We currently have two positions due to expire in December. My hope is to add at least one more December expiring position this week as our deltas are leaning far too negative for my liking, at least at the moment.

There isn’t much to discuss at the moment so I’m going to keep it short this week. We have several positions to due to expire each of the next three weeks. If all goes as planned, we should have the ability to lock in some really nice premium which should push our returns to new highs.

I expect to see a busy week this week with several key positions on our watch list due to announce earnings.

I expect to start the week with a trade in Home Depot (HD) which is due to announce prior to the opening bell tomorrow. The other announcement I’ll be focusing on is Walmart (WMT) which is due to announce prior to the opening bell on Thursday. I fully anticipate making trades around both announcements, as long as Mr. Market cooperates, so stay tuned for several trade alerts this week.

The latest market surge has left the All-Weather portfolio up a respectable 6.5%, with our poor man’s covered call in the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI) continuing to do the heavy lifting, up 25.2%. The S&P 500 is up 5% over the same time frame.

Our SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD) position has been resurgent of late. After being down roughly 20%, our poor man’s covered call position in GLD now sits 8% higher.

How quickly the market can change directions as one week we are on the verge of a steep decline, and the next week the indexes explode higher. This last week fell into the big winner camp as the S&P 500 gained 5.35%, the Dow rallied 5.07% and the Nasdaq added 6.61%.

While the market slid on Thursday, which put the recent rally in question, the bulls took the opportunity to buy that dip in a big way on Friday. When it was all said and done it was another strong week for the market as the S&P 500 gained 1.3%, the Dow rallied 0.65%, and the Nasdaq added 2.3%.

The markets had a very good week, and so far, we are also seeing momentum in the first couple of trading days this week. These upward moves have taken the Dow Jones Industrial Average to just about where we started at the beginning of 2023.

The market has been highly unpredictable over the last several years. Things are too uncertain to make bets on the current outlook. Timing the market and betting on sector rotation is a riverboat gamble. I’d rather bank on prevailing trends that will transcend short-term market gyrations.

There is a strong prevailing positive trend in the energy industry, particularly American energy.

Clean energy is the future, but not the near future. The world will continue to rely overwhelmingly on fossil fuels for at least the rest of this decade and probably much longer. But the world has underinvested in oil and gas exploration and production over the last decade and a half. Global supplies are straining to meet growing demand. The dynamic will last for some time.

Investors are realizing the value of companies and stocks in a sector that had been neglected for many years until recently. While commodity prices will go up and down based on several circumstances, energy companies should benefit over time going forward.

In this issue, I highlight the largest American oil refiner. The stock has been a stellar performer. And the company will continue to benefit from cheaper American oil and a reduced number of refineries.

Ahead of the long holiday weekend the market had yet another good week. The S&P 500 gained 1.75%, the Dow rallied 1.5%, and the Nasdaq rose another 1.9%.

This week in an attempt to diversify the portfolio we are adding an energy play.

Thank you for subscribing to the Cabot Value Investor. We hope you enjoy reading the November 2023 issue.

We discuss recent earnings from our companies and move shares of Sensata Technologies (ST) from Buy to Hold given the company’s lower overall quality compared to our initial understanding.

We also include some thoughts on the current stock market and how rising interest rates and other factors have led investors to unload shares of most companies and riskier companies in particular.

We’ve been writing for a few weeks that many secondary indicators were near levels normally associated with the market lows, so if something actually went right in the world, the market could respond powerfully—and we’re optimistic that process is now underway as interest rates have fallen off and the market popped beautifully last week. In response we’re bumping up our Market Monitor ... but only to a level 5 at this point, as the intermediate-term trend still isn’t up. Long story short: We’re OK throwing a couple more lines in the water, but we want to see constructive action from here (tame pullbacks, more breakouts, etc.) before turning truly bullish.

This week’s list has charts in a few different places (some coming off the lows, some near new highs, etc.), but a ton of them reacted well to earnings and most should do well if the market follows through on its rally. Our Top Pick is a stock that, after many months of tedious action, appears to be ready to resume its major upmove.

Stocks had their first legitimately good week since July, thanks to declining bond yields, improving earnings and – surprise! – Jerome Powell. Can the market keep the momentum going? I’m betting yes, even if it’s not a straight line. Market bottoms frequently occur in October, and this year will be no exception. Therefore, today I’m adding more growth to the portfolio in the form of a mid-cap name that’s little known to the masses but is essentially the Google search engine for big corporations. It’s a new recommendation from Cabot Early Opportunities Chief Analyst Tyler Laundon.

Enjoy!

A quick reminder that Cabot will be closed tomorrow and Friday for Thanksgiving. I hope you have a great holiday and enjoy a break from the market.

As far as our portfolio goes there is very little that’s changed since last week.

Last week, we rolled our valuation and earnings estimate table forward by a year, dropping the 2022 estimates and adding the 2024 estimates.

There are a couple of things that I’m thinking about this week.

