The major indexes and most stocks were hit fairly hard at the open today, though, as the day wore on the losses become minor and many stocks were actually green. Is that encouraging? You bet, especially as the big-cap indexes held support right near recent lows. That said, does it change the intermediate-term evidence at all? Not really, with the themes of the past few weeks (pockets of strength, but choppy action and some yellow flags) still with us. We’ll leave our Market Monitor at a level 6 and remain flexible.

This week’s list has something for everyone, with some cyclical plays, growth titles and a few recent breakouts. Our Top Pick is a mid-sized outfit with accelerating growth as its chips ride the AI (and other fast growing) waves.

The U.S.’s involvement in renewed conflict in the Middle East has so far done little to deter this market, despite some modest selling early Monday. That said, risk is decidedly elevated, with many growth stocks still well below their highs and the all-important VIX climbing above the 20 level today. But oil prices are on the rise too, and that means it’s a good time to capitalize in the form of a mid-cap energy play recommended by Tyler Laundon to his Cabot Early Opportunities audience last month.

Details inside.

The close of the month of February, which was extremely volatile day-to-day, was another week in the red as a mix of AI-driven growth fears and geopolitical tension put pressure on broader markets. Traders sold heavily into tech and financials, keeping sentiment cautious. By week’s end the S&P 500 had slid 0.4%, the Dow had lost 1.3%, the Nasdaq had declined by 1% and the Russell 2000 had fallen by 1.2%.

The close of the month of February, which was extremely volatile day-to-day, was another week in the red as a mix of AI-driven growth fears and geopolitical tension put pressure on broader markets. Traders sold heavily into tech and financials, keeping sentiment cautious. By week’s end the S&P 500 had slid 0.4%, the Dow had lost 1.3%, the Nasdaq had declined by 1% and the Russell 2000 had fallen by 1.2%.

Let’s start with some remarkable statistics.

Nvidia’s (NVDA) fourth-quarter revenue reported yesterday was $68 billion, up 73% from the same period last year. It now makes more revenue in a single quarter than most chip competitors generate in an entire year. Nvidia’s profit for the last 12 months was $120 billion. Just three years ago, Nvidia’s profit was $4.4 billion.

It is estimated that more than one-third of the value of the stock market is represented by companies based in the San Francisco Bay/Silicon Valley area.

We continue to get solid signals from the White House that cannabis rescheduling is on track. That’ll be a significant catalyst for cannabis stocks. The only question is the timing. That remains uncertain and probably unknowable. Cannabis stocks remain a buy on weakness ahead of this catalyst.

The background here is that last December, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Justice Department to move cannabis to Schedule III from Schedule I under the Controlled Substances Act.

The bull market has broadened out beyond technology in a big way. While the S&P 500 is about even for the year so far, most market sectors are beating the index, and by a lot. In fact, six of the eleven sectors have a better than 8% YTD return, not even two months into the year.

The new market dynamic is having a profound impact on the portfolio. Several stocks that had been dead weight in the portfolio have soared in recent months to 52-week highs. The new market has turned previously underperforming stocks into strong income generators.

It has been a strong run for several portfolio stocks. But a largely successful earnings season is almost over. That means there will be no obvious catalyst to continue driving stocks higher, at least for now. The situation makes it a better time to capitalize on recent price surges instead of adding more positions and hoping for more.

Under the current circumstances, the biggest market opportunity right now is income. In this issue, I highlight three more high-priced covered calls on stocks that have had strong rallies.

In researching potential candidates for this month’s edition of the newsletter, I narrowed down my final list of top choices to the usual 10 stocks. What caught my attention when reviewing the list, however, was how many of them were in the healthcare sector—in particular, the therapeutic arena.

I was gratified by this discovery since I feel that a.) medical stocks are underrepresented in the portfolio, and b.) the sector is at once defensive in nature (always a good thing in my estimation) yet also poised to benefit from ongoing sector rotation.

Before we dive into this week’s covered call idea, I need to address two items.

First, we are going to sell our RKT stock as the February call that we sold expired worthless, leaving us with our stock position.

It remains about as mixed an environment as we can remember, which does mean the risk of some sort of convulsion (a correction, a re-rotation into laggards, etc.) is elevated. That said, as opposed to the on-again, off-again action from certain areas in January, we have seen the winners persist of late, so that’s where we’re focusing—while also holding some cash and raising stops along the way given what’s going on. For the moment, we’ll stick with a level 6 on the Market Monitor, but again, we’re OK taking swings at strong stocks.

