Tomorrow afternoon traders will get another look at how the Federal Reserve perceives the inflation situation, as well as its plans to manage interest rate hikes going forward. Below are the expectations in the options market, the bond market, and from a couple Wall Street firms.

Ahead of the “big” Federal Reserve announcement on Wednesday, the market surged higher last week. The S&P 500 gained 4%, the Dow rose 5.7%, and the Nasdaq rallied 2%.

Since earnings season began, we’ve been fortunate enough to lock in all three of our earnings trades for winners. Our cumulative totals sit at 17.3% for an average one-day return of 5.8%.

Our latest winner came on Wednesday as we placed a trade in Mastercard (MA). We locked in a profit shortly after the opening bell the following day for a one-day return of 5.3%, mostly due to the volatility crush that occurs immediately following an earnings announcement when most of the near-term, built-in uncertainty in the stock has passed.

We currently have two positions open, both of which have a probability of success higher than 84%.


With December expiration quickly approaching (45 days) I plan on adding several new positions this week. We want to have, at the minimum, one bullish, bearish and neutral trade for each expiration cycle and December is no different.

This week I intend on adding several new positions to the mix. My hope is to add two new positions to the “Wheel” portfolio and two short-term, one-off trades.


Also, with PFE closing in the money, or above our 47 calls at expiration, we will need to sell some puts early in the week to start a new phase of the wheeling process. Our shares were called away at $47. We’ve managed to lock in $3.62, or 7.24% worth of premium since introducing PFE to the portfolio. Our breakeven currently stands at 46.38.

Happy Halloween! True to the occasion, the final day of October is cause for investor celebration this year – all three major indexes were up sharply this month (one more sharply than the other two). Yet, with the Fed set to talk interest rates again this week and midterms and more inflation data on tap for next week, things also still feel a bit spooky out there. So, to fortify our portfolio against any further impending doom, today I’m adding a household name that has a proven track record, pays a hefty dividend, and has been overly punished by all the selling over the past year. In fact, value expert Bruce Kaser just added it to his Cabot Undervalued Stocks Advisor portfolio.

Enjoy!

Ford (F) reported a down third quarter, but Explorer stocks had a good week with all positions in the black. MP Materials (MP) and Oracle (ORCL) were up 11%, and SQM rose 8%.

The headline of today’s GDP report will likely be more upbeat than the two previous negative growth numbers, instead showing that third-quarter GDP grew at about a 2% annualized pace.

But beneath these numbers, investor sentiment, economic trends, and geopolitical risks are not all that encouraging.

How should investors take all this in and execute a strategy to exploit the situation?

This week earnings season really gets in gear … buckle up, and be prepared to jump into some earnings season winners if the market can continue to show signs of strength.

This week earnings season really gets in gear … buckle up, and be prepared to jump into some earnings season winners if the market can continue to show signs of strength.

Election season lurks just around the corner.

The looming midterm outcomes have huge implications for cannabis – since the group is so dependent on legal reform in the hands of politicians.

There are going to be plenty of (tradeable) election-related ups and downs. But for reasons I will explain, cannabis stocks might see some very bullish catalysts near term, no matter which party takes the Congressional elections.

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

At it most basic, investing is a mental game supplemented by a calculator. Our articles use one or both aspects to find attractive investing ideas.

Our first group covers enduring companies with out-of-favor stocks with theses well supported by a calculator. Our other articles discuss companies with deeper issues but whose shares have been so heavily sold that their risk/return trade-offs are highly attractive, even if their theses rely less on a calculator and more on pure contrarian instincts.

Our feature recommendation this month is a high-quality, well-capitalized bank that emphasizes credit card loans

The market has likely not bottomed yet. The current rally will unlikely be sufficient to drive us out of this bear market ahead of continued high inflation and likely recession in the months ahead.

However, while the market indexes may have further downside, one area of the market may well have already bottomed, namely interest rate-sensitive stocks.

Previously buoyant defensive stocks got clobbered as interest rates spiked to the highest levels in 15 years. But the evidence is overwhelming that the economy is likely headed toward recession in the months ahead. Recessions put downward pressure on interest rates. As the economy worsens and inflation declines, rates are likely to move lower, negating most of the damage done to conservative dividend payers.

There are powerful reasons to believe that interest rate-sensitive stocks may have already bottomed. In this issue, I highlight one of the very best utilities on the market. It’s near the 52-week low after an overdone selloff and should be highly resilient in a recession.

This was a quiet week, with no earnings reports or ratings changes.

