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The market has been changing faster than the weather here in the northeast. And like any big change it’s been a bit tough to navigate.

Today marks the first face-to-face talks between senior officials from America and China since July.

As the futures indicated, the market is down sharply this morning, though the major indexes have bounced from their lows. As of 10:45 am, the Dow is sinking 454 points while the Nasdaq is down 118 points.

The market looks set to open down relatively sharply this morning, with the futures indicating opening losses in the 0.7% to 1% range for the major indexes. However, our focus is really on the overall evidence, which is clearly worsening.

Continue to step lightly. The overall market is still positive, but it’s clear that the buyers aren’t in firm control—the environment is news driven and rotational, with few stocks hitting new highs.

One of our portfolio stocks reported this morning and will host a conference call at 8:30 a.m. I’m including a quick overview now and will detail any learnings from the conference call later.

One of the portfolio stocks reported a big earnings miss; increases dividend and moves from Strong Buy to Buy.

The market seems to want to move higher, albeit slowly and with rude interruptions from the headlines. The S&P 500 is within less than 1% off the all-time high set in July, although the index has been somewhat range-bound since June.

It’s been mostly more of the same this week, with solid action among the major indexes (S&P 500 and Nasdaq are up a bit less than 1% as we write this), while the broad market has done OK (the number of new highs has picked up some) but growth stocks have generally languished.

Crista reports on four portfolio stocks, two of which just reported earnings beats.

One of the portfolio stocks is moving to Hold.

This software company that’s changing the world through digital experiences moves from Hold to Buy.

The weakness in growth stocks in general, and cloud-related stocks in particular, continued today, which caused one of our stocks to trip its loss limit.

This bioprocessing specialist reported Q3 results this morning that should be good enough to keep the stock stable, and hopefully get it moving back in the right direction.

We’re selling one stock, but we’re going to reinvest the proceeds in two steps—first, by adding another half-sized position in one and by initiating a half-sized position in another. Our cash position will still be in the low 50% range after these moves.