Today’s addition is one of the world’s best engineering and construction firms in the highly specialized natural gas-fired power plant industry.

It’s a highly leveraged play on increasing U.S. energy loads and the expected, multi-year gas power plant buildout. If you want exposure to a picks and shovels play on AI, EVs and other electrification trends, this one is for you.

Enjoy!

A sizzling summer for stocks has delivered some strong returns for investors, though not all sectors have enjoyed the ride. In fact, seven of the 11 S&P 500 sectors have underperformed the benchmark index’s 8% return so far this year. As a result, there’s plenty of value still out there. So today, we set our sights on of those underperforming sectors: consumer staples. While the sector hasn’t trailed the market as much as a few others, we’ve found a usually steady, reliable stock that just touched five-year lows despite reporting record sales. The company dates back to the 1800s, and is a brand everyone knows – and has likely been in your house, your parents’ house, your grandparents’ house and your great-grandparents’ house. And now it’s on sale.

Details inside.

Despite big earnings from leading tech stocks, the good times came to an end last week for the market as the leading indexes fell all five days. For the week, the S&P 500 lost 2.4%, the Dow declined by 1.2%, and the Nasdaq dropped 2.2% … though the indexes bounced back nicely on Monday.

The big-picture market outlook remains very bullish in our view, but there’s no question we’re seeing more potholes, with more stocks and sectors chopping sideways in recent weeks—and then, last week, we saw sellers step up. Of course, today’s bounce was encouraging, but the odds of a volatile rest period are growing given the prior extended run. Right here, we’ll leave our Market Monitor at a level 7, though we’re mostly taking things on a stock-by-stock basis.

The best news from the last week came from earnings season, where there were a large number of positive earnings reactions among names with solid stories and numbers. Our Top Pick is a well-run company, and now growth is strong as AI demand ramps.

For a second straight year, an eye-poppingly bad July jobs report sent stocks tumbling. Last year, the selling lasted a few weeks, taking the S&P 500 down 8% and the Nasdaq down more than 13%. Is a similar correction in store this time around? This week will likely give us the answer. So far, however, it’s just one bad day, so we’ll keep our foot on the gas pedal by adding a high-growth semiconductor stock that is starting to show signs of life after a rough start to the year. It’s a new recommendation from Cabot Explorer Chief Analyst Carl Delfeld.

Details inside.

Despite big earnings from leading tech stocks, the good times came to an end last week for the market as the leading indexes fell all five days. For the week the S&P 500 lost 2.4%, the Dow declined by 1.2%, and the Nasdaq dropped 2.2%.

Despite big earnings from leading tech stocks, the good times came to an end last week for the market as the leading indexes fell all five days. For the week the S&P 500 lost 2.4%, the Dow declined by 1.2%, and the Nasdaq dropped 2.2%.

This is a big week for financial markets, with the Fed holding interest rates steady, $11 trillion worth of tech companies reporting earnings, a key jobs report, and a tariff deadline with China and India looming. The market pulled back as Chairman Jerome Powell indicated the Fed may not be ready to cut interest rates as expected.

But 7,392 miles from the canyons of Wall Street, an AI global governance plan was released at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, which called for establishing an international open-source community through which AI models can freely be available. About 800 Chinese and international companies attended the summit.

Our plant-touching Cabot Cannabis Investor portfolio is up 29.2% since June 25. It is still down for the year. But it is performing better than the sector.

I believe it continues to make sense to stay long cannabis stocks, despite the big gains in the past month. Now, with the appointment of Terrance Cole to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), cannabis investors are one step closer to learning how serious the Trump administration is about rescheduling cannabis.

The turnaround path that Newell Brands (NWL) has navigated in the last few years has been anything but smooth, at times being downright torturous.

What started as a seemingly clear-cut turnaround story as far back as 2018 turned into a frustrating affair for investors who bought the stock back then and continued to hold it over the last seven years. But after the agonizing twists and turns since the stock’s 2017 peak, the road ahead appears clearer now than it has been in several years.

Before we dive into this week’s covered call idea, I am going to revisit our positions that expired on July expiration a week ago.

The market had yet another mostly quiet, mostly positive week, and the vast majority of the top-down evidence is still in good or great shape. That said, there’s no doubt things are a bit extended in time and that more stocks and sectors are beginning to lag, which is one reason we’re not flooring the accelerator. Another is the fact that earnings season really picks up this week—35%-plus of the S&P 500, along with more growth leaders, are reporting, which will obviously be key. Don’t get us wrong, we’re overall bullish, but near term we’re picking our spots. We’ll leave our Market Monitor at a level 7.

This week’s list has a wide variety of names, with many types of names and setups. This week’s Top Pick has earnings this week, but after a huge-volume ramp, shares have dipped on low volume to the 25-day line—we’re OK with a small buy here or on dips with a loose stop.

These are dark days for cannabis investors, maybe the darkest ever.

AdvisorShares Pure U.S. Cannabis (MSOS), one of the key benchmark exchange-traded funds in the space, is down 85% in the past five years against market gains of 80%.

As has always been the case, the fate of cannabis stocks is much more about politicians than the leadership and results at cannabis companies.

Stocks continue to move higher despite more tariff news. A 25% tariff was announced over the weekend on all imported steel. But the market is so far taking the news in stride during a good earnings season.

We’ll see what happens with the tariffs. But whatever happens with this latest round, it is most likely that tariff issues will remain at least a background story for most of this year. Meanwhile, stocks are being buoyed by strong earnings.

