I’m going to keep it short today as we enter the first of two holiday-shortened weeks. The focus, as always, continues to be adding a few positions to balance out the mix of options strategies and our deltas. As it stands, we only have an iron condor heading into the January expiration cycle, but if all goes well, we should have an opportunity to add one or two January trades, and with 52 days left until February expiration, I will also be looking to add positions there as well.

I’m going to keep it short today as we enter the first of two holiday-shortened weeks. The focus, as always, continues to be adding a few positions to the mix. As it stands, we have five open positions with one position, WFC, due to expire this week. The rest are due to expire in January. My intent with WFC is to wheel our position, which simply means, if the stock closes below our put strike of 44 we will be issued shares and begin the process, once again, of selling calls against our newly acquired shares.

The much-anticipated Santa Claus rally has yet to materialize on Wall Street, though at least the recent losses mostly stopped for the indexes last week. The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged, the Dow gained 0.88%, and the Nasdaq fell 2.5%.

As I stated last week, we’re just three weeks away from earnings season. However, the next two weeks leave us with little to no trading opportunities as Wall Street pretty much closes up shop until after the holiday season passes. I expect that we will see a few opportunities during the second week of January, but the next two weeks are certain to be slow from an earnings announcement standpoint.

The much-anticipated Santa Claus rally has yet to materialize on Wall Street, though at least the recent losses mostly stopped for the indexes last week. The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged, the Dow gained 0.88%, and the Nasdaq fell 2.5%.

In the December Issue of Cabot Early Opportunities we look at five companies growing nicely and with share prices that have held up reasonably well in recent months.

Our top pick this month is a small-cap biopharma stock that just made a timely acquisition this week. I also feature a potential biotech superstar, an emerging MedTech name, a solar energy specialist and an online retailer that we’ve seen before.

As always, there should be something for everyone in this month’s Issue!

First, a couple housekeeping notes: With Santa coming in a few days, there will be no Cabot Profit Booster issue next Tuesday. Have a great holiday weekend!

First, a housekeeping note: With Santa coming in a few days, there will be no issue next Monday, but we will send a “full” update next Monday (in place of the issue) to keep in touch, and we’ll be around if you have any questions. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

As for the market, the post-Fed action was clearly a downer and is threatening to reverse the intermediate-term uptrend, which was the lone positive piece of top-down evidence. To this point, we will say many individual stocks have bent but haven’t broken, but the onus is once again on the bulls to step up and offer support. We’ll move our Market Monitor down to a level 4, and it could sink further should the bears keep at it.

The good news is we’re still finding many solid-looking charts, though they’re from all nooks and crannies of the market. Our Top Pick today is in the surprisingly resilient housing group.

Santa Claus hasn’t arrived yet for investors, as stocks are enduring a rough December. As a result, we have two sells today and another rating downgrade. However, we are adding a stock that’s perfect for these turbulent times: a dividend-paying utility that holds up well in sharp sell-offs like this one but features an alternative energy wing that has allowed it to outperform the market for years, even in good times. It’s built for safety and growth and is a longtime favorite of Cabot Dividend Investor Chief Analyst Tom Hutchinson.

Despite a strong start to the week that saw the S&P 500 gain a combined more than 2% Monday and Tuesday, the sellers once again took control, as the index then fell 4.5% Wednesday and Thursday.

Despite a strong start to the week that saw the S&P 500 gain a combined more than 2% Monday and Tuesday, the sellers once again took control, as the index then fell 4.5% Wednesday and Thursday.

We’re just shy of a month away from earnings season, but that doesn’t mean that potential trading opportunities don’t exist. This week we actually have three notable earnings releases in stocks with highly liquid options.

On Tuesday, after the close, Nike (NKE) will report earnings followed by Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL) Wednesday morning. And to top off the week, Micron (MU) will release earnings after the closing bell Wednesday.

This week, everyone is talking about Evergrande. In case you’ve missed it, Evergrande is a Chinese real estate developer. Its core business is building homes, but it branched out into other directions like investing in EVs, a theme park, and other business lines.

One of this year’s greatest paradoxes has been inflation’s return. On the one hand, the rising tide of inflation has lifted industrial metal prices to levels not seen in over a decade. But on the other hand, gold and other precious metals haven’t really benefited from it. What’s the reason for this seeming contradiction?

