We think the odds favor the market has found a short-term low (last Monday) amid lots of panic selling, and it’s probably starting to repair the damage from the prior few weeks … but that process is likely to take some time, as the market deals with the tariff and economic uncertainty and as new potential leaders try to round out launching pads. Of course, how the market acts from here will be key, so we’re remaining flexible, but we always advise going with what’s in front of us, and right now the odds favor more patience will likely be needed before a sustained advance can develop. We’ll leave our Market Monitor at a level 3.

As the correction has gone on, it’s become easier to spot the names that are resisting the decline. Our Top Pick is a newer name to most and it’s shown accelerating accumulation the past three weeks.

Tariffs aren’t gone, but the 90-day pause has served as a tourniquet for a market that was bleeding out. Who knows what this week will bring after total extremes the first two weeks of April. But for now, relative calm has been restored. So today we capitalize on it by adding a growth stock with momentum via Mike Cintolo’s Cabot Top Ten Trader advisory.

Details inside.

The previous weekend’s worry about a crash last Monday proved to be incorrect as the market had some early-week struggles, but those were at least in the short term washed away on Wednesday as the indexes exploded higher. By week’s end the S&P 500 had rallied 5.7%, the Dow had gained 5%, and the Nasdaq had rebounded by 7.3%.

The previous weekend’s worry about a crash last Monday proved to be incorrect as the market had some early-week struggles, but those were at least in the short term washed away on Wednesday as the indexes exploded higher. By week’s end the S&P 500 had rallied 5.7%, the Dow had gained 5%, and the Nasdaq had rebounded by 7.3%.

On the surface, the economic numbers still look pretty good. Although unemployment edged up to 4.2% from 4.1% last month, the number is still low. Jobless claims are down; jobs added, up. Manufacturing looks good, but housing continues to be weak, due to sticky prices and high interest rates.

But the good economic news is on pause, due to tariffs. Already, we’ve seen the 30-year mortgage rate rise to 6.85%, and economists are back to predicting a recession, based on rising business and consumer costs related to the tariffs—which are not yet reflected in the economic stats.

This has been a week for the history books with record-breaking volatility and uncertainty.

My advice? Stay on the conservative side, leaning to blue-chip dominating stocks not tied to U.S.-China trade. Buy more gold. Since early 2022, gold has strongly outperformed inflation-protected Treasurys, so gold is now the world’s preferred safe-haven asset by many investors.

The President Trump reversal yesterday as Treasury bond market yields jumped and the U.S. dollar fell sent markets soaring. The U.S. raised China tariffs and China responded in kind. Unfortunately, both sides remain on a collision course.

The S&P crashed more than 5% on consecutive days last week for the first time since the onset of the pandemic. The index came within a whisker of a bear market, down 20% from the high on a closing basis.

It’s easy to get spooked out of the market these days. Few people believe the market has hit bottom when it does. Unheeded warnings play over in your mind as Judgement Day seems to have arrived. Stocks were overvalued. The trade war will cause a global recession. Excesses of the last several decades are being called. It’s time to get out of the market and save yourself.

Markets are emotionally driven in the short term. Fear and greed tend to be the dominant forces. But over time, emotions take a back seat to money and profits. When the market tanks, our emotions tell us to run for the hills. But history tells us it’s the best time to invest.

There are some truly stellar stocks in the portfolio that have generated returns comparable to the most successful stocks on the market. The problem is that these stocks are rarely cheap. But the recent market has put these phenomenal investments back within reach.

The recent panic has provided a rare entry point. Even if prices fall further before they rise, these stocks can easily make up for lost time when they move higher again. In this issue, I highlight two of the best stocks in the market to own at valuations not seen in years.

A quick note: we have several stocks that are near our stops, or broke below them last week as the market quickly fell 10% following the tariff announcements. For now, I am going to give these trades a bit more time, though if conditions worsen again, we will be exiting these trades very quickly.

It was a historic week for the market, and not for any positive reasons as the S&P 500 fell 9.1%, the Dow lost 7.9% and the Nasdaq declined by 10%. Perhaps the weekend gave traders a bit of time to better digest the tariff news and the market will stabilize this week after an up-and-down Monday (futures are up big on Tuesday, but that can change quickly in these tariff times). It’s also possible that the uncertainty is just too much for traders to digest.

