Energy stocks have been crushing it this year, thanks mostly to the Iran War and triple-digit oil prices. The second-best-performing sector through the first quarter of 2026 has gotten far less publicity, however … materials. Materials stocks are the only sector up double digits through the first month of the year; they’re expected to grow earnings by 25% this year, and yet, the group is the second-cheapest by price-to-earnings.

That’s the perfect recipe for a growth-at-value-prices opportunity. And today, we introduce a mining stock that fits the mold perfectly. After a rough February and March, it has immediate turnaround written all over it. In fact, it’s already starting to bounce back …

Details inside.

Today, we’re highlighting a “circular economy” champion that has navigated a complex multi-year turnaround and is now entering a high-growth phase.

By taking a data-driven approach to everything from high-end luxury watches to decommissioned data center servers, this small company has built a platform that’s well-positioned to capitalize on the emerging recommerce super-cycle.

All the details are inside the April issue of Cabot Small-Cap Confidential.

Marvell has historically been a boom-bust, more cyclical play involved in the storage switching market, but now it’s becoming a key cog for the AI data center buildout—with growth likely to go from good to great in the quarters to come.

Marvell’s top brass says it has the industry’s broadest and most comprehensive high-speed connectivity portfolio that addresses scale-out, scale-across and scale-up networking.

First off, a heads up: Our offices will be closed with the market for Good Friday; we’ll send a brief Movers & Shakers update on Thursday with some updated stops.

As for the market, when it comes to the rubber-meets-the-road evidence, not much has changed: Most major indexes, sectors and individual stocks remain in intermediate-term downtrends, with elevated numbers of stocks hitting new lows and more things trading below longer-term moving averages, too. To be fair, while some resilient names with good stories have begun to come under pressure, there remains a batch of names that still seem like they want to move higher if the market allows it, so it’s important to remain flexible should we see a change in character. We pulled our Market Monitor down to a level 4 last Friday and will keep it there today.

This week’s list has a nice mix of growth-y names that are acting well, combined with some commodity-type names that have recently broken out of big launching pads. Our Top Pick is set to see growth accelerate from here as demand booms.

Chaos reigns in the world and on Wall Street. Stocks have now fallen for five straight weeks, with the Nasdaq entering correction territory and the S&P 500 not far behind. Is the bull market in jeopardy? Not necessarily. But you have to go with the evidence in front of you, and right now, only one major sector is truly working: energy. So today, we beef up our admittedly light exposure to the energy sector with an undervalued gem – that has real momentum – courtesy of Cabot Turnaround Letter Chief Analyst Clif Droke.

Details inside.

The rescheduling waiting game continues. The good news is we continue to get signals from cannabis company CEOs like Boris Jordan at Curaleaf (CURLF) and sources in Washington, D.C. that the cannabis sector reform is on track to happen “relatively soon.”

What’s the hang-up? Most likely Department of Justice lawyers want to bulletproof rescheduling against the inevitable legal challenges by cannabis reform opponents.

This was a difficult week for stocks as uncertainty about how the Middle East will evolve caused investors to pause until the situation stabilizes. All signs point to an enlargement of the conflict, so caution is recommended.

Gold has lost some of its luster as prices are now back about to where they were at the start of the year. Artificial intelligence stocks have fallen sharply as well, and some are even trading at a discount suddenly. One of the biggest names in AI looks like a serious bargain, and that’s our featured recommendation for today.

Details inside.

In the March issue of Cabot Early Opportunities, I feature three high-conviction plays on the Electrification of Everything and global energy themes. We dig into an aerospace leader that’s repurposing aircraft engines to power AI data centers, a premier infrastructure contractor building the physical backbone of the U.S. electrical grid, and the undisputed leader in subsea energy infrastructure.

All the details are inside this month’s issue.

Enjoy!

J.M. Smucker is a name that needs no introduction; the hybrid consumer staples/discretionary company makes a bevy of well-known food and beverage items commonly sold at grocery and convenience stores throughout North America.

It’s also fairly common knowledge that the company is a Dividend Aristocrat, that is, an S&P 500 company that has consecutively increased its dividend payouts for at least 25 years.

It’s been a positive earnings season so far. But the market keeps rolling along just as it had before earnings.

It’s the same story as it was a month ago, technology is struggling while cyclical sectors are soaring. The S&P 500 has managed an anemic YTD return of 1.27% while energy, consumer, material, and industrial stocks are lighting it up with YTD returns of 19.32%, 14%, 12.45%, and 11.61%, respectively, for the sectors. The bull market continues to broaden out and leave technology behind.

It had to happen sooner or later, but the broad market is showing increased signs of stress as a result of what some have described as a case of “too much participation” from retail investors.

However, the good news is that this week’s increase in selling pressure across the formerly high-flying segments of the market serves to relieve some of that excess heat, particularly in the high-tech stocks. More importantly for our purposes, it also throws into sharp relief the usefulness of embracing the contrarian approach to investing that turnaround investors typically rely on.

“You must dare to be independent. Contrarian impulses are usually better. They are always better in major bubbles and busts.” -Jeremy Grantham

To begin, please note that since it is down about 20% over the last month, I’m moving Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) to Sell. This could bounce back but the selling pressure is steady.

