We roast a duck for the three of us – my wife, our daughter, and me. It started as a one-off experiment, but the flavor won people over fast. This year, my mother even asked for her own.

The big family gathering still runs on turkey. Tradition tends to stick. But anyone who’s tried my wife’s duck knows it’s the better bird.

Even then, the meal isn’t really the main point. The table is. Thanksgiving is about getting everyone in one place, telling the same old stories, and being reminded why these people matter. The turkey is just the excuse.

But that habit – and the predictability of it – is what makes turkey such a powerful business. Millions of families buy the same bird every year, and that annual surge flows straight through the country’s biggest producer.

Seaboard (NYSE: SEB) is a very strange bird. It ships cargo across oceans, trades grain, runs power assets, raises hogs… and owns half of Butterball – the largest U.S. producer of turkey.

Odd mix? Sure. But it works inside Seaboard’s broader protein and commodity business.

Through the first nine months of 2025, revenue rose to $7.3 billion from $6.6 billion a year earlier. Net earnings swung from a loss to $243 million. Operating income climbed to $174 million. Cash from operations reached $380 million.

Butterball’s share flows through Seaboard’s affiliate income, which has delivered $81 million so far this year – helped by stronger turkey pricing and steadier production.

Even with those improvements, The Value Meter looks past the surface and asks a simpler question: Is the stock cheap, expensive, or fairly priced?

Its enterprise value is only 0.97 times its net asset value, far below the peer average of 3.70. That makes the company look cheap. But its free cash flow efficiency tells a quieter story. Seaboard produces quarterly free cash flow equal to 0.61% of its net assets, while peers average 1.18%.

Its 12-quarter record is almost identical to the market: positive free cash flow in about half of those periods. Nothing alarming. Nothing dazzling. Solid, steady, and average.

The stock illustrated that blend for a while. Early in the year, shares drifted sideways. Then the climb began.

On the chart, the summer rise forms a clean upward slope, followed by a quick dip and an even sharper surge into November. Today, the stock trades near $4,560 – its strongest level of the year.

Like Thanksgiving itself, Seaboard is a mix of many things – simple at first glance, complex once you look closer. It owns the turkey brand that will show up on millions of tables this week, yet the business underneath is industrial, global, and built for slow, asset-heavy returns.

The numbers say the stock is fairly priced. You’re not getting a bargain, but you’re not overpaying. For patient investors who prefer durable businesses over exciting ones, Seaboard is exactly what it looks like.

The Value Meter rates Seaboard as “Appropriately Valued.”

What stock would you like me to run through The Value Meter next? Post the ticker symbol(s) in the comments section below.

The post The Thanksgiving Turkey King You Never Think About appeared first on Wealthy Retirement.

Stocks tend to do particularly well later in the month as the holidays get closer, a cycle known as the “Santa Claus rally.”

But President Trump has a habit of upsetting historic norms, and he might be doing it with this one too…

Last December, the markets plunged after President Trump declared himself “Tariff Man.”

The risks are rising for a repeat performance this month.

After rolling through the year and starting December at all-time high levels, the stock market hit some turbulence, falling 1.5%.

The selling really started on the eve of Thanksgiving, when President Trump signed legislation backing protesters in Hong Kong. Predictably, Chinese officials accused the president of meddling in affairs that shouldn’t concern him.

That Monday, China announced U.S. military ships and aircraft would no longer be allowed to visit Hong Kong.

Beijing also announced sanctions against several U.S. nongovernment organizations for encouraging protesters to “engage in extremist, violent and criminal acts.”

The next day, President Trump upped the ante. “I have no deadline,” he said at the NATO summit in London. “If it’s not going to be a good deal, I’m not signing a deal… In some ways, I like the idea of waiting until after the election for the China deal.”

The market sold off in reaction. While stocks rebounded nicely the next day, there’s currently growing fear that the trade war will escalate further before December 15.

That’s when the United States is scheduled to impose 15% tariffs on $160 billion of additional Chinese products, including electronics, shoes and other retail goods.

Let’s assume President Trump is following the playbook laid out in Trump:The Art of the Deal. If so, that means he’ll keep adding to the pressure on China until the last possible minute.

That means another 10 days of potentially market-moving headlines before the December 15 deadline.

But wait, there’s more…

In addition to battling China, Trump reopened fronts in the global tariff wars this week.

First, he restored tariffs on steel and aluminum from Brazil and Argentina.

Next, he threatened tariffs of up to 100% on $2.4 billion of French imports, including champagne, handbags and cheese.

This is in response to a new French digital services tax the White House called “unusually burdensome” for U.S. tech giants such as Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) and Alphabet’s (Nasdaq: GOOGL) Google.

Finally, he threatened tariffs against other NATO countries – Canada, most notably – if their governments don’t increase military spending to 2% of GDP.

Maybe it’s the weather, or maybe it’s just a coincidence. But it appears there’s something about December that brings out Trump’s inner Tariff Man.

To be clear, I’m not abandoning the bullish views I’ve expressed before. The declines we’ve seen so far in December are minimal in relation to the market’s overall strength in 2019.

But as I’ve written before…

Historically, bull markets end because of some combination of…

• Overaggressive tightening or other policy errors, which can tip the economy into recession
• War or another geopolitical shock
• Runaway inflation, which can erode the value of corporations’ future cash flow
• Rampant speculation, such as occurred in the Roaring ’20s and late 1990s.

“Other policy errors” top the list right now in terms of the potential to scuttle the bull market. That’s because of President Trump’s unpredictable nature.

This is not about politics or whether you believe the president is doing the right thing – or in the right way. No matter their political views, investors must keep a close eye on Trump’s latest statements and understand their ability to rattle Wall Street.

Speaking of which… In the middle of all the circumstances listed above, the president took another swing at the Federal Reserve.

While announcing the new tariffs on Twitter, he called out the governments of Brazil and Argentina for “presiding over a massive devaluation of their currencies.”

He tweeted, “The Federal Reserve should likewise act so that countries… no longer take advantage of our strong dollar by further devaluing their currencies. This makes it very hard for our manufacturers & farmers to fairly export their goods. Lower Rates & Loosen…”

The Federal Reserve meets next on December 10 and 11. It’s highly unlikely it will cut rates given the overall strength of the economy and relatively low inflation.

But Trump’s pressure adds another layer of uncertainty to a meeting that otherwise was shaping up to be a nonevent – for a Fed meeting, at least.

The same can be said about Friday’s jobs report for November. Trump also said this week, “I don’t watch the stock market, I watch jobs.”

A weaker-than-expected jobs report will give Trump more ammunition to target the Fed. Most presidents have been careful about dealing with the Fed, whose credibility rests, in part, on its independence from politics.

But, again, this president makes a habit of upsetting historic norms.

Another week like this, and rather than embracing the holidays, investors will be saying beware the ides of December.

(With apologies to Julius Caesar and Shakespeare.)

Good investing,

Aaron

The post Will This Grinch Stop the Santa Claus Rally? appeared first on Wealthy Retirement.