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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
I don’t have any historical data, but I know that the practice of senior corporate executives getting part of their compensation in company stock has been around for a long time.
Apple’s new product announcement this week was a big deal. When a company’s market cap is hovering around $640 billion, its gross profit was $70.5 billion in the past year and its stock is held by 2,157 institutional investors, it can’t be anything but a big deal. But for any growth investors out there who have their eye on AAPL, I’ve got to ask, “What the heck are you thinking?”
My contention today is that the last thing a growth investor needs to hear right now is someone predicting which way the market will move next. And the predictors are running wild.
Back on July 27, in a column titled “Sell Apple,” I told you that Apple, the world’s most loved and most highly valued company, was likely past its point of peak perception. I suggested that even though the company would continue to grow, its stock would suffer as investors slowly sold and went searching for the next Apple. (Precedents include both IBM and Microsoft.) Since that day, of course, the broad market has fallen apart, and it’s enlightening to see how certain stocks have behaved since then.
What do you do when a stock changes character? Specifically, how do you handle it when a stock you’ve known as a growth stock may have turned into an income stock?
In general, I think the future is pretty bright. By all measures, the world’s population today is better-nourished, better-educated and less violent than at any time in history. The long-term trends for the world as a whole look good. And if you’re going to be a successful investor, it truly helps to have a long-term perspective—to be able to imagine the possibility of holding onto a stock for ten years or more. Admittedly, that’s hard to do, with the media’s focus on the short term. And in the year ahead it may get even more difficult, as the noise from the current record-setting G.O.P. Presidential field—and indeed, all the election-oriented activity of the next fifteen months—serves as a constant distraction from the task/pleasure of managing your own money.
Today, I’m writing on a MacBook Pro. This morning I did my morning crossword puzzle on my iPad. All day long, my iPhone is by my side. My home Wi-Fi comes from Apple AirPorts. And some nights, I stream entertainment through my Apple TV. In short, I love Apple products, and I expect to continue using them for many more years. But one of the most important market truisms is this: “The company is not the stock.”
Tennis balls are stocks that might drop for a few days when the market is getting hit, but then they bounce right back, just like a tennis ball. Then there’s eggs.
Despite the Greece debacle, the IPO market has been on fire of late. Here’s what you need to know.
Having just returned from vacation, I’m thinking of the millions of baby-boomers who are spending more and more money on leisure travel, particularly on cruises, an industry that is dominated by a few big players
Believe it or not, millennials have now surpassed Baby Boomers as America’s most populous living generation. Many of those millennials are starting families - and that’s good news for the baby market.
You can’t just have a good offense if you’re going to be successful in the market. You also need a good defense, meaning you have to be able to identify when a stock’s major advance has ended and you should book profits.
Diversification is especially important for long-term buy-and-hold investors. If you plan to hold most of your investments through multiple market cycles, you’ll want to do whatever you can to make sure your portfolio doesn’t get wiped out by one event or sector correction.
I would never advise trading solely on any secondary measure, but they can give an alert to a possible upcoming change in the market’s character, which is why I keep an eye on them.
Today brings the third installment about my recent 17-day 4,218-mile road trip to and through the American Midwest and back—which I’m presenting not chronologically but thematically. Today’s theme is art, not least because my wife is an artist, and the one concrete reason for this trip was an opening reception at the “Minnesota Center for Book Arts” in which she had work.