The beginning of this week is going to be busy as I plan to buy back positions in DKNG, PFE and KO, lock in profits and immediately sell more options premium.

Our other positions are working through their respective expiration cycles using our “income wheel” approach. That being said, we do have one position, WFC September 15, 2023 45 puts, that will most likely close in-the-money at expiration this Friday. If that does occur, no worries, we will be assigned shares of WFC (100 per options contract) and immediately begin the covered call portion of our “income wheel” strategy.

We added another trade to the mix this past week and thankfully, at least so far, both our current trades are in profitable territory. We have the ability to take our SPY iron condor off the table for just over 8% and with 40 days left until expiration, it might not be a bad decision to lock in those profits. As for our IWM iron condor, we are early in the trade, and even though we have a chance to lock in some early profits, those profits are minuscule at the moment, so we will continue to hold in hopes of taking the trade off the table (for profits) over the next two to three weeks. Our total profits are just over 150% and the hope is we can add another 15% to 20% prior to the next expiration cycle.

The market rally in 2023 and recent pullback have left the All-Weather portfolio up a respectable 6.5%, with the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI) continuing to do the heavy lifting, up 25.2%.

Nothing has changed from last expiration cycle, both bond funds (TLT and IEF) and the commodity fund (DBC) continue to lag behind, but that is the yin-yang protective nature of the All-Weather portfolio just doing its job. That being said, all of our positions are outperforming their respective ETF benchmarks, once again showing the power of using a poor man’s covered call approach.

Partially aided by declines in mega-cap technology stocks Apple (AAPL) and Nvidia (NVDA), both of which lost 6% last week, the holiday-shortened week was not particularly kind to the bulls as the S&P 500 fell 1.3%, the Dow lost 0.75%, and the Nasdaq declined by 2% last week.

Partially aided by declines in mega-cap technology stocks Apple (AAPL) and Nvidia (NVDA), both of which lost 6% last week, the holiday-shortened week was not particularly kind to the bulls as the S&P 500 fell 1.3%, the Dow lost 0.75%, and the Nasdaq declined by 2% last week.

The market showed some promise in the past couple of weeks, but our indicators never could turn up and now the sellers are back at it, driving the broad market back down. All in all, then, the correction that started in earnest in early August remains in place, so we’re remaining relatively cautious. To be fair, there are some positives, not the least of which is growth stocks, many of which reacted well to earnings last week and a bunch have been resilient of late. That’s not enough to start a buying spree, but it’s another sign that there should be fresh leadership to sink our teeth into whenever the correction finishes up.

In tonight’s issue, we talk about one fundamental transition that three potential leaders are in the midst of, review our Growth Tides and go over a bunch of enticing candidates, be them cyclical or growth stocks.

China’s economy is struggling due to lackluster growth, falling property prices, high local debt, poor demographic trends, and lack of consumer confidence. In some ways, my thought is – join the club. The U.S. may be facing 2% GDP growth and has its own challenges such as excessive federal spending and national debt. My point is that we should remain skeptical but not discount China coming back strong with the right policies. In my view, China is both strong and brittle. And today, we add a high-profile stock that’s a play on China’s strength.

This month we’re jumping into a highly specialized financial services company that helps immigrants send money to friends and families overseas.

You can think of it as the modern version of Western Union (WU). But there’s more to the story than that. Starting with a vision that’s a lot more about helping customers than overcharging them.

The hook is that revenue growth is off the charts. And it’s profitable!

All the details are inside this month’s Issue.

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.

Following a tough 9% dip in the Nasdaq and 6% haircut in the S&P 500, the market rebounded about as well as the bulls could have hoped--though, with that said, we don’t advise cannon-balling back into the pool per se, as the intermediate-term trend is mostly neutral here, interest rates are still a bugaboo and a lot of stocks still have work to do to repair the damage seen in late July and early August. Simply put, we see the past two weeks as a great first few steps for the market trying to emerge from its correction—but now we need to see continued follow through. We’ll bump our Market Monitor back to a level 6.

After a couple of so-so lists, this week’s crop of stocks is broad and includes many that have shown outsized buying volume of late. There are many enticing choices, but our Top Pick is threatening to break free from its recent launching pad and a giant post-IPO base after another great quarterly report.

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

We do a deep-dive into what ails Citigroup (C) shares and remain steadfast in our conviction.

Please feel free to send me your questions and comments. This newsletter is written for you and the best way to get more out of the letter is to let me know what you are looking for.

I’m best reachable at Bruce@CabotWealth.com. I’ll do my best to respond as quickly as possible.

It’s September, which normally spells doom for investors. Even if that’s the case again this month, the “doom” is likely to be short-lived, as new bull markets like the one we saw in the first half of 2023 almost never up and fizzle. Short-term wobbles aside, share prices are likely to be higher by year’s end – perhaps much higher. With that in mind, today we take another dip in the growth pool by adding a favorite of Cabot Growth Investor Chief Analyst Mike Cintolo – a high-tech stock that’s already up more than 50% year to date and yet trades well off its late-2021 peak.