It doesn’t take a proprietary timing system to know the trend is down—we’ve been cautious and defensive since late February when the market and leaders first went over the falls, and we remain so today. That said, we’re also students of the market, and there’s no question we’re in the midst of an outright panic, with some truly extreme readings (north of 1,000 new lows on the NYSE on Friday and today; 95% of the S&P 1500 below their 50-day lines, etc.) that have a history of showing up near some sort of market low. That’s not a reason to turn bullish—again, the trends are clearly down—but it’s best to keep your head up and stay alert should some actual “good news” hit the wires. We’ll leave our Market Monitor at a level 3.

This week’s list is chock-full of defensive growth stocks—firms that have steadier growth stories that shouldn’t be affected by the tariff or economic headwinds. Our Top Pick is showing great relative strength and has a huge runway of growth ahead.

There’s no sugarcoating it: This is a historic market collapse, and it’s no fun for anyone. Volatility, fear and uncertainty are as palpable as they’ve been on Wall Street since perhaps the Covid crash in 2020. Unlike Covid, however, tariffs can be reversed, or at least mitigated, by a policy change, comment or tweet from the person who enacted them. That adds to the uncertainty. But it also means that it is very much a day-to-day, and even hour-to-hour, situation.

Given how fluid things are, it’s a good time to add as safe a stock as possible to the Stock of the Week portfolio. So this week I called upon Cabot Turnaround Letter Chief Analyst Clif Droke to offer up one of his most reliable potential turnaround stories. It’s a company that sells a lot of products that everyone needs all the time – regardless of tariffs or the state of the economy.

Details inside.

It was a historic week for the market, and not for any positive reasons as the S&P 500 fell 9.1%, the Dow lost 7.9% and the Nasdaq declined by 10%. Perhaps the weekend will give traders a bit of time to better digest the tariff news and the market will stabilize this week, OR, it’s also possible that the uncertainty is just too much for traders to digest.

It was a historic week for the market, and not for any positive reasons as the S&P 500 fell 9.1%, the Dow lost 7.9% and the Nasdaq declined by 10%. Perhaps the weekend will give traders a bit of time to better digest the tariff news and the market will stabilize this week, OR, it’s also possible that the uncertainty is just too much for traders to digest.

It is a late-summer/early-fall rite of passage on Wall Street: After Labor Day, the institutional investors and hedge fund types return from their summer vacation homes in the Hamptons and immediately start selling. They sell out of their weakest positions that have been neglected and left to rot during the summer months, in the hopes of beefing up their quarterly returns before October brings a new quarter. The result is that September is, far and away, the worst month for stocks, with an average decline of -1.17% in the S&P 500 dating all the way back to 1928. The next-worst month is February, with a mere -0.14% decline.

That’s the bad news as we enter September. Here’s the good news.

This market just continues to impress with the S&P within a whisker of the all-time high in these waning days of summer.

Why shouldn’t the market be strong? Everybody expects the Fed to start cutting the Fed Funds rate next month. The benchmark 10-year Treasury rate has fallen below 4%. And there’s no recession in sight. We’re getting the lower rates without the requisite economic pain.

In today’s note, we discuss the recent earnings report from Advance Auto Parts (AAP). We also discuss two new additions to the portfolio in the form of YETI Holdings (YETI) and Alibaba Group Holding (BABA).

While the S&P 600 Small Cap ETF (IJR) hasn’t yet challenged its high for the year of 120.7, hit just prior to the market rout a few weeks ago, the index’s performance lately has still been impressive.

For most of this year the IJR bumped up against overhead resistance near 111. It finally blasted through in the second week of July. But that market turbulence from a few weeks ago seemed like it could put a lid on the index for a while.

That hasn’t been the case.

Small caps have come back swiftly, jumping back above that 111 level a week ago and acting very well this past week.

Explorer stocks had a good week, but I wanted to highlight that recently, Warren Buffett sold almost 400 million of Apple (AAPL) stock during the second quarter. The Oracle of Omaha sold about 390 million shares of Apple stock, reducing Berkshire Hathaway’s ownership to roughly 400 million shares.

Granted, Berkshire booked some giant investment gains during the second quarter, with Apple accounting for a big share of those winnings. This is nothing to sneeze at, but why did Buffett and company decide to sell the shares, thereby missing out on some big capital gains? Forbes notes that Apple’s average closing price in the second quarter was 186, which is well below the 226 at which the stock closed on August 20.

