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Growth Stocks

Growth stocks are the glamour investments on Wall Street.

With the dominant performance of mega-cap tech stocks, growth stocks are also the best-performing stocks in the market today, having dramatically outpaced value stocks for the last decade. Growth stocks aren’t all tech companies, they run the gamut from up-and-coming consumer brands or fast-expanding restaurants to the cutting edge of biotech and technology.

We highlight some of our favorite growth stocks in our FREE REPORT on the 5 Best Stocks to Buy every month.

Of course, there’s a caveat to investing in these stocks. Unlike time-tested dividend stocks or bargain-basement value plays, these stocks carry plenty of risk. The companies are less mature, have smaller margins, and typically don’t pay a dividend. Thus, the stocks can be very volatile, especially around earnings season.

For many investors, however, the risks of investing in these stocks are worth the potential rewards. Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Netflix (NFLX)—all of them started off as growth stocks before they became some of the best-performing and most coveted stocks on the market. Those who got in early earned triple-digit, even quadruple-digit, returns.

There are several keys to finding the right growth stocks:

  • Invest in fast-growing companies. It’s a rather obvious prerequisite. But it’s important to know what fast-growing means. It means investing in fast-growing industries, where revolutionary ideas and services are being created. Any little-known stock that provides a product that is essential to that budding industry makes for a good growth stock.
  • Buy stocks that are outperforming the market. Companies can promise all kinds of financial growth. But is that growth potential translating to a rising share price? The best investing tips come from the performance of the stocks themselves.
  • Use only the best market timing indicators. Never underestimate the power of the market to move stocks. You don’t want to invest in a growth stock just as the market is plummeting. If you’re in a bull market, you can afford to be aggressive in buying stocks that are more speculative.
  • Be patient. Not every growth stock will make you rich overnight. Very few will, in fact. Even Apple took years before it morphed into the biggest technology behemoth in the world. In the investment world, time is your friend. If you get out of a stock too early, you may miss out on some big gains months down the road.

Growth stocks were the basis upon which Cabot Wealth Network was founded in 1970. Our founder, Carlton Lutts, gave up a career in engineering to pursue his passion for stock selection and market timing.

More than half a century later, we’re much more than a growth investing advisory. But growth stocks—and helping individual investors earn big profits from them—are still at the heart of what we do via our flagship advisory, Cabot Growth Investor.

Investing in these stocks can be tricky. Finding a hidden gem that has yet to be fully discovered by the market is simultaneously exciting and frustrating. Look for up-trending earnings growth, improving profit margins, and booming industries. If done right, investing in growth stocks can be both highly satisfying and highly profitable.

And we’re here to help!

Growth Stocks Post Archives
Everybody (including me) loves Warren Buffett. He’s rich. He’s a major philanthropist who actively exhorts other rich people to give away their money. And he looks like an ideal grandfather ought to look: gray, smiling and enjoying life. But I do think Warren Buffett has a little bit of a regret, and it’s this ...
I was at a cocktail party recently, and a friend who’s a hotel manager asked what stocks I was recommending now. In return, I asked, “What kind do you want—big and undervalued, that will appreciate in the long term, or smaller and faster-growing, that are likely to bring you more action, and more risk, now?” He chose the former, bigger and slower with low risk, so I suggested these two stocks.
Decades ago, we came up with a phrase to describe a growth stock’s long-term growth cycle, describing the three phases a stock will go through during its life: Romance, Transition and Reality. The Romance phase is when the stock makes its biggest gains; it’s when investors fall in love with the story and potential, as well as the initial rapid growth. Then comes the Transition phase, when the stock often stagnates or declines for many months or even years, as investors start to see the warts of the story and the stock’s nosebleed valuations come back into line. Then, finally, you get the Reality phase, when the company is more mature and the stock is judged based on cold, hard facts. If the firm is successful, the stock will head up (though at a more measured pace than in the Romance phase), and if it’s not, it will remain in the doghouse.
Gold is hot right now, that’s for sure. It’s in the headlines and has been contributing to beautiful stock charts since the beginning of the year, which is nice for the diehards who have been predicting its resurgence for years (through gritted teeth). Suddenly, everyone wants to invest in gold. But there’s an even bigger opportunity in silver.
Construction stocks, especially those tied to infrastructure (whether it’s residential, commercial or municipal), have been thriving since the market put in its early February low. Here are three names I like the most.
The focus of today’s column is gold, particularly the environment that makes gold stocks, gold ETFs and even gold bullion attractive to investors. For some readers, the highlight will be the 10 gold stocks I’ll discuss.
Facebook (FB) will report its latest quarterly results next Wednesday, April 27, after the market closes. And you can bet that people will be paying attention. When your company has a market cap of nearly $322 billion, a float of 2.2 billion shares, coverage from 49 analysts and over one billion active users per DAY (!), people tend to pay attention.
In the 10 days since Tesla Motors (TSLA) unveiled the prototype of its Model 3 sedan, more than 325,000 people around the globe have put down $1,000 deposits for the car. That’s more than $325 million in Tesla’s coffers, which the company gets to keep for more than a year; deliveries of the $35,000 four-door sedan won’t begin until late next year.
Tesla stock is back on the rise thanks to its new Model 3 sedan, which is already a bigger seller than anyone expected.
Today, I want to describe a simple but powerful chart pattern that can help you identify low-risk entry points, or at the very least, inform you that the stock is acting properly. I’m talking about tightness in a stock price’s movement, and I’m seeing a lot of it these days.
Everyone knows what a cheap stock is. Or do they? To some people, a cheap stock is one that is low-priced, like SunEdison (SUNE), currently trading at less than a dollar per share. People who like these stocks generally don’t have a lot of money to invest, and they like the fact that they can buy 100 shares of stock for less than $100 (plus commission). To other people, like Warren Buffet, a cheap stock is one that is selling at a price that’s below its true value.
For a growth stock investor like me with a sense of history, investing maxims help a lot; I often think of one when I’m in an investing rut, or when the market is a bit confusing. However, my only beef with all of these maxims is that there’s only so many times you can hear the basic ones like “cut losses short” before your eyes glaze over. So what I’m doing today is adding some “how” to the “why and the what” of those basic maxims, offering some ideas about how to actually implement them.
Most growth stocks are still on their launching pads, which I think is a good thing, at least for now—if the market strengthens from here, my guess is we’ll see some rotation into exciting new growth ideas. That said, I’m also seeing many “follow-on” opportunities in growth stocks—names that soared to new price highs in recent weeks (often following a great earnings report) and have since traded very tightly on light volume … a constructive sign that higher prices are ahead.
Finding the right growth stocks isn’t easy. To do so, focus on these important factors--and ignore the ones that don’t matter.
My topic today is what I call TOGA stocks, which stands for The Ones that Got Away. I got an email a few weeks back from an acquaintance who is still beating himself up because he didn’t buy Cisco Systems (CSCO) at 10 cents per share (split-adjusted) in 1990 and sell it at 80 in 2000.