This week’s list is very heavy on the cyclical side of things, with many names perking up and out of long ranges. Our Top Pick has a solid growth profile and has emerged on the upside after a six-month choppy phase.

Tariffs rejected. Big shortfall in GDP growth. Possible emerging conflict with Iran. There were enough headlines last week – and really, Friday alone! – to make your head spin. And yet … stocks were mostly calm, with no sudden movements in either direction. As always, the stock charts matter more than the headlines, at least when it comes to investing.

So, let’s stay the course, which this week means adding a well-known stock that continues to thrive in the midst of the ongoing travel resurgence. It was Mike Cintolo’s Top Pick in his Cabot Top Ten Trader momentum-trading advisory last week.

Details inside.

Despite early-week angst over continued AI disruption fears, markets steadied into the weekend as tech found fresh legs and headline risk eased after a key Supreme Court ruling altered the U.S. tariff landscape. The rebound in mega-cap names helped sentiment improve off midweek lows, though small caps lagged. For the week, the S&P 500 rallied 1.1%, the Dow advanced 0.3%, and the Nasdaq led with a gain of 1.5%, while the Russell 2000 was essentially flat.

The long-awaited promise of inflation’s “impending” demise remains as distant as ever entering 2026.

Economists have been assuring us since at least 2023 that inflation is abating. But far from this, what we’re actually seeing is a weakening dollar that’s putting ever-more upward pressure on prices across several asset categories.

WHAT TO DO NOW: Remain cautious. We have seen a couple of rays of light among the growth arena of late, though today’s wobbles (both in the market and in many stocks still being rejected at key levels) keep our growth measures pointed sideways to down. We’d like to put some money to work (both in some current holdings and some new names), and we could do so in the very near future if today ends up being the final shakeout to the Nasdaq’s three-month consolidation. But with the sell-on-strength pattern still with us for growth stocks, we’ll stand pat for the moment and look to see if more growth names can break free of the up-and-down action.

The S&P 500 walked higher for much of this week while small caps slipped from their recent highs.

We might get back to the pattern that existed in the first three weeks of the year (i.e., small caps outperforming) given weakness in some mega-cap names (i.e., TSLA and MSFT) after reporting and a little breather in small-cap strength.

After a brief tariff scare early last week, stocks resumed their regularly scheduled uptrend. All told, the stock market is doing just fine, with the major indexes touching new record highs. But certain sectors are doing more than fine.

Sector rotation is in full swing, with investors piling into some of last year’s most unloved sectors to kick off 2026. While technology continues to wallow, up less than 1% year to date and having topped right around Halloween three months ago, the following sectors have picked up the slack...

Several stock sectors are killing it while the overall market sort of languishes.

The S&P 500 is doing OK so far this year. It’s up about 1.5%. Of course, the index really hasn’t advanced much at all since late October. That’s because technology has been struggling. Those stocks have a huge weight on the S&P and are a major determinant of index returns. But a major story is developing beyond the index averages.

The last couple of years haven’t exactly been kind on food, beverage and restaurant stocks. Generally speaking, the companies in the food and drinks category underperformed the S&P 500 last year, while in the case of restaurants, 2025 was a particularly bad one.

There’s been plenty of drama over the last week, but small caps don’t seem to care. Both the S&P 600 and the Russell 2000 are making new all-time highs.

FactSet reported this morning that the Russell 2000 has outperformed the S&P 500 Index every session this year. That’s impressive. Let’s look more closely at the S&P 600 Index because I have sector data for it. Impressively, through mid-day Thursday, every small-cap sector is outperforming its large-cap counterpart YTD. The strongest small-cap sectors are materials (+14.4%), energy (+13.4%), industrials (+12.3%), and tech (+11.7%). The weakest, utilities, financials and healthcare, are all up in the 4.4% to 5.3% range.

As a whole, the S&P 600 is up 9.2% while the S&P 500 is up just 1.2% YTD.

Let’s begin in Davos, Switzerland where the world’s financial and political bigwigs are gathering at the World Economic Forum to do deals and await the fate of Greenland. Markets rebounded yesterday as President Trump softened his position on Greenland a bit, thus raising hopes of reaching an amicable agreement.

Gold was a hot topic as investors continue to seek a hedge on uncertainty. Central banks have been significant net buyers of gold every year since 2011.

Tariffs are back in the news. And the stock market doesn’t like it.

Investors shrug off a lot of things these days – geopolitical turmoil (lots of it), flagging jobs growth, a record-long government shutdown, wars, etc. But tariffs, and tariff threats, are still a four-letter word on Wall Street. So it was no surprise that stocks had their worst day of the young year on Tuesday after President Trump threatened high tariffs on Europe over the Greenland situation, and European leaders responded in kind.

