2020

Article Excerpt

Over the years, we’ve found that spinoffs are about as close as you can get to a sure thing in investing. Statistics show that after a company sets up one (or more) of its businesses or divisions as a separate entity and “spins it off,” or hands it out to its shareholders as a special dividend, the shares of both the parent and the spinoff generally do better than comparable companies for a number of years, if not decades. We were so impressed by the long-term benefit of spinoff investing that we launched an investment advisory publication around it—our Spinoffs & Takeovers newsletter—to help investors profit from it. Of course, this “spinoff effect” can take months or years to show itself. In AbbVie’s case, however, the enhanced performance began almost immediately. AbbVie began trading independently from Abbott Labs on the first business day of 2013. It started changing hands at $35 and slumped to $33 within a week.  After that, the…