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Last week, our issue was titled “Decision Time,” and after the Federal Reserve’s disappointing report, the market made the decision to go down with force—not only have the major indexes broken their intermediate-term trend lines, but tons of stocks have been nailed as the selling pressures intensify. Yes, there are still many decent-looking names out there, but the market is the elephant in the room at this point; it’s best to hold plenty of cash and do little new buying until stocks find their footing.

The good news from a stock picker’s standpoint is that it’s easiest to spot strength in a weak market; if a stock is holding up well in this environment, it deserves some extra attention. This week’s list has many stocks that fill that bill; our favorite is Infoblox (BLOX), a young, rapidly-growing networking firm. Just be sure to keep any positions small if you decide to buy.

Stock Name	Price	Buy Range	Loss Limit
Yelp (YELP)	41.30	28-30	26-27
The ExOne Company (XONE)	0.00	48-50	42-43
Tesla, Inc. (TSLA)	818.87	93-103	85-88
SodaStream (SODA)	142.91	65-69	60-61
Charles Schwab (SCHW)	0.00	19.5-20.5	18-18.5
RH Inc. (RH)	252.93	67-71	60-62
Colfax (CFX)	0.00	48-50	46-47
Infoblox Inc. (BLOX)	0.00	27-28	23-24
ANGI Homeservices Inc. (ANGI)	14.81	25-26	23-24
ACADIA Pharmaceuticals (ACAD)	47.84	16-17.5	13.5-14

Stop-losses, or more fully, stop-loss orders, are trading orders that are placed to execute a sale automatically if a stock falls below a specified trigger price. The idea is that these orders can prevent a small loss from becoming a large loss. It can also be used to lock in profits.

Finding Early-Stage Growth Stocks Before the Crowd + Two Early-Stage Stocks to Buy Now: From Tyler Laundon, Chief Analyst of Cabot Early Opportunities and Cabot Small-Cap Confidential, and Chris Preston, Chief Analyst of Cabot Wealth Network.

Current Market Outlook


First and foremost, with the virus now affecting most everyone, all of us here at Cabot are hoping you stay safe (and if you’re home with your kids, sane!). As for the market, there’s not much to say except the obvious: We remain in a very steep selloff, with bounces limited to a couple of hours, though we’re seeing such crazy extremes (price and sentiment) that a near-term low is possible at any time. Our advice really hasn’t changed despite the once-in-a-lifetime action of the past couple of weeks: You should remain cautious, holding plenty of cash and keeping any new buying on the small side. Eventually, there will be huge opportunities, but we need to see the market and potential leading stocks find support before thinking a workable low could be in.

In the meantime, we’re mostly focused on eying stocks that are showing some resilience—if something can hold up in this disaster, it’s definitely worth at least keeping a close eye on. Our Top Pick is Masimo (MASI), which could be a port in the virus storm.

Stock Name	Price	Buy Range	Loss Limit
Acceleron Pharma (XLRN)	75.11	71-75	64-66
Apple (AAPL)	248.94	238-248	217-223
Bilibili (BILI)	28.71	23.5-25	21-21.5
DocuSign (DOCU)	107.98	70-74	63-65
Equinix, Inc. (EQIX)	547.73	538-550	505-510
FTI Consulting (FCN)	120.09	112-116	103-105
Inphi (IPHI)	120.16	62.5-66	56.5-58.5
Masimo (MASI)	159.56	172-177	157-160
Repligen (RGEN)	91.34	83-86	75-77
TAL Education (TAL)	50.49	47-50	42-43.5

The market and growth stocks have had a couple of wobbles so far in September, and given the heady run from leading stocks in August, some further shakeouts are possible. If the selling pressure intensifies enough to turn our Cabot Tides negative, we’ll trim our sails, but right now, the trends of the major indexes and the vast majority of leading stocks are pointed up, so we remain positive.

It was only a month ago when we wrote about how the seemingly out-of-the-blue turmoil in the banking sector, driven by the sharp increase in interest rates, could lead to a major financial accident that traumatizes the world’s capital markets. Part II recognizes an ever-expanding roster to include additional percolating problems.

Thank you for subscribing to the Cabot Undervalued Stocks Advisor. We hope you enjoy reading the January 2023 issue.

Our letter describes our view that 2022 was a bridge year and that we may need some or all of 2023 to complete the bridge-crossing. We also provide our outlook for the stock market, the economy and the geopolitical environment, with some caveats about forecasting and model use provided by Yogi Berra and George Box.

All-in, we see 2023 as a year with many changes but also a year in which consumers, companies and countries – amazing sources of ingenuity and resolve – work their magic to adapt to whatever curve balls are thrown at them. Our optimism is undaunted.

We also have moved our rating for Arcos Dorados (ARCO) from Hold to Sell.

Please feel free to send me your questions and comments. This newsletter is written for you and the best way to get more out of the letter is to let me know what you are looking for.

Only three months ago, the financial community, including investors, analysts, economists, commentators and others, despaired that the Fed’s rate tightening program would produce a hard landing. The resulting combination, of higher interest rates and slowing/negative earnings and economic growth, is toxic for stock markets. Not surprisingly, the S&P 500 tumbled 27% from its highs to touch 3,500 in mid-October.



With the turn of the calendar and minimal discouraging economic news, the same financial community is now optimistic that we’re headed for a soft landing, or possibly no landing at all (economic growth remains positive). Worries that the Fed will inexorably keep raising interest rates have been replaced with the view that perhaps only 25 or 50 basis points of further increases are ahead. The outlook previously labeled as “toxic” has been transformed into “supportive” for equities. In the three short weeks since year’s end, the S&P has lifted 5%.

