The market’s evidence has clearly improved during the past couple of weeks, so much so that our Cabot (and Growth) Tides are now on the fence, while our old Two-Second Indicator is starting to pick up on a bullish change in character for the broad market. That said, it’s close, but we haven’t seen anything definitive yet--tonight, we have no changes, but if we see some green lights, we’ll be on the horn with two or three new additions most likely.



In the meantime, we continue to hone our watch list and put together our game plan should the evidence continue to improve; we’re not going to go whole hog right away, but after six months of punishing action, we’re remaining flexible and write about a few potential fresh leaders in tonight’s issue.

The market continues to be messy, but we’re going to take a partial swing at a profitable software company playing in a big, growth market – cloud services.

This company is like a smaller version of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. But without all the other parts of those much, much larger companies.



We may be a bit early. But we’ll manage that risk by taking a half position in a company that’s likely to grow above 30% for years and is very profitable.


Enjoy!

As investors are broadly satisfied with the current outlook, it seems that we have arrived at the end of the beginning of the post-pandemic era. However, there remains immense uncertainly about how the middle-game will play out.



This week, we took advantage of the strong performance of some of our stocks to reduce our ratings. And, as not every stock works right out of the gates, we are moving Big Lots (BIG) from Buy to Hold as we want to rethink our outlook and valuation given its dismal recent earnings report.

This week we are adding a covered call in yet another earnings season winner that has emerged amidst the rubble of the retail sector.

During the past couple of weeks, the market has put together a handful of solid baby steps; in fact, the rally has been enough to put the intermediate trend on watch—a bit more strength from here could produce a green light. That’s all to the good, but (a) we still have to see the signal actually occur, and (b) even if it comes, there’s still plenty of overhead to chew through given the damage seen over the past few months. That’s not to throw cold water on the rally attempt—we’re nudging up our Market Monitor to a level 3 tonight, but right now, it’s best to remain defensive and to go slow on the buy side.



This week’s list is again heavy on commodity-related stocks and special situations, along with some recent earnings winners sprinkled in. Our Top Pick is a medical firm that lifted above long-time resistance following a clean FDA approval.

The market remains quite weak, and thus ripe for a major rally at any time. But until we see real strength, continued caution is advised.
And today’s recommendation fits the bill, as it has a solid dividend and the prospect of real growth as the global energy industry adjusts to a world without Russian oil.


As for the portfolio, we’re selling one laggard, which is suffering as consumers cut back on discretionary spending.

Inflation may be easing somewhat but interest rates will continue to move upward, presenting a headwind for markets. Investors are acting on bargains but in restrained ways until an uptrend develops. The Explorer’s Fanuc (FANUY) is up 10% in the last two weeks and Chilean real asset play SQM is up about 25% in the last five weeks. Today, we add another new overseas play, this time from London.

It’s too soon to buy new stocks aggressively. But there is a safer place in the meantime to generate a high yield without much downside in the near term.
In this issue, I highlight a stock from the energy sector, the only market sector having a good year. Yet, the stock is not overvalued or overpriced. It provides a high yield without much downside if the market decline continues. And the price is likely to trend higher over the rest of the year.

It’s been a tough year for investors in cannabis stocks, and in the broad market as well, as all major indexes are in downtrends.

Yet prospects for the cannabis industry remain bright, as state-by-state legalization trends continue.



But until trends turn up, there’s no urgency to buy, so our portfolio sits roughly half in cash, waiting for the upturn.



Full details in the issue.



Yours for wealth and wisdom.

Thank you for subscribing to the Cabot Turnaround Letter. We hope you enjoy reading the June 2022 issue.



While the stock market has surged since its pandemic low, shares of many companies have sold off sharply and now trade below their March 23, 2020 level. We touch on several different types of situations behind these sell-offs and highlight five stocks backed by reasonably healthy companies yet trade at attractive valuations. We also mention one additional stock that has significant potential but not under the current value-destroying management.