Earnings season has arrived in full force. So far, cyclical companies are rallying and technology is faltering, just like before earnings.

Big tech earnings have been mixed so far, with more to come this week. Investors so far haven’t seen enough to change their view that AI investment is too high while revenues have not soared enough yet. That attitude could change soon or endure for a while longer. But AI will be back in favor at some point.

Earnings season is getting hot and heavy. Results have been good so far, and continued positive earnings reports could ignite a bullish trend.

Several big tech companies report on earnings this week. The results could determine if the technology sector, and consequently the market indexes, move higher. It’s been a huge year so far for cyclical sectors, including energy, materials, industrials, and consumer stocks. The rally has broadened while technology has sputtered.

The long-awaited promise of inflation’s “impending” demise remains as distant as ever entering 2026.

Economists have been assuring us since at least 2023 that inflation is abating. But far from this, what we’re actually seeing is a weakening dollar that’s putting ever-more upward pressure on prices across several asset categories.

WHAT TO DO NOW: Remain cautious. We have seen a couple of rays of light among the growth arena of late, though today’s wobbles (both in the market and in many stocks still being rejected at key levels) keep our growth measures pointed sideways to down. We’d like to put some money to work (both in some current holdings and some new names), and we could do so in the very near future if today ends up being the final shakeout to the Nasdaq’s three-month consolidation. But with the sell-on-strength pattern still with us for growth stocks, we’ll stand pat for the moment and look to see if more growth names can break free of the up-and-down action.

The S&P 500 walked higher for much of this week while small caps slipped from their recent highs.

We might get back to the pattern that existed in the first three weeks of the year (i.e., small caps outperforming) given weakness in some mega-cap names (i.e., TSLA and MSFT) after reporting and a little breather in small-cap strength.

After a brief tariff scare early last week, stocks resumed their regularly scheduled uptrend. All told, the stock market is doing just fine, with the major indexes touching new record highs. But certain sectors are doing more than fine.

Sector rotation is in full swing, with investors piling into some of last year’s most unloved sectors to kick off 2026. While technology continues to wallow, up less than 1% year to date and having topped right around Halloween three months ago, the following sectors have picked up the slack...

Several stock sectors are killing it while the overall market sort of languishes.

The S&P 500 is doing OK so far this year. It’s up about 1.5%. Of course, the index really hasn’t advanced much at all since late October. That’s because technology has been struggling. Those stocks have a huge weight on the S&P and are a major determinant of index returns. But a major story is developing beyond the index averages.

The last couple of years haven’t exactly been kind on food, beverage and restaurant stocks. Generally speaking, the companies in the food and drinks category underperformed the S&P 500 last year, while in the case of restaurants, 2025 was a particularly bad one.

There’s been plenty of drama over the last week, but small caps don’t seem to care. Both the S&P 600 and the Russell 2000 are making new all-time highs.

FactSet reported this morning that the Russell 2000 has outperformed the S&P 500 Index every session this year. That’s impressive. Let’s look more closely at the S&P 600 Index because I have sector data for it. Impressively, through mid-day Thursday, every small-cap sector is outperforming its large-cap counterpart YTD. The strongest small-cap sectors are materials (+14.4%), energy (+13.4%), industrials (+12.3%), and tech (+11.7%). The weakest, utilities, financials and healthcare, are all up in the 4.4% to 5.3% range.

As a whole, the S&P 600 is up 9.2% while the S&P 500 is up just 1.2% YTD.

WHAT TO DO NOW: The market has bounced back decently, though our market timing indicators are still looking iffy for now. Today’s bulletin is about Life360 (LIF), which is falling hard today despite a solid quarterly report. Given the abnormal action, we’re forced to sell and take what’s left of our profit. Our cash position will now be around 50%.

Life360 (LIF) Delivers Q3 Report

Karman Holding (KRMN) got whacked this morning after reporting a mixed quarter but has climbed back somewhat through the early afternoon. We’re standing by it, for now.

Warrior Met Coal (HCC), Primo Brands (PRMB) and Millicom (TIGO) Report

It’s required patience to live with the ups and downs of owning Enovix (ENVX) for as long as we have. And the timeline here serves as another reminder that building a company to bring a new product to market is no small feat. In this case, the launch of high-volume sales keeps getting pushed out, which also pushes out performance of the stock. But we’re sticking with ENVX because those better days should still arrive. And when they do, I think the stock can capture investors’ imagination and push it to levels that will seem, at times, totally ridiculous. We have seen that time and time again with these types of stocks.

WHAT TO DO NOW: While the market is in decent shape, our indicators are worsening, the broad market is weak and growth stocks remain very tricky—many look fine, but volatility is insane and, this week, we’ve seen more than a few air pockets after earnings. We’re still taking things on a stock-by-stock basis, which today means cutting bait on Arista Networks (ANET), which looks toppy after a poor earnings reaction. We’ll sell and hold the cash, which will be around 45% of the portfolio.

Hello from Senegal! While there is no regular Cabot Explorer issue this week as I am halfway around the world, I do have two new Sell alerts today.

Here some of the most common questions Mike Cintolo gets from the readers of Cabot Top Ten Trader.