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Through most of the summer, investors had become increasingly confident about the strength and direction of the economic recovery, the likelihood of the arrival of several promising Covid vaccines, another round of federal economic stimulus and other favorable indicators.

Household debt is rising, and consumers are feeling the squeeze of higher interest rates everywhere, from mortgages to auto loans to credit cards. In this month’s issue we’ll share ten warning signs that signal financial trouble ahead and the ten bad financial habits you need to drop now to avoid it.

Tyler Laundon, Chief Analyst of Cabot Small-Cap Stocks and Cabot Early Opportunities speaks about Software Stocks.

Among the topics he covers:
* A look at current software stock valuations
* Software in context: Trends over the last 25 years
* Software today: More options than ever
* Software stock opportunities for 2021

Current Market Outlook


The action of the past couple of days indicates that the market’s recent pullback likely isn’t through yet—while the Nasdaq hit new highs last week, no other index did, and that divergence (and negativity surrounding Deutsche Bank) brought out more sellers. In the short-term, then, the trend is mainly neutral, as most indexes haven’t made much progress during the past two months and are gyrating around their 50-day lines. Longer-term, though, we remain optimistic: Growth stocks and indexes are generally outperforming, the broad market is healthy and investor skepticism remains elevated (all good things). We’re going to leave our Market Monitor at level 7, meaning you should hold your strong stocks but also hold some cash on the sideline until the buyers retake control.

This week’s list has a good collection of stocks, mostly on the growth side. Our Top Pick, though, is a special situation—Tech Data (TECD) just announced a transformative acquisition that catapulted the stock to new highs. We think it’s buyable around here.

Stock Name	Price	Buy Range	Loss Limit
Adobe Inc. (ADBE)	315.23	105-108	99-100
CoLucid Pharmaceuticals Inc (CLCD)	0.00	28-30	23-24
Eagle Pharmaceuticals Inc. (EGRX)	0.00	63.5-67	57-58
Etsy (ETSY)	112.97	14-15	12.5-13
Match (MTCH)	0.00	16.5-17.5	15.5-16
Penske Automotive Group (PAG)	0.00	47-49	43-44
Penumbra Inc. (PEN)	173.25	75-77	69-70
TECD (TECD)	0.00	83-86	75-77
Twilio (TWLO)	183.39	62.5-65.5	54-56
ZELTIQ Aesthetics Inc (ZLTQ)	0.00	40-38	35.5-36.5

Electric vehicle stocks were red-hot in 2020. Which ones are worth buying in 2021? Let’s break them all down!

My investing idea in this issue is FLIR Systems, a global leader in thermal imaging. The company’s name is an acronym for Forward Looking Infrared, a kind of imaging technology that allows military aircraft and vehicles to see through darkness (and also daytime fog and smoke). Government Systems applications may be FLIR’s calling card, but they’re a small part of the whole story. The company also has a Thermography division that designs and manufactures temperature sensing technologies that can spot overheating machinery, leaks, flaws in buildings and gradients in scientific experiments.

First, Baidu (BIDU) is the Chinese equivalent of Google. Both companies get 99% of their revenue by presenting ads to Internet users. But Baidu is just 1% of the size of Google, as measured by revenues, and 5% the size as measured by market capitalization. And it’s growing twice as fast as Google. Furthermore, Baidu’s market penetration is far less than Google’s and it’s addressing a far larger population, so its growth prospects are substantially greater.

The inflation outlook has certainly moved toward the “less bad” end of the spectrum over the last week. That’s the big-picture reason stocks have been doing well since last Friday. On Tuesday the NFIB Small Business Survey (December data) showed that the percentage of small businesses with job openings is falling, as are the percentage of businesses expecting to increase hiring over the next three months and the percentage planning to raise average selling prices.

In tonight’s Cabot Growth Investor, we dive into all our stocks and highlight our current batch of ideas (including an intriguing recent IPO with a great cookie-cutter story) and discuss the good and bad of mental versus in-the-market stops.

Cannabis stocks continue to post sharp rallies on rumors of progress on federal policy developments like banking reform and rescheduling. Then the stocks give it all back over the next day or two.

There are two ways to deal with this trend.

After an ugly day October 10, the major indexes showed solid overall support last week, but under the hood was another round of volatile action, The market’s intermediate-term trend continues to tilt up, though we’re still taking things on a stock-by-stock basis and are closely watching earnings season, which is about to rev up. In the meantime, we’re just following the plan that’s been working for us: Being selective on the buy side, holding strong names (albeit with some partial profits on the way up) and also raising stops as time passes. We’ll again stick with a level 7 on the Market Monitor.

This week’s list is a mixed bag in terms of sectors and setups, with some we’re considering entering on strength and others on pullbacks. Our Top Pick is likely in for years of accelerating growth, and after a big run into early October, the recent pullback looks normal. We’re OK starting small here or on a bit more weakness.

WHAT TO DO NOW: The market’s rally has run into trouble, and while there are more than a few growth stocks that look fine (if not great), air pockets are reappearing in many issues. Today, Nutanix (NTNX), which looked picture-perfect heading into its earnings report, is getting mauled along with most other software stocks. We’re going to sell the rest of our stake today, thinking today’s meltdown after a prolonged run isn’t likely to lead to good things in the intermediate term. We’ll have more details (and likely other changes) in tonight’s issue of Cabot Growth Investor.