The bulls once again pushed the market higher last week as the S&P 500 gained 0.77%, the Dow was the big winner with a rally of 2.42%, and the Nasdaq rose marginally by 0.38%.

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

Artificial intelligence-inspired investors are partying like it’s 1999. We’re finding attractive value elsewhere, in discarded industrials like our new Buy recommendation, CNH Industrial (CNHI).

Most of the rubber-meets-the-road evidence is positive when it comes to the intermediate-term, that said, short-term, some wobbles and rotation are beginning to creep in—some growth areas (like chips) are weakening while the broad market (small-caps, etc.) are perking up, and after five weeks of strong gains, investor sentiment has gotten a bit comfortable. That doesn’t have us growing more cautious, and in fact, we’re bumping up our Market Monitor to a level 7—though we are still favoring moving gradually and picking your stocks and entry points carefully.

This week’s list has another nice collection of stocks, including everything from precious metals to chemicals to some powerful earnings gaps in the tech space. Our Top Pick is a tech infrastructure name that isn’t early in its run, but after a choppy three months, it appears ready for its next move.

The market continues to thrive as we enter the final month of 2023 – and Cabot Stock of the Week stocks are thriving along with it! A pullback in the coming days and perhaps weeks would make sense on the heels of the market’s banner November, but the long- and intermediate-term trajectory appears up. The potential (likelihood?) that interest rates may have peaked is perhaps the biggest driving force behind the rally. And it’s a big catalyst propelling the stock that we’re adding today, a brand-new recommendation from Mike Cintolo in Cabot Growth Investor.

Details inside.

We have two open positions, both bear call spreads, with the intent of opening up another position this week. My hope is to add a bull put spread or iron condor to the mix, but with implied volatility (IV) mostly low across the board due to extreme short-term overbought conditions, our opportunities, at least at the moment, are limited. I’ve been looking at a few potential volatility plays based purely on IV increasing over the next few months. I’ve also been looking at a few stocks that have IV around the 30% to 35% mark, if not higher. Ultimately, I want to balance out our deltas, as we don’t want to lean too heavily in one direction. At the moment, our deltas are leaning to the short side, so we hope to balance those out a bit as the week progresses.

As we move into the month of December all of our positions continue to thrive. Even if we see a pullback over the next month, unless it’s sharp, we should see some nice gains as we progress through the month. I also hope to add another trade to the portfolio, but I would like to see a reprieve before I sell a few puts. Implied volatility is currently quite low across the board and the market sits in an extreme short-term overbought state.

We have officially entered the earnings doldrums, but that certainly doesn’t mean that opportunities won’t present themselves. For instance, this week Lululemon (LULU) announces earnings and offers a decent opportunity for an iron condor. I’ve gone over a detailed iron condor example in the “Weekly Trade Ideas” section below.

The bulls once again pushed the market higher last week as the S&P 500 gained 0.77%, the Dow was the big winner with a rally of 2.42%, and the Nasdaq rose marginally by 0.38%.

The bulls once again pushed the market higher last week as the S&P 500 gained 0.77%, the Dow was the big winner with a rally of 2.42%, and the Nasdaq rose marginally by 0.38%.

From an intermediate-term perspective, the pieces continue to fall into place for the bulls--recently, our Two-Second Indicator has joined our trend-following indicator on the bullish side of the fence, while things like our Aggression Index and the trend in interest rates remain encouraging. Short-term, we are finally seeing some signs of churning in extended leaders, so we’re continuing to move gradually, picking our stocks and spots carefully. Last week, we did a little more buying in DUOL and started a position in ANET, and today we’re starting one more half-sized stake that will diversify the portfolio a bit.

Cabot Cannabis Investor has delivered several excellent trades in the past month.

* Back on October 31 I was very bullish on the cannabis group which was weak because of the nomination of Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) as House speaker. He has always opposed cannabis legislation. I argued there were several other catalysts in the mix regardless of how Congress acted on legal reforms. “Cannabis stocks are a strong buy in the weakness,” I wrote.

I suggested any of the names in our portfolio, or the AdvisorShares Pure U.S. Cannabis (MSOS) exchange-traded fund (ETF) and the leveraged version, AdvisorShares MSOS 2x Daily (MSOX), for simplicity. “I am adding to MSOS and MSOX in the weakness, and I will continue to add, particularly if they get weaker from here.” Since October 31, here’s how those trades have done.

Thank you for subscribing to the Cabot Turnaround Letter. We hope you enjoy reading the December 2023 issue.

Every investor has loser stocks. We discuss two ways to convert this year’s losers into assets and winners, including tax loss selling and buying shares that others have discarded for artificial reasons. Last year’s crop of bounce stocks performed exceptionally well. We discuss five for this year that look promising.

