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$10,000 gold may seem like an outlandish claim, but investors trying to preserve their purchasing power in the face of relentless money-printing may make it a reality.

WHAT TO DO NOW: While there’s been some modest improvement here and there, growth stocks continue to be unable to get going in any real way, with the Nasdaq stuck in the mud and our Aggression Index approaching multi-month lows. We already have a lot of cash, but today we’re pulling the plug on JFrog (FROG), which continues to have great fundamentals, but the stock (and the software sector overall) continues to sag. We’ll sell here and make sure a disappointing situation doesn’t get much worse.

Despite a rally midweek to new all-time highs, last week finished on a soft note as profit-taking and macro uncertainty crept back into equities. Investors grappled with cooling tech leadership, mixed earnings reactions, and a fresh focus on monetary policy. By week’s end the S&P 500 was up 0.3%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had slipped 0.4%, the Nasdaq Composite had fallen 0.9%, and the Russell 2000 had lost 1.5%.

Despite a rally midweek to new all-time highs, last week finished on a soft note as profit-taking and macro uncertainty crept back into equities. Investors grappled with cooling tech leadership, mixed earnings reactions, and a fresh focus on monetary policy. By week’s end the S&P 500 was up 0.3%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had slipped 0.4%, the Nasdaq Composite had fallen 0.9%, and the Russell 2000 had lost 1.5%.

The market hasn’t completely changed character at this point, but the recent action suggests that we’re at a key juncture here: After testing its October high, the Nasdaq has been fading, dragging down most other indexes while the number of new lows has picked up right off the recent high, all while defensive areas perk up—though, we’re also seeing many growth stocks hang in there well, with a few testing new high ground. All told, we’re again leaving our Market Monitor at a level 7, but we think the next few days will tell the tale of whether some new leadership can emerge … or whether a more general corrective phase gets underway. Stay tuned.

This week’s list has lots of strong names, including a few early earnings winners. Our Top Pick has a solid aerospace story but, like other names in this issue, is moving into the AI power space with some big future deals. We think nibbling on some here or on a further pullback makes sense.

It pays to be an optimist when it comes to investing. So, in a middling market, you’re better off focusing on the positives: The bull market remains intact, volatility is down, earnings growth continues to be robust, and market breadth has spread to the many previously unloved sectors. With that optimistic slant in mind, today we look internationally to add one of the biggest names in South America – an e-commerce giant recently recommended by Carl Delfeld to his Cabot Explorer audience.

Details inside.

The last few years have been turbulent ones for passenger airliner JetBlue (JBLU) which, in spite of an industry-wide recovery, hasn’t experienced the lift that many of its peers have since 2024.

On an industry-wide basis, domestic passenger airlines fully recovered in 2024, even surpassing pre-Covid levels, with last year showing continued profitability, record traffic and strong demand. For JetBlue, however, the last couple of years have witnessed operational headwinds—underscored by a failed $3.8 billion merger with Spirit Airlines—forcing the airline to turn its focus inward to improve profitability.

The market is vulnerable to a pullback due to elevated sentiment and bearish insider activity. Here’s what to do about it now.

Cannabis investors continue to await a significant catalyst which may hit inside the next month or two.

I expect Attorney General Pam Bondi to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order to reschedule cannabis in that time frame. That’s my best guess based on analysis from people close to the process. No one knows for sure, however.

The news would spark a sellable rally for traders. Long-term investors should hold through.

Rescheduling means moving cannabis to Schedule III from Schedule I under the Controlled Substances Act. That will save the larger publicly traded cannabis companies tens of millions of dollars each in annual tax expenses. That’s because rescheduling neutralizes an IRS rule that bars the deduction of operating expenses against the sale of Schedule I substances.

More than half the country is buried in snow or ice today. And yet, stocks continue to hum along regardless of the weather, economic headwinds or myriad geopolitical worries. A big one was quickly stamped out last week, when renewed tariff threats caused a brief market shock before cooler heads prevailed in Davos. This week will be dominated by mega-cap earnings and another Fed meeting. Given the market’s resilience against all-comers of late, today we take another big swing with a mid-cap industrial stock that was the Top Pick from Tyler Laundon in the most recent edition of Cabot Early Opportunities advisory.

Details inside.

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.

As market malaise lingers on, it’s become a stock-picker’s market. Fortunately, we have an entire team of expert stock pickers here at Cabot – and in Stock of the Week, we get our pick of the litter. This year already, that’s resulted in gems like Mike Cintolo’s Corning (GLW) (+50% in six weeks), Clif Droke’s JetBlue (JBLU) (+17% in two weeks) and Carl Delfeld’s TransAlta Corp. (TAC) (+10% in a month).

So today, we try to uncover another gem by going back to the well on a former Stock of the Week – and market – darling that has recently rediscovered its mojo. Cabot Dividend Investor Chief Analyst Tom Hutchinson never gave up on it and is now higher on it than ever.

Details inside.

Investing in stocks that are not being disrupted by AI has been a profitable play this year—especially as software sells off hard—here’s the names I’m watching now.

Gold vs. bitcoin has been a popular debate dating back to the earliest days of the cryptocurrency’s ascent, but that debate fundamentally misses how each investment performs as an asset.

Smart investing isn’t picking value or growth (even though value is currently leading), it’s finding the right blend of the two.

Just when it looked like inflation was abating, with nationwide retail gasoline prices falling from an average of $3.20 to $2.73 a gallon between August and January, the specter of rising prices has appeared once again in the wake of the latest Middle East conflict.

As of this writing, the national gas price average is $3.63 a gallon (and rising by the day), which is 33% higher from the January low.

Chipmakers and data centers were the first beneficiaries of AI, but stocks like utilities and information management companies are poised to surge as the next AI trade.

This week we had three of our stocks report, and we become incrementally more defensive. Two stocks are moved to Sell. Two more are moved to Hold.

One stock moves from Buy to Hold, another moves from Strong Buy to Buy, and a third joins the Growth Portfolio as a Strong Buy.