Another earnings season is finally behind us.

After two winning trades in Home Depot (HD) and Walmart (WMT) last week our cumulative total for the earnings cycle was 21.7%. That’s an average gain of 3.1% per trade, below our expected return per trade but certainly nothing to sneeze at, especially in this volatile market. I’ll take what can be thought of as paying myself a 3.1% dividend, seven times, over the past month or so. Again, not even close to a home run, but remember, we aren’t playing long ball. Aaron Judge doesn’t interest us. Our goal is to hit singles and doubles with each and very trade we place. We’re taking the Tony Gwynn/Rod Carew approach to trading earnings.

The top-down evidence isn’t completely green, but it’s certainly taken steps in the right direction, with our Cabot Tides clearly on a buy signal, the broad market improving in the face of tons of bad news and sentiment still in the dumps. We think there’s a decent chance this rally can morph into the real deal.

That said, there’s no rush to jump in when it comes to growth stocks, as few are really moving on the upside–the sell-on-strength pattern remains in place, with far more air pockets out there than moonshots. That can change, and if it does, we’ll embark on a buying spree, but we still favor going slow on the buy side for now.

In tonight’s issue, we go over all our stocks and our recent moves, as well as dive into the sell-on-strength action, which to us, is the #1 market trait of 2022. When it ends, many will likely be caught leaning the wrong way (selling/shorting at new highs), but that’s what we’re waiting for to floor the accelerator.

In the November Issue of Cabot Early Opportunities, I take a quick look at some recent earnings reports and continue to spread things out among different industries with our new additions.

This month I cover a premium furniture retailer, a micro-cap biotech, an online finance specialist, an oil refiner and a somewhat speculative space economy stock. There should be something in this Issue for everybody.

Sparked by an inflation data point that showed some signs of cooling, the market surged higher last week. The S&P 500 gained 6%, the Dow rose 4% and the Nasdaq gained a whopping 8.8%.

The major indexes quickly retreated after the prior couple of good weeks, with growth-oriented areas falling the most, a lot of stocks being rejected near resistance and some old winners being taken out and shot. Despite that, there are some green shoots out there—by the letter of the law, some broad indexes (like small- and mid-caps) are in intermediate-term uptrends, and we’re also seeing some sectors assert themselves, especially in the commodity space. We’re not bullish, and will leave our Market Monitor at a level 4, though our overall advice remains basically unchanged: Hold plenty of cash, honor your stops and, if you do some buying, keep it small.


This week’s list is again heavy on commodity-type names, though we’re also seeing a few recent earnings winners that have some growth to them. Our Top Pick straddles the line between growth and commodity and is one of the few names to move out to recently all-time highs.

A better-than-expected inflation rate saved the day last week, and stocks are back on the rise after their single best day since April 2020. Will the latest rally last, or is it yet another bear market fake-out? Time will tell. In the meantime, we’re adding a stock that should prosper regardless of which way the market heads next because the company improves access around the world to one thing everyone needs: food. It’s a recent recommendation from Cabot Explorer Chief Analyst Carl Delfeld, and it’s already up more than 40% year to date.

Details inside.

There really isn’t too much to report at the moment. Our passive portfolios continue to impress in the midst of a challenging market which displays the overall power of the passive approach. And I continue to mostly sit on the sidelines in our active portfolios, although that approach will be changing soon. I intend on adding several new positions to the active portfolios this expiration cycle as we are starting to see some good entry prices for several of the companies on our watchlist.

As I discussed in our subscribers-only webinar on Friday, this week should be the busiest trading week of the earnings cycle.

Several of the big box retailers are due to report including Home Depot (HD), Walmart (WMT), Lowe’s (LOW), Target (TGT), Cisco Systems (CSCO) and a few other notable names. All offer good volume and all are currently offering some decent premium for trades with at least an 85% probability of success, if not slightly higher.

I expect that we will see at least three trades, if not more, this week before we enter the doldrums of another earnings off-season that begins in earnest next week.

