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Five guidelines to help you deal with this volatile time in the stock market.

America loves a turnaround story, and so does Wall Street. Here’s a turnaround stock in the auto industry that’s ready to burst.

The market finished with a bang at the end of last week, spurred by excellent earnings news from technology leaders Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT). If you own the leaders, this is a rewarding market. But beneath the surface, all is not well.

The right options income strategies can help you generate yield in any market. Here’s how to use “The Wheel” on your favorite stocks.

The bulls continued their winning ways last week, but the advance wasn’t without some jostling. Late in the week several leading growth stocks pulled back, but those declines weren’t enough to keep the bulls from another weekly victory.

The S&P 500 gained 0.93%, the Dow advanced 0.78% and the Nasdaq rose 1.11%.



To put this market run into perspective, the current rally has lasted 189 days, basically nine months, without a 5% pullback. Additionally, there have been 43 days of a recorded new high.



So, my stance hasn’t changed too much. I continue to take a cautious but optimistic approach.

After a volatile week, the major market indices all closed out with losses. The S&P 500 fell 0.97%, the Dow lost 0.52%, and the Nasdaq declined by 1.87%. And the bearish sentiment continued on Monday as the S&P 500 lost another 1.6%. Which leads to a question I’ve been receiving from a few Profit Booster subscribers: “Will you keep recommending trades if the market gets ugly?” The answer is yes. In times of rocky market action, I will continue to make trades for two reasons:

The overall market continues to be, well, wobbly. After a 2.1% loss last Monday, the sharpest decline in roughly 10 months, the bulls took charge at the opening bell last Tuesday and have yet to give up. Last week, the S&P 500 climbed 1.92%, the Dow advanced 1.07% and the Nasdaq surged 2.76%.

This Friday marks the expiration of July options, and if everything holds steady, our calls in MRO, GPRO and SGMS will expire worthless. As a result, we will maximize the call premium on each position. Per usual, on Monday I plan to sell my shares in each position and start the search for more opportunities.

There’s no doubt it has been an incredible year for the market. The S&P 500 has witnessed five straight months of gains while simultaneously carving out new all-time highs in the process. And last week was no different. The market continued to forge higher, with all three major market benchmarks closing the week near or at all-time highs. The S&P 500 added 1.67%, the Dow gained 1.02%, and the Nasdaq advanced by 1.94%.

Ahead of the long holiday weekend, it was a mixed bag last week as the S&P 500 rose 0.58%, the Dow lost 0.25%, and the Nasdaq climbed 1.55%.



This week traders will keep a close eye on inflation as the Labor Department releases its August index of U.S. wholesale prices, otherwise known as the producer price index. The market is estimating an increase of 0.5%, after 1% increases in June and July. July witnessed a 7.8% increase year over year, which was the largest bump in over a decade. Another spike would not bode well for the overall market, so I will be keeping an eye on the release and its impact on price action.



With that in mind, and always an eye on diversification, this week’s pick is a steel and iron enterprise company.

The recent August expiration cycle was our second disappointing month in a row. And while 18 wildly successful months of trading out of 20 is a truly spectacular track record, when trades go wrong there is little doubt it’s painful in the moment. However, trading/investing isn’t about being a prisoner of the moment. It’s about building wealth over time, which the Cabot Profit Booster has been very successful at since its inception in early 2020.

The three leading indexes pushed higher this past week as the S&P 500 rose 0.78%, the Dow gained 1.22%, and the Nasdaq added 0.08%.



Following a choppy and volatile start to the week, on Thursday politicians kicked the debt-ceiling can down the road, which seemed to make investors happy, at least for the day. Unfortunately, that investor excitement was short-lived as the September jobs report on Friday came in at 194,000 new jobs added, well under the expectation of 500,000. The market managed to close Friday only slightly lower despite the bad news.

Last week the major indices pulled back in a meaningful way. The S&P 500 lost 2.20%, the Dow declined 1.36%, and the Nasdaq pulled back 3.20%.



The benchmark index sank 4.8% in September, marking its worst month since March 2020. It was also the first losing month for the S&P after seven straight months of gains. The outlook didn’t look much brighter Monday as the market saw another bout of losses.

This week I’m continuing to diversify my overall portfolio exposure by adding American subscription-based software company ZoomInfo (ZI).

Last week, despite a large market decline on Monday, the major indices took a baby step forward. The S&P 500 gained 0.51%, the Dow rose 0.62%, and the Nasdaq eked out 0.02%.



The advance came despite ongoing uncertainties around Chinese property developer Evergrande and the seemingly hawkish message from the Fed announcement. Now the focus has shifted to Washington, D.C.’s finest and the decision around the debt ceiling and infrastructure. Add a sprinkle of Chinese power concerns and there seems to be just enough worry to keep investors on their toes.

When the Cyprus banking crisis popped up in the news a week ago, the first thing I did was research Cyprus.

As Hanukah and Christmas and Kwanzaa roll near, I would like to tell you how important YOU are as a part of the Cabot family. So I will, in a roundabout way. One of the challenges of running a small business is finding good employees and managing them well, especially without the benefit of a full-time Human Resources department.

The election results and Federal Reserve rate cut were seemingly just what the market was looking for as the S&P 500 rallied 4.7% last week, the Dow added 4.65% and the Nasdaq gained 5.4%.

Despite a late-week sell-off, stocks finished last week with a mixed but telling tape. Federal Reserve policymakers delivered a widely anticipated 25 basis-point rate cut mid-week — reinforcing easier policy expectations — while fresh highs in cyclicals and small caps early in the week signaled strong breadth, only to be met by renewed AI valuation angst into Friday. Rotation out of mega-cap tech and into value names helped buoy the Dow and Russell 2000, which gained 1% and 0.5%, respectively, even as the tech-heavier S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell 0.6% and 1.6%.