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The most popular stocks aren’t always the best stocks, and investors in FitBit (FIT) and GoPro (GPRO) have found out the hard way.

Why am I very bullish on the market right now? Because the most bullish option trade I’ve ever seen keeps happening every day.

This 23-month bull market, led by the Magnificent Seven stocks, has been too top-heavy, and with the Mag. 7 rally seemingly over, new leaders need to emerge.

Energy drinks are supplanting coffee and rapidly becoming the beverage of choice for Millennials looking for a caffeine fix. These three energy drink stocks are my favorite way to take advantage of the trend.

Consumer trends are changing in a big way but demand for caffeine has never been higher. That’s setting up big opportunities for investors in energy drink stocks.

Small-cap stocks have been lagging their large-cap brethren all year; keep an eye on this ETF for signs of a broader (healthier) rally.

One of our stocks moves from Buy to Hold, plus earnings reports from four of our stocks.

Markets are choppy, which is normal considering uncertainty is high and we’re less than a week from the presidential election. Today I look at what history can teach us about politics and markets and why it might be a bit different this time. The Ant Technology giant IPO moves forward as China flexes its muscle, and it’s a signal for coming events. Today’s new idea is an electric vehicle play from Canada that is under the radar of even the trends of most avid supporters.

Infrastructure has been a hot topic for the last couple of years given passage of a bipartisan bill to finally spruce up the U.S. and try and address climate change.

This month we’re jumping into a pure-play infrastructure company that owns railroads and deep-water ports supporting crude oil and clean fuel shipments, as well as a modern power plant that’s getting tons of calls from AI data centers.

One thing – the company reports quarterly results after the bell today!

For much of the last four years, the “friendly skies” have been anything but for the airline industry and its customers. The restrictive measures of the Covid era put the entire $1.2 trillion air travel industry into a tailspin, causing massive financial losses and layoffs for the major carriers, not to mention major headaches for travelers.

The problems began in March 2020 and continued through that year, but by the start of 2021, industry-wide losses totaled over $35 billion, with no fewer than 64 airlines around the world ceasing operations. By the time Covid restrictions were lifted in 2023 (in the words of a contemporary CNN report), “A handful [of airlines] have revived after announcing bankruptcy, or changed names, but the vast majority are gone for good.”

In anticipation of a booming economy in the months and quarters ahead, the stock market has rallied within a whisker of all time highs. But certain individual stocks and sectors are still languishing despite the index performance. It is among these stocks where great value and high yield can still be found.

In this issue I highlight one of the best banks in the country at a historically low price as the sector struggles. But the bank has remained solidly profitable through the horrible economy in the second quarter, and the stock will benefit as the recovery gains traction. It currently offers a great income opportunity with a high yield and getting high call premiums as the market anticipates better days ahead.

Dog days of August, indeed! The market’s late-summer swoon continues, but that doesn’t mean the bull market party is already over; the power simply went out and we’re waiting for the generators to bring it surging back to life. In the meantime, opportunities to buy good companies at discounted prices abound. With that in mind, today we add a former market darling that fell on very hard times in 2021 and 2022 but is having a solid 2023, with even better growth likely to return in 2024 as the Fed is poised to (likely) cut sky-high interest rates next year. It’s a new addition from Cabot Early Opportunities Chief Analyst Tyler Laundon.

Current Market Outlook


Impeachment talk stole the headlines last week, and China trade issues remain one of the chief economic concerns, but overall, the market remains healthy, with all major indexes in uptrends and most just a couple of weeks off their recent highs. Nevertheless, making money remains difficult, as the forces of rotation have been sending old leaders to the locker room and trotting out fresher new leaders to take their place. This is actually good for the health of the bull market, but it does make investing more difficult, so you should continue to tread carefully, in particular by choosing low-risk entry points and being ruthless at cutting loose your worst performers. As for the market monitor, we’ll stand pat this week, as the flurry of selling late last week has created some decent entry points.

This week’s list includes a great variety of stocks, and our Top Pick is a lower-risk insurance stock, Arthur J. Gallagher (AJG), which has been building a base over the past couple of months and looking ripe to resume its uptrend.

Stock Name	Price	Buy Range	Loss Limit
Arthur J. Gallagher (AJG)	89.27	87-91	84-86
Chubb Group (CB)	153.34	156-164	150-152
Entegris (ENTG)	48.08	46-48	41-42
Garmin (GRMN)	97.45	81-87	77-78
Insulet (PODD)	175.69	154-168	145-147
Jabil Inc. (JBL)	41.50	34-36	31-32
MasTec, Inc. (MTZ)	66.65	62-65	59-61
Synnex Corp. (SNX)	129.70	110-113	105-108
Taylor Morrison Home (TMHC)	27.51	24-26	22-23
Weight Watchers International, Inc. (WW)	35.33	35-38	30-32

It’s not valuation that matters, it’s growth potential and upside momentum that matter.

With the market having come back strong since its swift retreat in early June the immediate threat of a larger correction has diminished. The S&P 500 index is back above its 50-day line and within a couple percentage points of its all-time high.

The broad market has traded higher for eight straight sessions, the longest run since 2021. The Nasdaq is up for nine sessions.

The S&P Small Cap Index is up in five of the last nine sessions, but the last four have been down. What the ...?!!

Big picture, this isn’t great for the broad market as we want a more broad-based rally. And in theory it’s not great for us.

But the reality is our portfolio isn’t diversified along the same lines as the small-cap index. We’re not overweight financials, energy and health care (we have little to no exposure to all three) and instead are focused on pure-play opportunities that aren’t expected to trade in lockstep with the small-cap index.

• The Do’s and Don’ts of Investing in Real Estate
• The One Thing Keeping Silver Prices Down
• 5 Ways to Invest in the Most Valuable Resource on the Planet
• 3 REITs to Buy for the 5G Technology Boom
• A Better Way to Profit from Amazon (AMZN)
• Breaking Down the 3 Best Cloud Security Stocks
• Which Small-Cap Marijuana Stocks are Worth the Risk?
• This is How You Know it’s Safe to Invest in a Recent IPO
• 3 Dirt-Cheap Tobacco Stocks for Value Investors
• The Surprising Sector Benefitting from a Growing Global Middle Class
• What’s Causing the Dollar Short Squeeze?

Here’s an update on the stock which rating has been upped to BUY.

Five Below (FIVE) has been unable to pull out of its tailspin following a good-but-not-great quarterly report last week, so we’re selling the stock today and booking our small profit.

For those investors who still feel like doing some buying, Paul looks at a few stocks that are resisting the downtrend of the market.