We decided to stay on the sidelines last week given the market action, but intend to add several new positions for each of our portfolios this week. As I’ve stated in the past, I don’t plan on ramping up positions quickly; rather, I take a methodical approach to slowly adding a few new positions to the mix. As for our current positions, they remain in good shape. Other than BITO we’ve had a good stretch over the past few months and if all goes well BITO might even join the club, if we continue to allow it.

We added a bear call spread last week in SPY and plan to add an iron condor and bull put spread, if the market cooperates, this week. I’m still hopeful to sell premium for the December 16 expiration cycle, but have no issue kicking it out a week or two if it makes sense. The most important part is that we want the deltas of our portfolio to be balanced so we aren’t leaning too far in one direction.

Sparked by an inflation data point that showed some signs of cooling, the market surged higher last week. The S&P 500 gained 6%, the Dow rose 4% and the Nasdaq gained a whopping 8.8%.

Sparked by an inflation data point that showed some signs of cooling, the market surged higher last week. The S&P 500 gained 6%, the Dow rose 4% and the Nasdaq gained a whopping 8.8%.

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.

The market continues to be strong with the S&P 500 near all-time highs. And micro-caps continue to chug along. In aggregate, our micro-cap recommendations continue to do quite well, and I continue to find many excellent opportunities, especially in “cyclical” areas of the market. Before we get into this week’s update, I wanted to spend some time sharing my perspective on stop-losses as I get questions on them quite often. In general, stop-losses are not a viable option for micro-cap stocks.

It’s a period of offsets for the market. The excitement of a booming recovery is offset by the fact that the market is looking six months ahead to the end of the year when growth is slowing.

Have we already reached “peak” inflation? That’s a question that investors are asking after recent economic headlines suggest some of the factors which led to higher metal prices (and other commodities) may be abating.

Today’s note includes the Signet Jewelers’ (SIG) earnings update and our price target increase, as well as our ratings changes from this past Monday, and the podcast.

Wall Street expects this gaming company will increase its annual earnings by 30.18% over the next five years.

The market remains messy and is acting in a one step forward, two steps back fashion, at least where growth stocks are concerned. As of early afternoon today it looks like many of our stocks are testing their lows from earlier this month.

Growth stocks have come under renewed pressure in recent days as the Nasdaq’s recent rally attempt has hit a wall, with a few former leaders already testing their lows. We’ve been cautious for three weeks now, and tonight, we’re going to sell one of our remaining positions.

This utility is expected to grow earnings at an annual rate of 22.90% over the next five years. The shares have a current annual dividend yield of 3.47%, paid quarterly.

The marijuana sector, in general, remains in a correction. The high for the sector was six weeks ago, while the most recent bottom was two and a half weeks ago.

Accolade revealed preliminary Q4 and full-year 2020 results after the bell yesterday and announced a private offering of $250 million convertible notes, with a $37.5 million option (pricing to be determined). The reasons for the offering are the usual – working capital, acquisitions, strategic investments and general corporate purposes.

The shares of this airline were recently upgraded by Deutsche Bank to ‘Buy.’

BioLife (BLFS) reported Q4 results yesterday after the close that surpassed revenue expectations. Revenue was up 77.5% to $14.7 million (beating by $1.2 million) while adjusted EPS of -$0.01 was in-line. For the full-year 2020 revenue was up 76% to $48.1 million, driven largely by Media products, which grew by 32% to $31 million.

This containership company beat analysts’ estimates by $0.05 last quarter, and it is expected to grow earnings at an annual rate of 16.5% over the next five years.

The Dynatrace (DT) March 55 call that we sold last month for $4.60 expired worthless on Friday. This was a totally fine situation, and our position is at a small profit.

New business is pushing shares of this flight simulator up, up, and away.

Today is the expiration of March options, including five positions in the Cabot Profit Booster portfolio. And I’m happy to report, despite the market being a bit “crazy” the last three weeks, four of our positions will very likely expire today for profits ranging from 4.5% to 18.6%, and one will expire mostly at breakeven. Here is the full breakdown:

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.