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The bull market rolls on, and our portfolio continues to deliver, so I continue to recommend that you be heavily invested in stocks that help achieve your investing goals.

Today’s featured stock is making a repeat appearance, because we lost it on a shakeout earlier this year and I think it’s worth trying again.



As for the current portfolio, Tesla (TSLA) and Trulieve (TCNNF) are upgraded to buy, but we’re selling Coca Cola (KO), mainly because something’s got to go.



Details inside.

Stocks proved their resilience once again, shaking off the U.S.-China tariff re-escalation fears and creeping back toward their early-October highs. An encouraging start to third-quarter earnings season helped, but that was mostly the banks. The real test will come in the next couple weeks, when most of the big tech companies report. So it’s still choppy waters out there. With that in mind, today we add another fairly low-risk play to the Stock of the Week portfolio in the form of a healthcare REIT that offers a decent yield. It’s a stock Tom Hutchinson just recommended to his Cabot Dividend Investor audience.

Details inside.

While I don’t like putting on bullish positions in the hours, or even days, after such a dramatic selloff, there are many ways you can take advantage of this volatility using options.

Two of our stocks reported earnings and opened lower this morning. I’m keeping one on Hold and moving the other, which was rated Buy, to Hold as well.

This stock reported first-quarter earnings that beat expectations last night. However, the stock declined in after-hours trading.

Sprout Social (SPT) reported a terrific Q4 yesterday and offered above-consensus guidance for 2022. Despite the good results and outlook, we’re going to sell another one-quarter position to take our stake down to one half today. The bottom line is it continues to be a challenging environment for pure growth stocks, and we need to continue to adapt to the times.

Cloudflare (NET) reported Q4 results yesterday that surpassed expectations. Revenue was up 54% to $193.6 million while adjusted EPS came in at $0.01. As compared to some other software stocks that have beat expectations, Cloudflare reinvested the surplus cash in growth initiatives, so it didn’t flow to the bottom line.

Last week’s recommendation, Virgin Galactic (SPCE), took off like a rocket and this week we go underground to recommend a premier global company that provides the backbone for future-oriented technologies such as green energy and electric vehicles.

Looking at the big picture impacting global stocks, U.S.-China haggling continues but the NAFTA redo looks like a done deal as we head into the end-of-year rush. As a result, our Emerging Markets Timer (EEM) moved into a stronger bullish position, putting some distance between its 25- and 50-day averages as it moves back towards 44.

Today’s stock is a name you’ll know. The company was born in the early days of the internet and today it’s all grown up—a major player in the world of financial transactions.

The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady and signaled it is open to cutting later this year, especially if economic growth and employment slow in an election year. Big tech earnings so far are a mixed bag and below elevated expectations.

But cybersecurity companies have been resilient due to ever-growing demand. And today, we add a familiar cybersecurity name to the Explorer portfolio.

As many analysts focus on inflation and the job market, they miss that earnings per share for companies in the S&P 500 for the first quarter now look to be up 5.2% from a year earlier, according to FactSet. Since profits and profit growth are the lifeblood of an economy and stock market, it pays to watch them closely.

For this week’s new idea, we go to a Canadian-based company focused on a different resource and technology crucial to North America and beyond.

Explorer stocks had a good week, but I wanted to highlight that recently, Warren Buffett sold almost 400 million of Apple (AAPL) stock during the second quarter. The Oracle of Omaha sold about 390 million shares of Apple stock, reducing Berkshire Hathaway’s ownership to roughly 400 million shares.

Granted, Berkshire booked some giant investment gains during the second quarter, with Apple accounting for a big share of those winnings. This is nothing to sneeze at, but why did Buffett and company decide to sell the shares, thereby missing out on some big capital gains? Forbes notes that Apple’s average closing price in the second quarter was 186, which is well below the 226 at which the stock closed on August 20.

The rally since the election continues as Bitcoin reached $90,000 for the first time. Tesla (TSLA) has climbed more than 40%, and the KBW Nasdaq Bank Index, which tracks shares of some of the nation’s largest lenders, is surging.

Dutch Bros (BROS) shares jumped 36% this week as it beat analysts’ expectations on the top and bottom lines while offering improved guidance for the remainder of 2024. Sea Limited (SE) soared 10.3% as the Singapore-based company reported overall net income that beat estimates at $153.3 million, with a better-than-projected 31% rise in revenue for the September quarter.

Thanks to ETFs, the largest asset management firm in the world is moving away from mutual fund managers. As an individual investor, you should too.

Running stock screens is a great way to find potential investment candidates, especially if you already have established requirements for new investments based on your investing system. But it can also be interesting to run stock screens just out of curiosity. Checking on which stocks have the highest yields, or lowest...

“The only way for a REIT to have done well between early 2007 and the March 2009 bottom would have been to have vanished and then reemerged after the storm, which brings us to two REITs, neither of which had to suffer through those 25 months: Pan Pacific Realty, which...