What started out as another troubling week for the bulls turned encouraging as the indexes rebound nicely on Thursday and Friday. By week’s end the S&P 500 gained 1%, the Dow rose 1.1%, and the Nasdaq rebounded 2%.

This month we are going with a small industrial company that is showing how consistent focus on operational improvement can pay dividends.

Once thought of as a highly cyclical company with management that tended to drop the ball, execution has improved dramatically. In 2022 revenue was up 14% and EPS was up 41%.

With exposure to megatrends like infrastructure and global electrification, I see more upside ahead.

Enjoy!

In an effort to keep the portfolio as diversified as possible, this week’s pick is a recent earnings winner whose products are used in the aerospace field.

Last week was the worst week of the market’s recent retreat, and it’s fair to say many pieces of evidence are now at or approaching key levels: Most major indexes closed in on their 50-day lines, many individual potential leaders are in a similar boat, and both the broad market and the growth-vs.-defense dynamic are healthy but showing a bit of wear and tear. Ideally, this three-week dip leads to a resumption of the January rally—but the next few days should tell the tale. Right now, given the late-Friday firmness and today’s bounce, we’ll leave our Market Monitor at a level 6, but we’re watching closely.

Despite the market action, we actually think this week’s list has a bit more juice than the prior couple of weeks. Our Top Pick looks like a fresh leader in the chip sector; it’s extended, so try to buy on a shakeout.

Stocks continued to retreat last week, ensuring a down February after a very promising January. Still, the latest pullback has been fairly modest, with the 200-day moving average now acting as a floor instead of a ceiling, as it did for most of 2022. With the market in a state of flux, we’re adding another dividend stock today – a household name that used to be part of the Stock of the Week portfolio before we sold it late last summer. That looks like a mistake, as the stock has risen 11% since, and seems to be gathering more steam of late. It’s a longtime recommendation of Cabot Dividend Investor Chief Analyst Tom Hutchinson.

We locked in an 11.86% return in our DIA March 17, 2023, 355/360 bear call spread last week. The return marks our second winning trade for the March expiration cycle for a total of 22.48%. Our average holding time for both trades was 12 days.

As it stands, we currently have two iron condor positions, and my hope is to add another position, preferably a bear call spread, early this week. If we see even a mild bounce in IWM we should be able to take off our IWM iron condor for another nice return, thereby building upon our current profits for the March expiration cycle. If our IWM trade works out we could see March expiration bring in close to, if not exceeding, 40% on a cumulative basis.

We added four new positions last week, which brings us to five open trades. Our PFE position is due to expire this week and the four (KO, BITO, WFC, GDX) we added last week are due to expire on March 31, 2023.

Our PFE calls are essentially worthless, so I plan on buying them back today or tomorrow and immediately selling more calls against our shares. Otherwise there really isn’t much to do with our existing open positions as we are early in the trades.

We had the good fortune to lock in a gain in Home Depot (HD) early last week. The win marked our sixth this earnings season for a cumulative total of 36.9%. That’s a healthy return for this earnings season, especially when you consider the S&P 500 is basically flat since our first trade in JPM back on January 12, 2023. Hopefully the market offers up a few more opportunities to increase our current totals.

Following another week of hotter-than-expected inflation data and hawkish Fed speak, the leading indexes had their worst week of 2023. The S&P 500 fell 2.75%, the Dow lost 3%, and the Nasdaq declined by another 3.3%.

Following another week of hotter-than-expected inflation data and hawkish Fed speak, the leading indexes had their worst week of 2023. The S&P 500 fell 2.75%, the Dow lost 3%, and the Nasdaq declined by another 3.3%.

A renewed bout of worry over how much tightening the Fed has left to do has taken the market lower over the past two weeks, taking most stocks down in the process. Even so, to this point, we’re looking at the pullback at tedious, yes, but also acceptable--all of the indicators that turned positive in January have taken on some water, but remain positive, as have the vast majority of potential leaders. We’re far from complacent, and if the weakness spreads, we’ll pare back, but we remain optimistic and are standing pat tonight.

Tonight’s issue is heavy on new ideas, including some enticing names in Other Stocks of Interest and two chip stocks that we’re very high on--both quack like fresh leaders, and it’s good to see the (growthy) chip sector itself act well, too. Bottom line, our antennae are up, but going with the evidence, we’re still leaning bullish, though also remaining flexible if something definitive changes.

America’s economy has been resilient in the face of rising interest rates, pushing the 10-year Treasury to the cusp of 4%. Earnings have been pretty good but ironically, the threat of too strong an economy, or a recession, seems to be weighing on markets. Our Exscienta (EXAI) was stopped out while Centrus Energy (LEU) was up 14% yesterday after positive earnings.

After a solid three-day rally, stocks sold off again today—the Dow was actually up a point but the Nasdaq fell 270 points (1.7%) and most growth stocks were down in the 3% to 5% range.