We delve into the investment management industry and highlight four stocks of companies that look appealing but are not generally on investors’ radar screens. Our featured recommendation this month is investment firm Janus Henderson Group (JHG). The company produces strong free cash flow, has a fortress balance sheet, offers an attractive 5.7% dividend yield and is under pressure from activist investor Trian Partners to improve its results.



We note our recent ratings change of Altria Group (MO) from Buy to a Sell.

Despite some optimism early last week, the sellers obliterated that hope Wednesday through Friday, as the indexes fell sharply, pushing the S&P 500 into an official bear market (down 20% from its highs).

Titanium, an under-covered market on Wall Street, has the unlikely distinction of now being one of the top-performing metals.

This metal, along with lithium and steelmaking coal, grabbed the top spots in terms of overall performance and has provided us with a solid performance in an otherwise soft metals broad market.



Elsewhere, steel should strengthen while gold and silver both have a good chance to turn around in the coming weeks.



I continue to recommend that we maintain a mostly defensive stance.

This week is off to a good start for growth stocks—many of the names that have been acting wobbly during the past couple of weeks bounced decently yesterday and today.

With most of our companies having now reported we are turning our attention back to the longer-term future. For the most part, earnings from our companies were good and we’ve only made a few incremental ratings changes here and there.

Markets are showing great resiliency as the S&P 500 nears a record and stocks have risen all but one day in August. Optimism about an eventual stimulus bill and the prospect of declining Covid-19 cases and a vaccine are still supporting the economy and markets.

The S&P 500 is now within 1% of the all time high. It could even make a new high today. The index has rallied 54% since the lows of March. What pandemic?

We are mostly through the bulk of earnings season and it has been enlightening, particularly as we learn about the pandemic’s effects on profits. Earnings season should be a period when company results can be clearly measured, especially since we are dealing with numbers.

Remain bullish, but continue to keep your antennae up. The Nasdaq has pushed to new highs, our trend-following indicators are positive and most leading stocks remain in uptrends, so we’re still in a bullish frame of mind.

The horrible second quarter is behind us and a rapidly recovering economy with a very accommodative Fed lies ahead. There are a lot of reasons for the rally and unless investors get scared straight the rally seems destined to continue.

The market has resumed its uptrend and the S&P 500 is now back to within 3% of the all-time high.

U.S large-cap markets are more expensive than international developed and emerging markets.

On Friday, the September 78 call that we sold expired worthless.

In the past 30 days, 40 analysts have raised their price targets for this big-box retailer.

There are five holdings in this biotech fund.

Tomorrow is the expiration of five of our September covered call trades. It was another great month for the Cabot Profit Booster portfolio!

This shipping company just reported 60% growth in earnings and 13.5% increase in revenues, for the second quarter.

There hasn’t been any real news about our stocks in the past week, but I’ve been watching the charts carefully, trying to decide whether it’s time to put some of our 35% cash back into the market, or to take more out, or to simply stand pat.

This bank beat analysts’ earnings estimates by $0.09 last quarter.

Six analysts have increased their earnings estimates for this ore and nickel producer in the past 30 days.

This consumer products company walloped Wall Street’s earnings estimates, posting EPS of $.059, compared to the $0.23 forecast.

Every so often one of our stocks is the target of a short report that tries to make the case that a company is garbage, a fraud, and/or wildly overvalued.

Earnings estimates are rising, and analysts expect this fuel aggregator to grow by more than 60% next year.

In the past 30 days, 13 analysts have increased their EPS estimates for this auto reseller, and are predicting 37.10% next year.

A few Cabot Options Trader subscribers have asked me about ways to protect gains in their portfolios, so I thought I would write to everyone with a couple of strategies using options to hedge your portfolio.

A subscriber recently asked me if I keep a journal of my trades. Many traders keep journals so they can look back at their trades and evaluate what they did right and what they did wrong.

Want to know how the big institutional investors use options? Here is an example of how one trader spent $132 million on three technology stocks.

Options trading has its own vernacular. To know how to do it, you need to know what every options term means. Here are some of the basics.

Our Cabot Top Ten Trader’s market timing system consists of two parts—one based on the action of three select, growth-oriented market indexes, and the other based on the action of the fast-moving stocks Cabot Top Ten features.