As central banks around the globe aggressively raised interest rates, the stock market had its second straight awful week of trading. The S&P 500 fell 4.6%, the Dow lost 4%, and the Nasdaq continued its ugly slide, falling another 5.1%.

Weakening economic indicators in the U.S., along with Covid-related shutdowns in China and economic woes in Europe, have converged to push prices for industrial metals lower. Gold and silver, meanwhile, have been caught up in the equity market downdraft produced by the Fed’s tightening monetary policy.

There are windows of opportunities ahead for both precious metals, however, including a potential recession-related safety bid for gold and an upcoming seasonal factor for silver.



In the trading portfolio, no new positions (save for a U.S. dollar ETF) are recommended for now as the broad metals market is still unsettled.

As central banks around the globe aggressively raised interest rates, the stock market had its second straight awful week of trading. The S&P 500 fell 4.6%, the Dow lost 4%, and the Nasdaq continued its ugly slide, falling another 5.1%.

As central banks around the globe aggressively raised interest rates, the stock market had its second straight awful week of trading. The S&P 500 fell 4.6%, the Dow lost 4%, and the Nasdaq continued its ugly slide, falling another 5.1%.

We were assigned shares of WFC and KO. As a result, per our income cycle guidelines, we will begin the process of selling calls on both stocks shortly after the opening bell Monday.

Moreover, I plan on adding a new short-term position to the mix early next week. This will not be part of our income cycle portfolio; rather, it’s a short-term play to take advantage of the near-term pop in implied volatility that resides across the board.



Stay tuned for an alert or two over the coming days!

We’ve had a good start, with the Quant Trader service outperforming the market by a significant margin. Risk management has been a huge part of our success, mostly by locking in profits when we can lock in 50% to 75% of the original premium sold.

As a result, I decided on Friday (per the trade alert) to set a hard stop-loss for our IWM iron condor at $2.00. This will allow us to take all risk off the table and maintain overall profits in the portfolio, which speaks to the power of our approach as it has been a challenging environment for most investment strategies. Hopefully, the oversold state of IWM will lead to a push higher, giving us the ability to take a potential profit, but if not, we want to be fully prepared by taking off our trade, maintaining overall profits and patiently waiting for more opportunities to arise.

There’s not much to say when it comes to the market—the downturn that started in late August continues, with the major indexes back down to their May/June lows, keeping the intermediate- and longer-term trends pointed down. Moreover, after last week’s Fed meeting, the sellers finally came around for many resilient names, causing a bunch to crack support. Today, we’re staying cautious and continuing to hold plenty of cash, but we’re keeping an open mind as we see how this retest phase plays out. Our Market Monitor is down to a level 3.



This week’s list is mostly names that have taken on water (like everything else) but are still acting “normally.” Our Top Pick is a name that’s acting very unusually good, and it has a good story and excellent growth, too.

This week offers a few potential trades in Micron (MU) and Nike (NKE). The following week offers us next to nothing in the way of trades, but no worries, because on October 14 earnings season begins in earnest with the big banks (JPM, C, WFC, MS, etc.) due to report.

I will be introducing short strangles when we enter earnings season and will be covering the strategy during our first webinar of this upcoming earnings report. Regardless, if you wish to use the strategy it will be a wonderful introduction to an approach that many professionals use as their bread and butter strategy. I recently received an email from an old subscriber who has been using the strategy since he learned my approach. My goal was to wait one more earnings season to introduce short strangles, but I have reconsidered after his email and will be utilizing the strategy, in addition to our already established iron condors approach, during this upcoming earnings season.

It’s ugly out there, as virtually everything has been caught up in the merciless selling the last couple weeks. As a result, we are parting ways with three more stocks this week before their losses become even bigger. But we’re not completely battening down the hatches: Today’s addition to the Stock of the Week portfolio is a small-cap growth stock courtesy of Cabot Early Opportunities Chief Analyst Tyler Laundon. It’s not a household name, but it’s growing fast by taking full advantage of the return to relative normalcy in a post-Covid world.

Details inside.

Last Tuesday’s hot inflation report, along with Thursday evening’s earnings warning from FedEx, led to a terrible week for stocks, which keeps the negative top-down evidence in place: Both the intermediate- and longer-term trends of the market, as well as most stocks and sectors, remains pointed south. On the positive side, we still see many stocks doing a solid job of holding their own, and sentiment is firmly on the bearish side of the fence, and both of those represent dry tinder—if something goes right in the world (what a concept!), we think there’s a chance of a really solid rally. But bear markets are all about patience; we’ll leave our Market Monitor at a level 4.


This week’s list has another batch of resilient stocks, and our Top Pick has been bottoming out for months, and a decisive push higher should be buyable.

There’s been a lot of bad news in the past couple of weeks, but nothing has changed with the market--it’s still trending down, and the broad market remains on the outs, and today, we started to see the first signs that even the many resilient stocks are coming under the gun. Big picture, we’re continuing to advise a cautious stance with much more cash than stocks and patience as we wait for the bulls to re-take control.


