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January has lived up to its reputation in 2025, with plenty of volatility, cross-currents and news-driven moves, highlighted by this week’s huge AI infrastructure selloff and partial recovery while the broad market improved.

A Tale of Two Earnings Reports: Atlassian (TEAM) and Vestis (VSTS)

It’s hard not to be at least encouraged by the market’s resilience of the past couple of weeks—last Monday, one of the big leading sectors (AI infrastructure) was clobbered on the DeepSeek-related uncertainties, and then this Monday, the market took a hit on tariff fears (including some that actually went into effect). Certainly, if the market wanted to sell off a few percent, it could have, but instead things held together—and bounced back.

WHAT TO DO NOW: The market has rallied nicely in the past week, which has improved the evidence—though for both our indicators and leading stocks, it’s been good but not necessarily decisive just yet. Even so, we’ve been sitting on a big cash hoard for a few weeks and we’ll start to come off that today, buying half-sized (5% of the portfolio) positions in Marvell Tech (MRVL) and Reddit (RDDT) while also restoring our Buy rating on Shift4 (FOUR). Our cash position will now be around 48%—more details in tonight’s issue of Growth Investor.

It’s been another solid, encouraging week for the market, with the major indexes all sporting solid gains—the big-cap indexes were up 2% or while the broader indexes are in the black by a bit more than 1%.

WHAT TO DO NOW: The popular AI stocks were hit extremely hard today on fears that the CapEx spending boom could be cut short following the DeepSeek successes, which in turn dragged the major indexes lower. Outside of AI, the damage was reasonable, which is a plus, but with the major indexes still trending sideways and few stocks decisively moving higher, we’re remaining relatively cautious. In the Model Portfolio, we’re forced to quickly cut our loss in Marvell Tech (MRVL), which was caught up in the out-of-the-blue selling storm among AI stocks. Our cash position will now be around 53%.

Happy New Year! The market’s stance didn’t change much during the past couple weeks of 2024—big-cap indexes are trying to hang in there, but the vast majority of the market and growth stocks had a rough December. The equal-weight S&P 500, for instance, fell a whopping 6.6% on the month, and many growth measures were down about the same (if not a bit more).

The holiday-shortened week yielded more gains for the leading indexes as traders ready themselves for the close of 2024. Here is how our positions performed last week.

It was another interesting week for the market as the Nasdaq rallied 3.3%, while the S&P 500 added 1% and the Dow fell 0.6%. That is quite the performance difference between the Nasdaq and Dow!

It’s been a mixed week for the market, with the big-cap indexes doing well and many leading growth titles again showing strength, but the broad market and many sectors were sluggish (not awful, just down some) and we have started to see a few leaders here and there that have begun to wobble.

It’s nice to see Duolingo (DUOL) responding well to another very solid earnings release. The company reported that Q2 revenue grew 43.5% to $126.8 million (beating by $3.1 million) while adjusted EPS of $0.08 improved from -$0.38 in the year-ago quarter and beat by $0.27.

It’s obviously been an eventful week, starting off with some mini-panic on Monday, though the market did find support three days in a row. But Wednesday evening’s tariff announcement has sent the market into a tailspin, with huge losses yesterday and, after China’s retaliation moves announced this morning, further big losses today. We have thoughts, so let’s run through them.

The extreme environment has continued this week, with last Wednesday’s tariff reveal leading to a massive selloff that took the market down into Monday morning, though there has been support since, thanks in large part to Wednesday’s tariff delay that caused the market to pop higher.

The major indexes hit a low on March 13 and bounced for eight days through Tuesday, though that bounce has run into another wave of selling, with the major indexes retrenching the past three days. Overall, the major indexes are about flat on the week after this morning’s modest down opening.

The selloff in leading stocks that started last week has continued, and now it’s spilled over into the major indexes, as it usually does—most indexes were down 2% or more on the week, including the Nasdaq down 5% and many growth measures off 4%-plus.

HEADS UP: I’m finishing up a soiree with the kiddos so this week’s M&S update will be on the briefer side. I’ll be back at my desk Monday for another Top Ten issue.


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After a tough slide Monday, the market has been very impressive this week, with three straight solid and broad-based gains. Heading into Friday, the S&P is up nearly 4% while the Nasdaq is up more than 5%.

WHAT TO DO NOW: It’s been a brutal week for growth stocks in general, with the major indexes off some but with more breakdowns than we have seen in a few months. Today’s update involves CrowdStrike (CRWD), which is getting hammered today after an update glitch has disrupted a ton of the world’s operations overnight and this morning. To respect the action, we’re going to sell one-third of what we have, though we’ll hold the remaining small-ish position for now. Many more details below. Our cash position will be just shy of 50%, which we’ll hold onto as we wait for growth stocks to find support.

WHAT TO DO NOW: Four days doesn’t guarantee success, but the sharp broad market rally during the past few sessions has turned our Cabot Tides positive and improved our Two-Second Indicator; growth stocks remain choppy, but some names are perking up there, too. All told, we’re going to put a little money to work today, adding half-sized stakes (5% of the portfolio) in Robinhood (HOOD) and ProShares Ultra Russell 2000 Fund (UWM). That will leave us with around 30% in cash. Details below.

It’s been a very volatile week in the market, but thanks to this morning’s worse-than-expected jobs report (which is driving interest rates lower), it’s looking like a positive one—as of this morning, the big-cap indexes and most growth measures are flat to up 1% on the week, while broader indexes are up 1% to 1.5%.

New kid on the block Zeta (ZETA) is starting the week off with a bang after the Q1 report yesterday sailed past expectations.