There remain a few yellow flags in this environment, especially as many indexes are chopping around and trends in individual stocks and sectors remain fleeting. But there’s no question that the action in growth stocks has improved, so we’re going to put a bit more of our large cash hoard to work—we’re going to add half-sized positions in both DocuSign (DOCU) and Cloudflare (NET), which are two of the best-looking growth names in terms of story, numbers and charts.

Despite some wobbles last Friday it has been a constructive week for the market, and especially for growth stocks. Since last Thursday’s close and through yesterday’s close the S&P 500 has inched up 0.5% (back near record closing highs), the Nasdaq has hit a record high and the S&P 600 Small Cap Index is up 0.3%.

The market is hovering at a high level within bad breath distance of the all-time high. But that factoid is deceiving. The market really has not gone anywhere but sideways for about two months.

Greentech managed last week’s market downturn well, with a huge-volume day Friday that left the index we watch most closely, the Wilderhill Clean Energy, with a spinning top doji.

Last week, we started our multi-part discussion on position sizes, and looked at the benefits and weaknesses of an equal-weighted approach. Let’s look at perhaps the most common weighting used by fund managers: relative weighting.

Do you consider yourself a growth stock investor or a value stock investor? I think growth or value framework is a false dichotomy. Warren Buffett summed it up well when he said: “Most analysts feel they must choose between two approaches customarily thought to be in opposition: ‘value’ and ‘growth.’... In our opinion, the two approaches are joined at the hip: Growth is always a component in the calculation of value.”

This was a quiet week, with no earnings reports or ratings changes.

Small caps have pulled back ever so slightly from the all-time highs of last week. But that’s not the big news of the week. The larger event was yesterday’s Fed meeting, during which Chairman Jerome Powell suggested that a start to tapering of asset purchases was still a “ways off” but that this was a “talking about talking about meeting.”

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) convened on Wednesday and Chairman Jerome Powell and colleagues seem to be inclined to raise benchmark rates sometime next year. At least for now, the Fed kept rates on hold and signaled it would continue its quantitative easing.

Sideways is a good thing. The market had a huge recovery from the pandemic and really soared between November and May. After such a rapid move higher in a short amount of time, a correction would be normal.

In most professional and personal endeavors, there are dozens if not hundreds of decisions to make. Manage a tech company? You need to decide who to hire/promote/fire, what responsibilities to give them, how much to pay them (base and bonus), resolve conflicting agendas, decide what products to promote, approve technical and strategic changes to each product or service, check quality control, help customers, set pricing … the list is essentially endless. Even a simple home landscaping project involves a long list of decisions: how much to spend, do it yourself or hire out, what to plant and where, and so on.

Our first idea is an automotive component company that is forecasted to grow at a 20% annual rate over the next five years, and has a current annual dividend yield of 2.04%, paid quarterly. Our second recommendation is a sale of a previous pick.

This dynamic company has changed the way that sound is amplified in our homes and automobiles. Analysts expect it to grow earnings at an annual rate of 26.6% over the next five years.

Our first idea is an industrial company that makes a wide range of consumer, commercial, and industrial products and has a current annual dividend yield of 2.93%, paid quarterly. Our second recommendation is some profit-taking on a previous pick.

This furniture maker had a great quarter, beating analysts’ EPS estimates of $0.58, and bringing home earnings of $1.37 per share. Revenues were up 40.7%, coming in at $129.7 million, handily surpassing estimates of $116.1 million.

This healthcare IT company beat analysts’ estimates by $0.04 last quarter.

Today, for a change, I’ll cover the news first, and the investing advice second. In Illinois, marijuana taxes exceeded alcohol taxes in the first three months of 2021. Marijuana tax revenue amounted to $86,537,000 while alcohol taxes brought in $72,281,000. I expect the gap to widen from here and there’s no question other states have taken note.

This financial company beat analysts’ earnings by $0.03 last quarter.

It is a stink fest out there in the market today and Fisker (FSR) has looked like a hot pile of garbage for weeks. But today we see another big bank jumping in with a buy rating. Bank of America says FSR is worth 30.

The top three holders of this closed-end fund are: Bank of America Corporation, 1.12% of assets; Morgan Stanley, 0.99%; and Wells Fargo & Company, 0.68%. The shares have a current annual dividend yield of 6.18%, paid monthly.

The major indexes are selling off today on various news items. As of 1 pm, the Dow is down 195 points and the Nasdaq is also off 195 points, while the average stock we own or are watching is off around 2.5%.

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.