And we do think they can re-take control, possibly sooner than most think: There’s so much negativity and bearishness out there that any spark could ignite a big rally, if not a sustained uptrend. But as always, we have to see it first to act on it, so we’re continuing to stay close to shore--we’re selling one name tonight and placing the rest on Hold.


We spend most of tonight’s issue discussing the overwhelming negativity out there, which is setting the stage for the next advance, as well as diving into a handful of new names to watch, including one cheap cookie-cutter story that looks ready to go if the market can stabilize.

In the September issue of Cabot Early Opportunities, we continue to try and thread the needle of this bear market, selecting a few potential opportunities to buy while adding others to our Watch List.
This month’s issue features a couple of old friends that are shaping up again, plucks one healthy stock off the Watch List and digs into two fresh names that seem to have the wind at their backs.


Enjoy!

Proxy season is moving into full gear. As a shareholder, you are one of the owners of your companies, so you get to vote on major decisions. Shareholder votes are, of course, much like public government elections, but in most cases your vote has a bigger impact.

Even the S&P 500 is back near all-time highs. So why does it feel like there’s been a pullback in the market? Because there has … if you’re a micro-cap investor. The Russell Micro-cap index has pulled back and has underperformed the S&P 500 by 13% in the past month.

It’s earnings season. So far, it has mainly been just the big banks that have reported. And the results have been largely positive.

Today’s note includes earnings updates and the podcast.

It’s been another mostly constructive week as many of our stocks inch higher and the economic picture continues to improve.

This is an incredible market that just keeps creeping higher. The promise of a booming recovery with trillions in stimulus ahead continues to pull stocks to new all-time highs.

Continue to go slow but have your shopping list ready. Growth stocks are gradually improving their standing, with more popping toward their highs, many holding their gains and a few finding some good-volume buying.

EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, is a straight-forward measure (not a perfect measure, though) of a company’s cash operating profits. But, like seemingly all metrics published by company managements, it is usually adjusted for unusual items that may be non-recurring.

Today’s note includes earnings updates and the podcast.

There’s no doubt things are looking a little better out there as many software, MedTech and other growth stocks retested their March lows late last week then turned north. The timing of that short-term reversal, coinciding with the end of the first quarter, most definitely has me feeling better about the state of things right now.

Nearly 95% of companies in the S&P 500 are now trading above their 200-day moving average, according to Dow Jones Market Data, the highest percentage since May 2013. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, as of late February, investors had borrowed a record $814 billion against their portfolios. That was up 49% from one year earlier, the fastest annual increase since 2007, during the frothy period before the 2008 financial crisis. Before that, the last time investor borrowing had grown so rapidly was during the dot-com bubble in 1999.

How about this market? Even with the technology sector still in a funk and the huge energy sector rally abating, the S&P 500 just made a new all-time high anyway.

With so much going on in the market I wanted to share some of what’s running through my head today, then keep tomorrow’s Weekly Update focused mostly on stock updates.

Yesterday’s big rally in the Nasdaq was enough to reignite bullish spirits but it was not a clear signal that it is time back up the truck on growth stocks just yet. While I side with those who say the pullback has opened up opportunities for fresh buying in many beaten down names, I think the chances of a snapback rally in many of the highest multiple growth stocks, then a follow through to new highs within a few weeks, is unlikely.

The Dow hit a new high today, but marijuana stocks didn’t; their correction, which was richly deserved, is now one month old. And the fact is this correction is likely to run further, mainly because the broad market still needs a correction.

Trading at a P/E ratio of 9.99, this insurance stock looks undervalued. Its shares have a current dividend yield of 3.10%, paid annually.

This construction materials company beat earnings estimates by $0.20 last quarter.

This Brazilian medical education company is forecasted to grow earnings at a rate of 42.3% next year.

Suffice to say the last two weeks have been very tough. On the one hand, yes, of course some sort of correction or pullback has been expected given the huge progress the market – and growth stocks, small caps and IPOs in particular – have made over the last 12 months. But expecting something to come eventually and actually experiencing it are two entirely different things.

Growth stocks remain under the gun, and while we’re already relatively defensive in the Model Portfolio, we’re going to do a little more trimming now

Suffice to say the last two weeks have been very tough. On the one hand, yes, of course some sort of correction or pullback has been expected given the huge progress the market – and growth stocks, small caps and IPOs in particular – have made over the last 12 months. But expecting something to come eventually and actually experiencing it are two entirely different things.

This fintech company earned $2.74 per share last quarter, handily beating analysts’ estimates of $2.74.

With the market continuing to weaken we’ll move incrementally more into defensive mode until the smoke begins to clear and we can better distinguish the stocks that will emerge as the next leaders. While there is a lot we could say about just about any stock in our portfolio, right now we’ll focus just on what actions to take.

The resurgence of the semiconductor industry is happening right now. And this company is expected to grow earnings by 17.4% this year.

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.