Perhaps the whole kerfuffle will be settled over a catered lunch at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. Or maybe tensions will escalate further. Either way, this feels like a pivotal week for stocks.

The broadening market rally has been usurped by the return of tariffs, at least for now.

The market is unnerved to start this week after President Trump threatened the European Union (EU) with additional tariffs and the EU is threatening retaliatory measures. The issue caught investors by surprise and is threatening to derail the ascending market.

It’s been a good start to the year so far with the S&P up 1.38%. But the bigger story is under the hood.

Most sectors are outperforming the S&P 500. Seven of the eleven S&P stock sectors are outperforming the index in January. And none of them are technology. This is in sharp contrast to performance through most of this bull market, with technology driving the market higher while most other stocks sputter around.

It’s a thorny subject, but one that I think merits at least a brief discussion: direct government intervention as it pertains to the private defense sector—and by extension, to our holding in GE Aerospace (GE).

On January 7, the White House issued an executive order (EO) that prohibited defense companies from making share repurchases and paying dividends to shareholders. It also placed restrictions on executive compensation, except for companies making investments to modernize weapons production facilities.

WHAT TO DO NOW: Despite the indexes holding up today, lots of growth stocks are again coming under pressure, continuing a wave of late-week distribution. We’re already holding a lot of cash, but today we’re selling one more position—Vertiv (VRT), which had been trying to hold up but the late-week selling pressure has been too much, cracking the stock. We’ll sell our half-sized position and hold the cash, leaving us with around two-thirds on the sideline in the Model Portfolio.

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 Warrior Met Coal (HCC). Buy Second Half of Life360 (LIF)

Lighten up a Little

WHAT TO DO NOW: The market remains very mixed, as we continue to see some tempting names but also more than a few that are hitting potholes, as well as rotation into safe areas. Yesterday, we sold Life360 (LIF) after that stock fell apart on earnings—and now we’re going to sell our half-sized stake in AppLovin (APP), with Friday’s and Monday’s encouraging action going up in smoke since. That will leave us with a high-50% cash position, which is a lot; if the market stabilizes, we’ll probably start a couple of new positions, but for the moment we’ll sit with that cash and see how things play out.

WHAT TO DO NOW: The market has bounced back decently, though our market timing indicators are still looking iffy for now. Today’s bulletin is about Life360 (LIF), which is falling hard today despite a solid quarterly report. Given the abnormal action, we’re forced to sell and take what’s left of our profit. Our cash position will now be around 50%.

Life360 (LIF) Delivers Q3 Report

Karman Holding (KRMN) got whacked this morning after reporting a mixed quarter but has climbed back somewhat through the early afternoon. We’re standing by it, for now.

Here’s an overview of everything you should know about preferred stocks before adding them to your portfolio.

Here’s a quick review on how to invest in emerging markets the Cabot way.

This is a collection of tips on stock chart reading, something that’s key to Mike Cintolo’s growth stock methodology, but something few individual investors (and even professional investors) understand too well.

A unique market timing tool, we use the Cabot Two-Second Indicator to determine the health of the stock market every day.

I was talking with an investor recently about the latest stock market downturn. He was puzzled; if General Motors (GM) is supposedly such a great stock and vastly favored among portfolio managers, why would it fall 30% during a market correction?

No matter what the market environment, the most common questions we field at Cabot concern selling. Here are some of our most fundamental tools and rules.

The Cabot Dividend Investor portfolio currently holds three ETFs, one in each tier of our portfolio. Their distributions come from a variety of sources, including qualified stock dividends, non-qualified stock dividends, preferred stock dividends, MLP and CEF distributions, and possibly some fixed income distributions. That affects how you will pay taxes on the income, since ETF distributions are taxed based on their original source—i.e., how the fund earned them. So it’s important to know what your ETFs hold and what types of dividends those securities pay.

A BDC, or Business Development Company, is an investment that gives ordinary investors a way to participate in the rarified world of venture capital.

Our market timing indicators are discussed in every issue of Cabot Growth Investor. Here are detailed explanations of what they are and how we use them.

If you follow these rules, you’re sure to boost your portfolio’s results.

My stock-picking strategy has been refined over the course of 28 years, and has been quite stable for the last six years. My investment goals are (1) minimize stock market risk, (2) achieve capital gains, with dividends as a welcome addition to total return and (3) outperform the U.S. stock markets.

These are the six fundamental characteristics that correlated most highly with profits in a 10-year study of stocks bought for the Model Portfolio of the Cabot Growth Investor.