Today’s selection is a company you’ve probably not heard of, but it provides a valuable medical technology that should see increased use in the years ahead. Also, it’s growing by acquisition.

Current Market Outlook


During the past two-plus weeks, we’ve seen the Nasdaq and most leading growth stocks lag most other indexes, and things came to a head today, with the sellers unloading on many of the market’s biggest winners this year. As for the overall market, there are plenty of areas of strength as money rotates into both turnaround situations and some growth-oriented ones, too. So what should you do? For the stocks you own, follow your plan and honor your stops; it’s OK to take a couple of partial profits, too, if you are holding some long-time winners. As for new buying, you should focus on areas that are working and stocks that have shown good-volume buying recently. We’re moving our Market Monitor back down to a level 7 tonight.

This week’s list has many such possibilities, including a few with solid stories. Our Top Pick is Guess? (GES), which looks like a solid turnaround story as it’s seeing excellent growth overseas.

Stock Name	Price	Buy Range	Loss Limit
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (ALNY)	143.58	107-113	97-99
Blue Buffalo Pet Products (BUFF)	0.00	26.5-27.5	24.5-25.5
Guess (GES)	0.00	15.6-16.4	14.2-14.8
Juno Therapeutics (JUNO)	0.00	40.5-44	35-37.5
Lending Tree (TREE)	411.51	230-240	215-220
Navistar International (NAV)	0.00	38-40	35-37
RPC Inc. (RES)	0.00	22.5-23.5	20.5-21.5
Sociedad Quimica (SQM)	0.00	51-54	46-48
Ultra Clean Holdings, Inc. (UCTT)	0.00	26.5-28.5	23.5-24.5
Weibo (WB)	98.16	94-97	85-87

Despite a hiccup in the past couple of days from Chinese stocks, the U.S. market and the emerging markets continue to outpace their moving averages by comfortable margins. In today\'s issue, I talk about how little profit taking in a couple of our strongest stocks can protect your portfolio while maintaining your exposure.

This month’s Spotlight Stock is a technology company that is a leader in the all-important cloud business, and Nancy’s Feature further explores that cloud industry and the up-and-coming applications that should see it expand greatly in the near future.

Today’s featured recommendation is a low-risk financial stock that will give the portfolio some stability (and income). And since the portfolio doesn’t currently own a bank stock, this will provide some healthy diversification.

Current Market Outlook


The market’s gradual improvement since mid-August continued last week, with the intermediate-term trend of the major indexes turning back up and individual stocks (including both leading growth stocks, as well as many sectors bouncing strongly off prolonged corrections) acting well. We’ve even seen an impressive rebound in the broad market, with the number of stocks hitting new lows drying up drastically. We can’t say the major indexes are incredibly powerful, as many are at or just above their prior highs, but overall, the most bullish thing a market can do is go up, and that’s what we’re seeing. We’ll push our Market Monitor up another notch this week to a level 8 (out of 10) and will continue to put money to work as the evidence improves.

This week’s list has a bunch of strong charts from a variety of industries, including three chip names as that sector reasserts itself. For our Top Pick, we’ll keep it simple and go with one of the market’s liquid leaders—Nvidia (NVDA) has exploded out of a tight base on big volume over the past two days. You could start a position here or on dips.

Stock Name	Price	Buy Range	Loss Limit
Adient (ADNT)	0.00	76-79	71-73
Allegheny Technologies (ATI)	27.78	21.5-22.5	19-19.5
Bitauto Holdings (BITA)	0.00	42-45	36.5-38.5
Celgene (CELG)	0.00	139-143	131-133
Lear Corp. (LEA)	0.00	160-166	149-152
Micron Technology, Inc. (MU)	43.31	33-35	30.5-31.5
NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA)	242.42	177-188	164-170
ON Semiconductor (ON)	24.07	16.7-17.4	15.2-16.
Square, Inc. (SQ)	91.04	27-28.5	24.5-25.5
Terex (TEX)	0.00	41.5-43.5	37.5-39

Our contributors are staying mostly on the safe side this month—with recommendations paying solid and rising dividends, but we also offer several stocks with a more adventurous bent.

Today’s recommendation is a fast-growing mass market stock that has the leading market share in the online food ordering business. The stock has been trading sideways for five weeks and I think it’s ready for a breakout.

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.

Chemtura (CHMT) is Up 15% on Buyout Offer and Carnival (CCL) Reports Earnings Beat

Tonight, we’re going to sell Amazon (AMZN), which doesn’t look awful but hasn’t been able to get going during the past couple of months. We’ll sell at about breakeven and hold the cash. We’ll also place Abiomed (ABMD) on Hold

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.