The success of headliners Walmart and Target in the last week has helped drive consumer staples stocks as a group up nearly 5% in August. No other S&P 500 sector has performed better this month. And yet, consumer staples are “only” up 14% year to date, trailing the gains in the S&P 500 (17.3%).

Thus, the sector as a whole is still undervalued. That spells opportunity.

What a difference two weeks make! From the close on Monday, August 7 to the close on Monday, August 14, the S&P 500 was up about 8% and is again flirting with the high.

The market fell a lot from mid-July to early August. But it has since recovered all the losses. While the S&P is back near the high, the last month has been a wild ride to nowhere. Now what?

What recession? After a terrible start to August, the market has completely turned around. The S&P 500 has moved 7.5% higher since August 5 and is again near the high.

The recession fears that contributed to the worst day for the market in over a year were overblown. And numbers have come out since that indicate a recession is unlikely any time soon. But the Fed is still expected to start slashing rates next month. It looks like we will still get the rate cuts without a recession. The market loves it.

In today’s note, we discuss the recent earnings reports from Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB), B2Gold (BTG) and Kopin (KOPN), among others. We’re also making a new addition to the portfolio in the form of YETI Holdings (YETI).

WHAT TO DO NOW: The market’s rebound has been very encouraging, especially when looking at individual growth names—we’re seeing more constructive action now than we were during the narrow advance of June and July, including among all of our holdings. That said, the intermediate-term trend for most everything is still neutral at best (negative for lots of stuff), so the possibility of a partial or full retest still exists. Given our large cash position, we’re going to add half-sized positions tonight in Palantir (PLTR) and Axon Enterprises (AXON), two strong potential leading titles, but we’ll also still hold a 50%-ish cash position as we watch to see how things play out from here. Details below.

With this week’s PPI inflation number (Tuesday morning) coming in lower than expected and the CPI reading (Wednesday morning) coming in as expected, the trend of lower inflation remains intact.

That’s a good thing, unless you have a hankering to buy more Treasuries and have held off.

The 2-year Treasury yield is now below 4%.

Inflation is dead.

OK, it’s not “dead.” But at 2.9% in July, as reported Wednesday morning, it has now (narrowly) reentered the Federal Reserve’s magical 2% realm for the first time in nearly three and a half years – since March 2021. For all the inflation angst during those past three and a half years, the market has fared pretty well overall – the S&P 500 is up 30% since the first CPI print north of 3% was reported in mid-May of 2021. On a per-year basis, that only slightly trails the average annual return in the large-cap index of 9.9% since its inception in 1928.

I will be exiting our Amgen (AMGN) trade today. I will discuss the trade in greater detail in our upcoming weekly issue and within our subscriber-only call this Friday.

Amgen (AMGN) is due to announce earnings today after the closing bell.

Like most of our bullish-leaning positions, our AMGN trade has moved sharply higher since the onset of 2024. We are up over 18% on the trade since we initiated it on January 5, 2024.

Varonis (VRNS) New Highs After Earnings, Move to Hold

We’re going to continue with our strategy of taking relatively quick, modest gains on slower-growth names while holding on to our faster, more aggressive positions in hopes of larger gains.

WHAT TO DO NOW: Remain bullish, but weed your garden if you have some laggards. The primary evidence is still bullish and most leading stocks look fine, but there are some yellow flags emerging under the market’s hood. We’re still following the main trend, but today we’re going to sell two small positions that are struggling—Duolingo (DUOL) and ProShares Russell 2000 Fund (UWM), leaving us with around 31% in cash. We could put some of that cash to work if things settle down, but right now we’ll hold onto it and see how things shake out. Details below

For those who are new and wish to enter a trade, all of the details are listed in the alert (as always) for those wanting to initiate a position. As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email me at andy@cabotwealth.com.

In Income Trader, we’ve managed to lock in a return of 40.1% in BITO. Not many can say they’ve made money in BITO, or any other crypto-related asset, since the beginning of June 2022. Just another reason why more and more individual investors are flocking to the tried-and-true, mechanically driven, income wheel approach.

For those who are new and wish to enter a trade, all of the details are listed in the alert (as always) for those wanting to initiate a position. As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email me at andy@cabotwealth.com.

I will be exiting our Microsoft (MSFT) trade today. I will discuss the trade in greater detail in our upcoming weekly issue.

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.