Despite the sting of today’s pullback that included just about the entire market, the Cabot Emerging Markets Timer is holding on to its buy signal. We’re watching the big Party Congress in Beijing and are paying attention to the flat performance of a few of our stocks over the past few months. But with good profits in many of our stocks, we’re willing to be patient as we head into earnings season.

This month’s Spotlight Stock is a household name that ran into some challenges that put a dent in its stock price. But now with a new management team and favorable industry trends, the turnaround looks promising, and the stock price is certainly discounted—and attractive.

With today’s recommendation, I swing back to the aggressive side, with a technology company that is revolutionizing (well, maybe that’s too strong a word) the marketing industry. In any case, it’s growing very fast and it’s expected to turn profitable this year.

Current Market Outlook


The market remains in great shape with all the major indexes in gear on the upside, a ton of stocks and sectors acting well and a general lack of selling pressure even after the recent run. Surprisingly, we’re still seeing hesitation among investors in terms of money flows, which, from a contrary point of view, is bullish. The next big test for the market and (especially) individual stocks is earnings season—how leading stocks respond (both those that have been running for a while, and new leaders that emerged in September) will have a big say on the market’s short-term future. But given the overall evidence, the odds continue to favor higher prices down the road, so any reasonable dips should be viewed as buying opportunities.

This week’s list is another good-looking mix of growth and industrial stocks with strong charts. Our Top Pick is Adient (ADNT), which owns about one-third of the car seat market and has big earnings, a cheap valuation and a tidy pullback after a powerful September breakout. Keep new positions small ahead of earnings.

Stock Name	Price	Buy Range	Loss Limit
Adient (ADNT)	0.00	82-85	75-77
Atlassian (TEAM)	182.16	38-40	35.5-37
Baidu (BIDU)	0.00	257-267	236-240
CF Industries (CF)	45.23	35-37	32-33
DXC Technology (DXC)	0.00	88.5-91.5	83-84
LPL Financial Holdings (LPLA)	85.22	51-53	47-48.5
Monolithic Power (MPWR)	0.00	109-113	102-104
Sherwin-Williams (SHW)	526.09	370-380	350-355
Thor Industries (THO)	104.76	124-128	114-116
Vishay (VSH)	0.00	20-21	18.5-19

In this issue, I begin to transition stocks from Roy Ward’s Value and Enterprise Models to my new, more consolidated Prudent Model. My top recommendation is a new stock for us, and I give it a thorough write-up.

In tonight’s issue, we go over all our recent moves, dive into the recent action in one of our stocks and review one of our proprietary indicators that, along with some precedent analysis, adds further evidence to the market’s bullish outlook.

Our Spotlight Stock this month is representative of thriving stock markets—a company that owns and operates exchanges for stocks, options, futures and derivatives. It has grown leaps and bounds, both internally and by acquisition, and numerous opportunities for expansion remain. My Feature further explores those opportunities.

Today’s recommendation is a classic steelmaker that has great growth prospects as the U.S. economy speeds along and protectionist measures improve our country’s competitive position. Also, the stock is cheap, so downside risk is limited.

While flashier, more star-studded teams like Lionel Messi’s Argentina, Kylian Mbappe’s France and Erling Haaland’s Norway garnered most of the headlines at the just-completed World Cup, Spain was the best team. There was nothing flashy about Spain: no mega-stars, not a ton of goals, no relentless attack. Instead, they dominated the tournament with precision passing, immaculate ball control and near-impenetrable (just one goal allowed all tournament!) defense.

The market rolls sideways amidst a slew of conflicting forces.

The S&P 500 has bounced around and is at the same level it was in the middle of May. The primary culprit is technology. That sector has been in a funk. The S&P 500 is hard-pressed to generate any lasting traction while this massive sector, accounting for over 40% of the index, flounders.

The market has gone sideways since May. It seems to be deciding what to do.

