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Consumer Staples and Communication Services are two sectors that have held up well in the recent correction. Today, I’ll highlight a stock from each sector.

Two of our stocks reported earnings last night.

AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) is up more than 140% so far in 2024. What’s behind the rise of this space-based cellular broadband company?

While only insiders will be attending the Federal Reserve’s annual Jackson Hole symposium, which starts this morning, markets will react to any hints on the Fed’s move to tighten monetary policy and lift interest rates.

Despite some nervous-making weakness last week, the Cabot Emerging Markets Timer has bounced back to regain its green-light status. And with our stocks acting well, the situation looks excellent, although we’re issuing the usual bull-market warnings that this can’t go on forever.

The S&P 500 is making yet another new all time high. The index has risen 72% since last March and over 17% just since the beginning of October. That’s amazing performance in a short amount of time.

I’m positive on the market for the rest of this year as a full recovery along with low interest rates and massive stimulus should be very positive for stocks. But the market never goes straight up. And a selloff is overdue. It would present a buying opportunity ahead of a promising year.



While I am increasingly cautious in the near term, there are very select places where great value can still be found. And even fewer that historically move independently of the overall market.



In this issue I highlight a stock that moves to its own drummer and not with the market. It is near the low point of its range in a long-term uptrend facilitated by rapid growth in its business. The situation presents an ideal time to buy into the stock now and write calls later.

2021 is off to a good start thanks to strong earnings and continued investor enthusiasm for big technology companies and a new administration. The backstop from governments and central banks, as well as the consensus among investors that a strong economic recovery is coming this year, has for now pushed volatility out of the market.

The Explorer portfolio had a good week and today we add another SPAC merging with an established, fast-growing financial payments firm based in the United Kingdom.

Years from now, I wonder how historians will label this new decade. Will it be the “Terrific Twenties” or the “Turbulent Twenties”? It’s obviously too soon to tell, but we remain optimistic about the future today with a new idea at the fringe of the powerful clean energy trend that has moved past an inflection point. Meanwhile, the Explorer’s group of stocks had another good week as Virgin Galactic (SPCE) launched into space. I wonder if its take-off might be wrapped up in the Reddit revolution?

The latest earnings reports were mixed but generally encouraging.

The S&P 500 exceeding the 5,000 mark reminds us that while our dynamic economy leads to disruptions in companies and markets, and Fed interest rate moves can impact the market, it is revenue and earnings growth that really drives stock returns over time. Companies normally become more profitable over time, and that’s what leads to higher stock prices. Staying in the market and leveraging the power of compounding returns is important to successful investing.

So today, we expand our portfolio by starting a small position in a brand new asset class.

“The Air Transport Industry had a solid ranking advance that moved it further away from its five-year low shown six months ago. There was a notable percentage increase in the overall insider buying and similar contraction in their selling. ... Hawaiian Holdings, Inc. (HA) [had] three insider buys,...

Tesla’s goal is big—to be the leading force in the movement to obsolete the internal combustion automobile.

How to Profit from the Coming Social Disruption

Buy this Gun Stock Before the Election

Tesla Has New Competition in the Electric Car Space

Want a Pandemic-Averse Investment? Try Timber

This South American E-Commerce Giant is Outperforming Amazon and Alibaba

5 Tips for Getting Your Portfolio Through a Pandemic

2 Stocks Capitalizing on the Global Health Crisis

This Indicator Says It’s Still Time to Buy Stocks

Debunking 5 Options Trading Myths

How Secondary Stock Offerings Affect Stock Prices

4 Retailers that are Benefiting from Social Distancing

For the first time in a while we started to see big investors floor the accelerator last week, with some names really letting loose on the upside. Moreover, even the “non-AI” nascent leaders that perked up earlier in May are acting fine, with most digesting gains in normal fashion. All of that is to the good—though the top-down flaws that we’ve written about are all still out there, too, with relatively few stocks hitting new highs, a good number of blowups each week and most areas of the market still struggling. Right now, we’re keeping our Market Monitor at a level 5, but we’re watching things closely—if more leaders emerge, it would certainly add to the bullish side of the ledger.

This week’s list has a bunch of solid growth and earnings-related plays from a variety of industries. Our Top Pick is practically a blue chip name from the software field that’s emerging from a solid launching pad.

Current Market Outlook


The holiday-shortened week was a relatively quiet one, with most indexes and sectors mostly meandered in tight ranges. After the prior two and a half weeks of constructive action, we consider the lack of selling a positive; to this point, the bears haven’t really come around for many names despite some decent rallies and a few breakouts. But now the real test will begin—if the former leaders that have run right into some tough resistance can hold firm, if recent breakouts can build on their gains and fresh breakouts can emerge, this rally could gain steam ... but if the sellers return, things could go back in the soup within a few days. Right now, we’re still in the trust-but-verify mode of the rally, slowly increasing exposure but also keeping a close eye to see if cracks show up.

This week’s list has a wide array of stocks, including a few cyclical names that are pushing up after a few weeks of consolidation. Our Top Pick is Marathon Oil (MRO), which showed some real power last week as oil stocks came to life.

Stock Name	Price	Buy Range	Loss Limit
Apellis Pharmaceuticals (APLS)	59	54-56.5	48-49.5
Callon Petroleum (CPE)	48	45.5-48	40-41.5
Discover Financial Services (DFS)	124	118-122	108-110
General Motors Company (GM)	63	62-64	56-57
Jabil Inc. (JBL)	58	55.5-57	51-52
Logitech (LOGI)	133	126-130	112-115
Marathon Oil (MRO)	14	13.0-14.0	11.5-12.0
SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. (SEAS)	58	56-58.5	50-51
United Parcel Service (UPS)	213	209-214	193-196
Vale S.A. (VALE)	22	21.5-22.5	19.3-19.8

There were a lot of headlines over the last couple of days about the emerging small-cap rally.

That’s because small caps surged on both Tuesday and Wednesday after a somewhat cool CPI inflation report drove expectations for a 25bps September rate cut to 99%.

On Wednesday, the S&P 600 SmallCap Index jumped 2.0%, trouncing the 0.3% rise in the S&P 500 Index.

The consensus opinion right now is that the market is strong because it’s looking favorably on the prospects of a clear-cut winner in the upcoming presidential election and that the likelihood of another round of stimulus is going up.

There’s been a jump in volatility among individual stocks and some sectors (gold, oil, retail investor favorites, etc.), but at an index level, things continue to be pretty smooth. The S&P 600 SmallCap Index is trading higher than it was a week ago.

WHAT TO DO NOW: Remain cautious, though remain flexible. The market’s initial bounce this week was good to see but it didn’t offset the recent weakness, and today’s Meta-inspired selloff didn’t help the cause. All told, our Cabot Tides remain negative, and most growth stocks are still in rough intermediate-term shape—though the long-term picture is still positive. After selling the rest of our Arista (ANET) position last Friday, our cash position is 44%—we’ll sit tight tonight with our remaining names and our cash and see how earnings season continues to play out.