Our comments this week are mostly questions. Day-to-day gyrations make sense on the surface. Yesterday, the market surged on news of China easing its monetary policy combined with a growing sense of relief that the Omicron variant is milder than previously understood. But in the wider context, the market’s position and trend makes less sense.

The past week brought a swift correction to Greentech with the sector falling more than 16% from last Wednesday to Monday’s intraday low.

Everything was going so well. And then things turned sour on a dime. The party pooper virus is up to its old tricks again.

Selling panics are never fun, but they can be quite useful for gauging gold demand, for extreme financial market volatility often reveals just how much safe-haven interest truly exists for the metal. And we’re about to find out just what participants think about gold after shunning it for most of this year.

This past Wednesday we published the December edition of the Cabot Turnaround Letter. Our first article, “Year-end Selling: Turning Other’s Losses into Gains,” describes three reasons why many investors, including highly experienced professional managers, tend to sell weak stocks toward year end without regard to price or value – and how this can produce quick profits for nimble investors. We include six stocks that look well-positioned to bounce.

The market has entered a rough patch, especially for tech and stocks that have not been demonstrating relative strength. Explorer stocks are all over the map, with Coupa (COUP) and Cloudflare (NET) showing some weakness, many positions holding steady, and Novonix (NVNXF) up 25% in the last week.

The big news this week is the emergence of a new coronavirus strain in Africa. The news prompted a steep selloff last Friday and then again yesterday. This throws a wrench in the works.

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Mine was perfect. We had a great holiday in Milton, MA, with my parents, my family, my sister and her family. After essentially skipping Thanksgiving last year, it felt especially great to get my extended family together.

Everything was going so well. And then things turned sour on a dime. The party pooper virus is up to its old tricks again.

In last week’s newsletter, we discussed the case for future inflation being already priced into commodity prices. I also addressed the possibility that something might happen to unexpectedly reverse the trend of higher consumer prices, suggesting that China’s debt crisis as a likely culprit. And while China is still high on my list of possible trend reversal triggers, the latest broad market sell-off has provided an even more likely catalyst: public health worries.

The market has leveled off over the last few weeks. But the indexes are still within bad breath distance of the highs. We should be in for more of the same in the months ahead as this high market is due to cool off.

The earnings of this construction company are forecasted to grow by 37.8% this quarter.

Inspire (INSP) is soaring this morning as the company trounced Q2 estimates and management raised guidance. Revenue was up 335% to $55 million (beating by $9.1 million) while EPS of -$0.48 improved from -$0.88 in the year-ago quarter and beat by $0.14. Driving the results was the addition of 63 new U.S. centers (well above expectations for 35 to 40) and a jump in covered lives. Results were strong both in the U.S. (up 349% to $49.4 million) and Europe (up 201% to $3.6 million) with average prices of both $23.9K and $23.4K (U.S. flat, Europe up modestly).

Looking at the charts of our portfolio stocks today, there’s been no real change since last week, so I have no changes. But there have been a few relevant news items.

The shares of this car parts manufacturer are rated ‘Strong Buy’ by two analysts and ‘Buy’ by one analyst. Wall Street expects the company to earn $80,240,000 in 2021.

This morning, we received bad news from Medexus. Medexus announced that it has received a complete response letter from the FDA related to Treosulfan, its newly in-licensed drug that was expected to drive substantial revenue growth. What is a complete response letter?

Our buy recommendation today is expected to grow earnings by more than 26% this year. We are also selling two previous ideas.

This transaction service company is due to report earnings on August 3. Estimates call for EPS of $0.57 on $138.35M in revenues.

This biopharma has a new distribution agreement for its obesity drug, and is expected to grow by 47% this year, then 16.1% annually over the next five years.

While copper futures prices remain firm, copper ETFs have come under renewed selling pressure late this week, thanks in part to persistent strength in the U.S. dollar and in spite of widespread hopes of additional monetary easing measures in China.

In keeping with its investments in interesting properties, this REIT just agreed to provide a $79.5 million mezzanine loan investment related to the development of the more than $250 million Great Wolf Lodge Mid-Atlantic project in Perryville, MD. The shares have a current annual dividend yield of 4.18%, paid quarterly.

Coverage of the shares of this engineering and construction company has recently been initiated at Cowen & Co., with an ‘Outperform’ rating, and at Piper Sandler with an ‘Overweight’ ranking.

Repligen (RGEN) reported Q2 results before the bell today that surpassed expectations and has the stock up nicely (6% at mid-day) and bucking the broader market weakness. Revenue was up 86% to $163 million, beating by nearly $19 million, while adjusted EPS of $0.79 rose by 88% and beat by $0.27. Management raised full-year guidance to a range of $625 million to $645 million (up 71% to 76%), well above consensus estimates of $586 million. Adjusted EPS guidance goes to $2.71 - $2.78, way above consensus of $1.71. Gross margins are up a lot, from 57.9% in the year ago quarter to 62% in Q2.

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.