It’s encouraging that the resumption of hostilities with Iran has not sent the market lower. It’s also positive that oil prices aren’t rising back to the $100 level earlier in the war, although prices have risen. It’s also another earnings season and analysts expect a big one.

With war being one of the most dominant themes of the last four years, it stands to reason that investors should position their portfolios to account for this conspicuous (and unwelcome) trend.

And lest one be tempted to think that the warfare theme will diminish anytime soon, last week’s article by NPR deflates that illusion: It revealed that global military conflicts are at their highest level since WWII.

Price targets are standard practice on Wall Street. But sometimes, they can act as an artificial ceiling.

For example, say Truist sets a price target on an up-and-coming growth stock that’s 25% higher than its current share price. For a growth stock, a 25% return isn’t much. But then again, the stock could be a total flop, which is the natural boom-or-bust tradeoff growth investors must endure in trading off increased risk for massive upside. So, a price target on a growth stock seems almost like an unnecessary cap on a stock that has the potential to go through the roof.

WHAT TO DO NOW: Continue to trim your sails. In the Model Portfolio, we’ve been getting closer and closer to shore as growth funds and indexes are under pressure and AI stocks cascade lower. Tonight we’re going to further trim Marvell (MRVL) given its ugly action, selling a third of what we have left. That will leave the portfolio with a big 58% cash position. We could put some of that to work if growth names find support, but we want to see key growth measures firm up before buying.

After a brief pause last week, small caps are once again leading the pack.

Through Wednesday’s close, the S&P 600 Small Cap Index is up roughly 21% year to date, compared to gains of about 15% for the S&P 400 MidCap Index, 17% for the Nasdaq and 11% for the S&P 500.

Its earnings season again! That’s a good thing. Earnings just might save the day in an otherwise confusing and uncertain market.

The market is causing whiplash. The Iran peace deal changed things. Stocks held back by high oil prices, and the resulting higher inflation and interest rates, reignited as oil prices came back down after the peace deal. But hostilities with Iran have resumed.

The peace deal may be on hold again. But stocks are hanging in there so far.

The ceasefire with Iran is over and hostilities have resumed. That sounds like a bigger bummer than it’s been in the market so far. Falling oil prices enabled previously beleaguered stocks to soar higher again as the prognosis for inflation and interest rates simultaneously improved. But that rally is over if oil prices spike higher again.

It’s no surprise that summer often brings lower market volatility levels as Wall Street heads to the Hamptons and participation rates diminish.

Indeed, what we’re seeing right now has all the classic symptoms of a low-participation environment, with investor sentiment being remarkably muted. This can be seen across a number of sentiment indicators for several different markets, most of which are flashing decisively “neutral” signals.

The divide between value and growth stocks is widening, as the Nasdaq is now more than 5% off its highs after peaking in early June while the Vanguard Value Index ETF (VTV) is hovering near its late-June apex and is up 3% in the last month.

That can flip in an instant, of course, as we saw in April and May. But the bottom line is that value stocks have risen 15% year to date, compared to an 11% gain in the Nasdaq and a 9.5% boost in the S&P 500.

After a very strong run from the March lows, the market appears to be going through an uncomfortable but healthy rotation. Many of the biggest winners from the AI and semiconductor trade have come under pressure, while value stocks, equal-weight indexes and other areas that had lagged earlier in the year have held up much better.

Several of our portfolios stocks are rising this week, so I want to reiterate some trading suggestions in case the stocks reach price targets before the next weekly update of Cabot Undervalued Stocks Advisor.

E*Trade Financial (ETFC) reported blowout earnings yesterday afternoon.

Sell Reynolds American (RAI). The company received a $56.50 per share takeover offer from British American Tobacco this morning, a 20% premium to RAI’s closing price yesterday.

Today, Goldman Sachs Group (GS) reported a tremendous third quarter, with earnings per share (EPS) of $4.88 vs. Wall Street’s consensus estimate of $3.82, and up 47% vs. $2.90 EPS a year ago (December year-end).

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 Momentum 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 Momentum Trader features.