The success of headliners Walmart and Target in the last week has helped drive consumer staples stocks as a group up nearly 5% in August. No other S&P 500 sector has performed better this month. And yet, consumer staples are “only” up 14% year to date, trailing the gains in the S&P 500 (17.3%).

Thus, the sector as a whole is still undervalued. That spells opportunity.

The market’s pullback went over the falls late last week and on Monday, with panicky trading leading to a huge gap down--and possibly a short-term low. Overall, the evidence tells us the intermediate-term trend is down and that, even if we have bottomed, plenty of repair work will be needed. That said, the longer-term evidence is still positive and, frankly, we’re not having trouble filling up our watch list for potential fresh leaders. Long story short, we remain cautious here and hold lots of cash, but we’re not sticking our head in the sand, either, and could have a couple of small moves if the market continues to stabilize.

This is the 13^th bull market in the S&P 500 since 1950. If it ended today, it would tie for the shortest – just over 21 months – with the last bull market, the post-Covid-crash rally that began in March 2020 and tidily peaked at the end of 2021. The average bull market, according to statistics from Ryan Detrick of Carson Investment Research, lasts 65 months.

Does that mean this one can’t up and fizzle right now, taken down by a “carry trade” in Japanese equities, one bad U.S. jobs report, and a whole lot of political (presidential election) and social (war in the Middle East possibly spreading) uncertainty? Of course not. We know a bull market can last only 21 months because we just saw it happen.

The Fed is on the precipice of cutting interest rates for the first time in years; when that happens, homebuilder stocks tend to benefit first. But that’s not the only reason to be bullish on the sector. Homebuilders have changed the way they do business in recent years to become more like car makers, only with greater upside and higher internal rates of return. With both those short- and long-term winds at their sails, homebuilder stocks are a good – and still undervalued – bet. And today, we add a big name in the space that has the best combination of growth and value.

Enjoy!

Our plant-touching Cabot Cannabis Investor portfolio is up 29.2% since June 25. It is still down for the year. But it is performing better than the sector.

I believe it continues to make sense to stay long cannabis stocks, despite the big gains in the past month. Now, with the appointment of Terrance Cole to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), cannabis investors are one step closer to learning how serious the Trump administration is about rescheduling cannabis.

Glad to be back! A lot has happened in the two weeks since I last wrote, with the market reaching new record highs despite the tariff deadline coming and going without a ton of clarity. And now second-quarter earnings season has arrived, which could provide further wind in the market’s sails, though estimates are more tempered (5% growth, vs. 14% growth among large-cap companies in Q1) this time around.

Meanwhile, our portfolio is humming, with TWO of our stocks reaching their price targets today! We’ll “retire” them to make room for today’s new recommendation, from an industry I wrote extensively about in our last update: movie theaters. The hope is that this movie theater stock will follow in the footsteps of United Airlines (UAL) and Carnival Corp. (CCL) and quickly reach our price target as shares play catch-up to their fundamentals due to some post-Covid lag.

Details inside. Enjoy!

Stocks have finally hit a speed bump, retreating modestly in the last couple weeks. But pullbacks are both inevitable and healthy in the long run. And the latest one offers an opportunity to buy some great companies at more attractive prices. So today, we add perhaps February’s hottest stock – after it’s been knocked down more than 8% in the last two trading days. I’m betting it’ll bounce back, and so is Mike Cintolo, who recently recommended the stock to his Cabot Top Ten Trader readers.

So far, our recommended companies have reported strong earnings but the share performances following the reports have generally been sloppy. What’s going on?

Investors, of course, are forward-looking. So, decent trailing results can take a back seat to the incremental changes in near-term prospects. As we note in our discussion about the recent and continued slide in shares of Citigroup (C), investors are assuming that the company not only has no chance of improving its earning power but are also assuming that profits will probably slide backward. Comcast (CMCSA) reported one of the strongest quarters in its history, yet the outlook is for incremental headwinds in its customer count, so the shares slid.

In the wake of a rare down December, stocks have come roaring back to kickstart 2025, up more than 2% through the first three trading days. It’s early yet, but perhaps the bulls are taking control again after a sluggish end to an otherwise very productive 2024.

Still, there were enough yellow flags under the surface to close out the year that it’s worth taking a cautious approach for now. So today, we add a mega-cap, high-yield dividend stock that’s been a staple of Tom Hutchinson’s Cabot Dividend Investor portfolio for some time.

Details inside.

Growth as a whole has been stagnant for three months, and this week, we started to see the selling spread out a bit, with our Two-Second Indicator waiving a yellow flag and with more names coming under pressure (and with many growth stocks really caving in). To be fair, the top-down evidence isn’t much changed, so we’re flexible--if this is the final shakeout to the past three months of rest, there could be many things to sink our teeth into soon.

But as growth investors, we’re focused on the growth evidence, which tells us to remain in a cautious stance until the buyers step up.

Tariffs are back in the news, and the market doesn’t like it. How long they remain in the news is anybody’s guess. Perhaps the situation will be settled over lunch in Davos this week. In the meantime, fourth-quarter earnings season serves as a welcome diversion and ramps up this week after some mixed results from the banks last week. Speaking of banks, today we add a regional play that should pair well with our Morgan Stanley (MS) holding. It’s a lower-risk, income-generating stock that is a new choice of Cabot Dividend Investor Chief Analyst Tom Hutchinson.

Details inside.

It’s still an amazing market. The S&P is up 96% from the bear market low in March of 2020. The index is also up over 20% so far this year.

While the overall market may be pricey, there are still undervalued pockets within the market. The indexes don’t tell the whole story. Even in a market like this, some stocks get neglected.



The yield curve has flattened and two stocks in the portfolio, AGNC and USB, have pulled back as a result. I believe this interest rate dynamic is temporary and these stocks are good buys ahead of a likely reversal.