After quite a strong rip higher the first half of August, U.S. markets have pulled back sharply.
The S&P 500 touched its 200-day moving average last week and then immediately started to retreat.



Retail investor sentiment has started to creep up but it still feels to me that sentiment among professional investors remains quite low.

In late 1991, two storm systems and Hurricane Grace combined to produce some of the most violent open seas conditions on record. One monitoring buoy in offshore Nova Scotia reported a 100.7-foot wave (picture a 10-story building), a record for the region. In 1997, Sebastian Junger wrote the book The Perfect Storm and in 2000 it was made into a movie starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg.

The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) has reached a milestone of two million “.ETH” names created, just three months after it took them five years to generate one million addresses!

ENS operates like GoDaddy. These .ETH domains allow users to attach their digital wallet to the address, replacing the need for difficult-to-remember alphanumeric “0x” codes akin to IP addresses.



Web users can simply type in a text web address thanks to DNS.

This note includes our review of earnings from Brookfield Reinsurance (BAMR).

There were no ratings changes or price target changes this week.



This will be a brief note this week. It’s been a busy earnings season and we’re on the road this weekend in upstate New York. My oldest son will be a senior in high school starting in a few weeks and is knee-deep in the college application process. Visiting a dozen or so schools is, of course, part of this process.

It was a relatively quiet day on Wall Street, with the major indexes staying mostly range bound. At day’s end, the Dow up 19 points and the Nasdaq up 27 points

We had a one year old in 2013 and took a trip to Nevis, an island in the West Indies where my grandfather had retired in the 1980s.

Is this a bear market rally or a new bull market?

That’s the question investors are grappling with. Is this the end of the crummy market or is this 17% rally off the lows just a head fake? Let’s examine each possibility.

Over the past three years, special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, went from an obscure way for sketchy companies to become publicly traded to an extraordinarily trendy way for sketchy companies to become publicly traded.

It’s starting to feel like a bull market. But let’s not bank on it just yet.

Inflation is moderating, and many see an end to the Fed tightening cycle by early next year. The Fed part is probably true. The Central Bank will likely raise the Fed Funds rate to around 3.5% and then stop. Higher than that would probably plunge the country and the world into a deeper recession. I doubt this Fed will have the belly to do that.

The bleeding out among growth stocks is continuing today thanks in part to Netflix’s (NFLX) implosion, with the Nasdaq and most growth funds under pressure.

Silvergate Capital (SI) reported Q1 2022 results yesterday morning and held a conference call later in the day. Digesting the results took some time but at a high level the trends are very solid, despite a somewhat messy quarter for crypto markets. Here are the main bullet points.

Given that today’s date is 4/20, I feel compelled to acknowledge that that’s the code for “time to smoke pot.” But I don’t have any jokes. This is serious business. And it’s doubly serious because we’ve been dealing with a weak sector for over a year!

The only bright spot in that trend is that valuations have become more attractive; if this goes on long enough, I expect Cabot’s value analyst Bruce Kaser will recommend one of these stocks!

We are adding the Proshares Strategy Bitcoin ETF, ticker symbol: BITO to our stock portfolio today. We are purchasing a quarter of our expected total position of 10%. There are several reasons why we may increase the weight to overweight and bring our total holdings over 10% in time. We highlight these below.

Terra (LUNA) is demonstrating very strong intraday price action – moving from $82 to $87. It is now up over 8% on a day when other names are flat or negative. LUNA is outperforming broader indices.

Since first recommending LUNA several weeks ago, price has been volatile. Today, we reiterate our conviction in holding LUNA over a multi-year period.

Today is the expiration of April options. Because I am on vacation this week I won’t dive deep into the profits, and one potential loss, for these positions until next week. However, most importantly, for today the “headline” is that you don’t need to act on any of our April positions.

Remain cautious. The market’s latest selloff has continued this week, with even this morning’s good-looking gap higher disintegrating by day’s end.

The market (and especially growth stocks) took a good-sized hit today—our Cabot Tides remain positive, but as we wrote in last week’s update, we’re still seeing lots of selling on strength, leading to many air pockets among individual stocks.

Cactus (WHD) moves to sell today. After a quick trip to north of 60, shares of WHD have been somewhat volatile and downside risks seems to be creeping in as investors weigh the relatively high valuation and potential for slower ramp up of onshore U.S. production even in the face of soaring oil prices.

The market had another solid day today, which was enough to flip our Cabot Tides back to a bullish signal.

On March 22, we purchased a conservative position in Sigma Lithium (SGML), a Canadian company that develops, through its subsidiary Sigma Mineracao S.A., hard-rock lithium deposits in the Americas.

The good news today is that the broad market is looking healthier than it has in many months, thanks to a resurgence by growth stocks.
The bad news is that we still can’t say that cannabis stocks are truly in an uptrend yet—but they might be!

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.