First, the yield curve is inverted. An inversion of the 10-year – three-month yield curve has predicted all of the last recessions, and so I have high confidence that we will see a recession in 2023.

With that being said, usually, the market performs better in the year of the recession than in the year before the recession (markets are forward-looking!).

As such, I’m relatively optimistic.

Today I am adding $40,000 of our cash to AdvisorShares Pure US Cannabis (MSOS) with a buy limit of 11.45.

Cabot Options Institute Income Trader is focused exclusively on the creating consistent income through a variety of options selling strategies. Whether you have questions about selling puts, covered strangles, jade lizards or our income wheel approach, Andy is more than happy to help you steepen your learning curve in this live event.

Cabot Options Institute Fundamentals is focused exclusively on the Poor Man’s Covered Call strategy, which is a way to collect reliable gains from a relatively simple options strategy, without the substantial up-front cost of a regular covered call strategy.

Macy’s (M) – With a capable new CEO since February 2018, Macy’s is aggressively overhauling its store base, cost structure and e-commerce strategy to adapt to the secular shift away from mall-based stores. Macy’s acceleration of its overhaul shows considerable promise.

As far as today goes, the S&P 600 Small Cap Index has come up against a wall at 1,230, which is where support was in January and February.

Centrus Energy (LEU) shares recovered five points this week to reach 35 as the Department of Energy announced that it and Centrus Energy’s American Centrifuge Operating, LLC will share the $150 million cost 50-50 to demonstrate production of a fuel called high assay low enriched uranium. This is still a buy for aggressive investors.

Over the past couple of weeks, there have been a couple big news items:

• The collapse of crypto exchange, FTX.
• The market rallying on lower-than-expected inflation.

The collapse of FTX has nothing to do with micro-caps, but it’s a fascinating story. I can’t wait to read the Michael Lewis book on it (apparently, he’s been working on the book for the last 6 months).

Cabot Options Institute Quant Trader is focused exclusively on creating consistent returns using high-probability options strategies including bear call spreads, bull put spreads, iron condors and more. Whether you have questions about the strategies, or even about setting up your account, or how to make your own trades, Andy will answer all of your questions

As discussed in our weekly issue last week, and on our weekly call, I will be taking a position in Walmart (WMT) today. WMT is due to announce earnings before the opening bell Tuesday (August 16). The stock is currently trading for 133.27.

Okay, it’s finally time to dip our toes into a few new positions for our active portfolios. I want to start by initiating one trade in each of our active portfolios today and plan to ramp both Patient Investor and Growth/Value portfolios up over the next few expiration cycles.

CS Disco (LAW) is getting hammered today after the company lowered full-year guidance. The main issue is that the company’s Review solution isn’t selling as well as expected. The idea here is that revenue per customer jumps when they add more modules to the eDiscovery solution. This is a standard software business model.

With the overall market in an extreme, short-term overbought state after rallying almost 12% in just 27 days, I’ve decided to place a bear call spread in DIA. We already have a bear call in SPY and I want to add another in DIA today for the September expiration cycle. I also want to place an iron condor today and my hope is to add a bull put spread or two over the next few days to fully balance out our deltas.

We need to roll our August positions as there is little to no value left (good thing) and sell more premium. So far, our most conservative portfolio is up over 10% since we started to initiate positions back in early June. Even with the wild whipsaws since that time, the portfolio has managed to endure with flying colors, maintaining a nice, smooth equity curve.

Our passive portfolios continue to shine! Our Yale Endowment Portfolio is up over 20% and our most conservative portfolio, the All-Weather Portfolio is up close to 10%. Not bad for just over two months. I’ve found over the years that the most conservative approach is often the best. Less volatility, smooth equity curve, rarely any sleepless nights and over the long term, the results are historically better than more aggressive approaches.

Well, I think it’s about time to rip the Band-Aid off and close our August 19, 2022 SPY iron condor. As we talked about last week, the move in SPY has been a historic one since we added our position back on July 14. At the time SPY was trading for 375.87. Now, only 27 days later, the world’s largest stock index trades 11.7% higher at 420. Not too shabby for the bulls.

I will be exiting the Disney (DIS) trade today. I will discuss the trade in greater detail in our upcoming subscriber-exclusive webinar, at noon ET this Friday.

Our WFC 39 puts for the August 19, 2022, expiration cycle are essentially worthless. Same goes for our KO 57.5 puts. As a result, I want to buy back both our WFC and KO puts, lock in a decent profit and immediately sell more premium in both.

The good news today is that the bottom seems to have passed, for both the broad market and stocks in the cannabis sector. The S&P 500 was down 25% at the bottom, while the cannabis index was down 84% at the bottom—and for both, that seems enough.

Today’s CPI reading showed inflation moderating a little (not a huge surprise) and the market has, so far, loved the result. The Nasdaq has been up over 2% in the early going.

As discussed in our weekly issue last week, and on our weekly call, I will be taking a position in Disney (DIS) today. DIS is due to announce earnings after the closing bell today (August 10). The stock is currently trading for 110.60.

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.