One of our more productive methods for sourcing new ideas is to see what other like-minded investors are buying. We discuss how to refine the vast data in 13F filings and review four from the most recent batch of filings that look attractive.

This month’s Buy recommendation, Fidelity National Information Services (FIS), was used in a February 2023 article about how we evaluate candidates. It was too expensive then, but its recent 26% share price slide and encouraging fundamentals make it attractive to buy now.

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

What a difference a few weeks can make. The S&P 500 has moved up 15% from the low of October. Have we turned the corner on this bear market?

The main catalyst is a slower-than-expected inflation report. While still unacceptably high, inflation showed real signs of slowing in October. That means the Fed could be done hiking rates sooner. The chief cause of this bear market, rising inflation and a hawkish Fed, show signs of abatement.

It’s a furious rally. The market is on fire. Last week’s inflation report ignited a surge that might last longer. Let the good times roll (for now).


October inflation numbers were reported last week and both top-line CPI and core inflation numbers were lower than expected. It reignited hope among investors that inflation has peaked and is on the decline and the Fed will stop raising rates sooner than previously expected.

Following our demoralized and never-changing, four-word question of “are we there yet” came worthless responses like “soon enough,” or “sometime later,” “we’re getting closer.”

This week’s update includes commentary on earnings from Adient (ADNT), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK/B), Brookfield Reinsurance (BAMR), Elanco Animal Health (ELAN), TreeHouse Foods (THS), Viatris (VTRS) and ZimVie (ZIMV).

The market boomed today after a tamer-than-expected inflation report, with the Dow exploding higher by nearly 1,200 points (3.7%) and the Nasdaq surging 761 points (7.3%).

This week the cryptocurrency market is in absolute turmoil as one of the biggest exchanges, FTX, is insolvent. This is bleeding into equity markets too.

It’s been a tough market for covered calls. Although the market has rallied off the low, call premiums are subdued because investors are less willing to bet on higher prices in the future with still high inflation, a hawkish Fed, and a looming recession.

Many of the more successful positions were called away at options expiration as they exceeded the strike price. But in hindsight it was beneficial to take those profits as well as generate a high income. Many of the remaining portfolio positions left are more cyclical stocks that have fallen below the purchase price. Several more defensive positions have since been added to the portfolio.

Well over two decades ago, I oversaw the investment strategy for a large branch office of a major investment management firm. Our clients were flush with gains from a decade of tech mania – and highly reluctant to shift from their winning strategy. A major challenge was convincing clients to stay invested in stocks but step aside from high-flying dot-com stocks.

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

TransMedics (TMDX) reported yesterday afternoon with revenue beating while EPS came in a little light. Revenue rose 150% to $20.5 million (beating by $4.2 million) while GAAP EPS of -$0.41 missed by $0.06. Big picture, this was a good quarter and adds to the positive momentum the company showed last quarter.

Starbucks (SBUX)
As discussed in our weekly issue last week, and on our weekly call, I will be taking a position in Starbucks (SBUX) today. SBUX is due to announce earnings after the closing bell today (August 2). The stock is currently trading for 84.65.

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

With 22 days left in the August 19, 2022 expiration cycle we are able to lock in well over 50% of the original premium sold in GLD back on July 8.

As discussed in our weekly issue last week, and on our weekly call, I will be taking a position in Caterpillar (CAT) today.

Geothermal energy producer Ormat Technologies (ORA) closed Friday at 86.54, above our target for a breakout. We are shifting the stock from ‘Watch’ to ‘Buy’ for Monday.

Let’s Ring The Register With GO. MTDR Moves To HOLD

We currently own the DBC January 19, 2024, 22 call LEAPS contract at $10.50. You must own LEAPS in order to use this strategy. If you wish to enter the position and are uncertain about which LEAPS to purchase, please refer to the reports section of your subscriber page, or our latest subscriber-exclusive webinar in which I go through the process, step by step, of entering a new position on an already established position.

I’ve decided to go ahead and buy back our short calls in GLD, DBC, VNQ and VTI for the opportunity to sell more premium in September. I will be sending the trades in two separate alerts to make it a little more manageable. I’ll start with GLD and VTI in this alert…

With 22 days left in the August 19, 2022 expiration cycle we are able to lock in well over 50% of the original premium sold in GLD back on July 8.

MSFT opened the day within our range of 227.5 to 270. However, MSFT has pushed higher throughout most of the day and has hit our stop-loss. As a result, I am going to exit the trade for a small loss. I don’t want to take a what is now a small loss and turn it into something larger. I will discuss the trade further in our upcoming subscriber-exclusive webinar, at noon ET this Friday.

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.