After a stunningly strong market so far this year, with the S&P 500 producing a 20% total return through Monday, the slow grind-down of most stocks since early September has seemed interminable. The 1,100 largest stocks in our 3,000-stock database have declined only 2% in the past two weeks, but the steady flow of higher inflation news, a growing likelihood of interest rate increases, a never-ending pandemic, the prospect of higher taxes of all kinds and memories of the tragic events of 9/11 makes us feel like we’re stuck inside on a cold, rainy day watching an awful four-hour movie.

Today’s note includes the podcast.

The action in the second half of August was encouraging, but as has been the story of 2021, a lot of that move has been erased so far in September—and that goes for just about everything.

The S&P 500 has finally failed to make a new high every day lately and is 2% below the high-water mark! That doesn’t seem like it should be news but in this market it’s worth noting.

So far, the post-Labor Day market has been just a little bit crummy. Stocks have drifted slightly lower over the past week. While that’s nothing alarming, it is a reversal of the summer market where stocks were drifting slightly higher. It could be that the balance has been tipped toward the negative.

Here we are in September. So far, it’s not bad. But it’s not good either. For the first week after Labor Day, the market has drifted lower. It’s no big deal. But stocks have been losing a battle they were winning in the summer. The bulls were eking it out then. Now the bears are prevailing, slightly.

The market seems expensive, but the S&P 500 keeps making new all-time highs.

Fundamentally, all is well in the marijuana sector as the industry’s leaders continue to grow, both organically and by acquisition. The average rate of revenue growth for the plant-touching companies in our portfolio in the most recent quarter was an amazing 132% from the previous year.

We’re past the earnings season, so there were no companies reporting earnings this week. The next scheduled earnings report looks to be on October 8, with Lamb Weston (LW) reporting.

Despite more grumblings out there about how “we are due for a pullback,” stocks continue to hold up. In fact, many growth stocks have done far better than that and are jumping higher on almost a daily basis.

This pharmacy chain just got lighter with a sale of a business, and earnings estimates are rising.

While this biotech could certainly go much higher, our contributor is recommending taking profits.

This tech company is being acquired by Microsoft. If you want to hold MSFT shares, keep holding; otherwise, cash in.

We recommended Cohen & Steers Infrastructure Fund, Inc (UTF) on February 3, 2021, at a price of 26.89. Today, it is trading at 27.70. Not much of a move up.

Gold and the precious metal mining stocks are rallying on short covering after reaching an extremely “oversold” market condition earlier this week. August gold is up just 0.80% from last week’s low as of this writing—admittedly nothing to write about—but what is worth mentioning is an article I came across which expands on a theme that was touched on in the last report.

We’re going to step aside from e.l.f Beauty (ELF) today for a very slight loss (roughly 4%). We’ve held the stock for just over a month and it has posted uninspiring performance, especially since reporting on May 26. My original intent was to try to make a relatively quick and modest gain on the stock, but with so many other positions working well there’s little incentive to hold this one.

As I write this, every stock in our portfolio is up today, in what may be the beginning of a new advance for the sector. It’s been more than four months since marijuana stocks’ February peak, so they’ve definitely cooled off, but only time will tell if this is truly the start of a new run. In any case, we’re ready, with the portfolio now 84% invested.

This tech company—a perennial investor favorite—is forecasted to grow its earnings at an annual rate of 21% over the next five years.

Shortly after I sent this week’s Profit Booster idea to execute a covered call on Scientific Games (SGMS), the stock rallied $1, and I missed my buy price. I am going to raise my net price to 72, so that we can get into the trade.

This electric auto maker is forecasted to grow earnings at an annual rate of 44.51% over the next five years.

The market got hit hard on Friday, which sent three of our stocks (FNKO, IGT, RRC) below their strike prices on expiration Friday.

The five largest holdings in this ETF are: Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO, 3.57% of assets), Proofpoint Inc (PFPT, 3.16%), Fortinet Inc (FTNT, 2.93%), NortonLifeLock Inc (NLOK, 2.93%), and Cloudflare Inc (NET, 2.77%).

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.