In today’s note, we discuss pertinent developments for some of the stocks in the portfolio, including Alcoa (AA), Janus Henderson Group (JHG), Paramount Global (PARA), Starbucks (SBUX) and Teladoc Health (TDOC).

The market is continuing its bumpy ride higher. Despite a barrage of concerns, 10 of the 11 S&P 500 stocks sectors are higher year to date.

While Nvidia (NVDA) has pulled back more than 20% over the past two weeks, our conservative AI play IBM (IBM) has tacked on 40 points over the same period- hitting an all-time high early this week.

Cloudflare (NET) shares were up again this week and are now up 28% in 2025 to reach 140.

Dutch Bros (BROS) shares rose 8.5% this week and have surged 23% so far in 2025.

It’s one thing after another. But stocks keep inching higher.

January featured the interest rate scare, as the ten-year Treasury hit the highest level since 2023, and the DeepSeek news, which called AI spending into question and sent related stocks reeling. Yet the S&P 500 finished the month up 2.7% with 10 of the 11 sectors higher for January. This week features more potential market-moving issues.

In today’s note, we discuss pertinent developments for some of the stocks in the portfolio, including Alcoa (AA), Atlassian (TEAM), Fidelity National Services (FIS), Paramount Global (PARA) and Starbucks (SBUX).

WHAT TO DO NOW: It’s been a typically volatile January, with this week’s huge convulsions among AI stocks the latest crosscurrent to deal with. Overall, the top-down evidence is mostly neutral at this point, and leading stocks are in a similar boat as last week—improving, but without much decisive buying so far. To be fair, we’d like to put some money to work and could do so soon (next day or two) if we get the right setup, but tonight we’ll stand pat and look for signs big investors are getting involved. In the Model Portfolio, we cut our loss in Marvell (MRVL) on a special bulletin Monday, though most of our stocks are acting well and tonight we’re placing On Holding (ONON) back on Buy as it looks to be resuming its overall uptrend. Our cash position is right around 50%.

Small caps are up a very, very small amount over the last week. In fact, the S&P 600 SmallCap Index has hardly moved over the last five sessions.

I think that’s remarkable given everything that’s gone on lately.

The DeepSeek drama inspired a truly magnificent wipeout for the broad market on Monday. And we had an FOMC meeting yesterday that barely registered on the S&P 600.

There are a lot of things the stock market can handle.

In 2024 alone, stocks advanced more than 20% despite two major overseas wars raging, high interest rates, stubborn inflation, escalating unemployment, a toss-up presidential election in which one of the candidates changed midsummer, tepid consumer confidence, etc. That’s because, aside from Kamala Harris replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate less than four months before the election, most of these potential headwinds were known. What Wall Street fears most is the unknown. And that’s why DeepSeek rattled markets on Monday.

The catalyst that has driven this market higher for more than two years got punched in the face on Monday. Is it the end of the gravy train or just an overreaction?

Stocks came crashing down on Monday. The S&P 500 was down almost 2% and lost most of this year’s gains in one day. The tech-laden Nasdaq index fell more than 3%. It was all because of some upstart Chinese company.

In today’s note, we discuss pertinent developments and ratings changes for some of the stocks in the portfolio, including Agnico Eagle Mines (AEM), Alcoa (AA), American Airlines (AAL), GE Aerospace (GE), SLB Ltd. (SLB) and UiPath (PATH).


Projected strength in U.S. commercial loan growth and continued increases in M2 money supply bode well for the stock market’s liquidity backdrop.

Cava (CAVA) Moves to Sell a Quarter, SharkNinja (SN) to Hold

RxSight (RXST) Still a Buy

WHAT TO DO NOW: While a couple handfuls of mega-cap stocks act well, we continue to see more stocks hit air pockets than get going on the upside, which, combined with our mixed market timing indicators, has us staying relatively close to shore. Today we’re going to sell one-third of our stake in Cava (CAVA)—like so many names, the stock has been unable to break through resistance, and now it (and its peer group) has come under heavy selling pressure. Our cash position will now be just over 40%.

Sell Intapp (INTA)

Sell Core & Main (CNM)

WHAT TO DO NOW: The market’s evidence remains unchanged, with a choppy, narrow and challenging environment. Many stocks are hanging in there, but there continue to be air pockets here and there, and our goal is to get out of names that are truly breaking down while holding (and possibly adding) resilient growth titles. Tonight, we’re going to sell PulteGroup (PHM), which hasn’t been able to bounce and cracked support today on a big rise in rates. Our cash position will be around 37%, which we’ll hold onto tonight but could put some back to work in the days ahead.

Shares of Rivian (RIVN) are trading up double digits today (though well off their highs) on news of a staged equity investment and joint venture (JV) with Volkswagen (VWAPY). One of the biggest concerns with Rivian (and other early-stage EV manufacturers) is access to capital and gaining enough manufacturing scale to get to cash flow positive. This deal with Volkswagen addresses much of that concern.

Enovix (ENVX) Gets Charged up on Mixed Reality News

Today, a whopping eight Profit Booster positions will expire. Most are “slam-dunk,” full-profit trades, while others will go down to the wire.

The big takeaway, before we dive in, is we are going to let the situation play itself out, and come Monday/Tuesday of next week we will revisit our profits, as well as how we will manage the remaining positions.

Sell Second Quarter of EverQuote (EVER)

The shine seems to have come off gold and gold miners recently so we’re going to step aside from Alamos Gold (AGI) at just a hair above our entry price.

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.