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A few weeks ago, I wrote here about investing in master limited partnerships, or MLPs, and invited you to send in your questions about owning MLPs. (You can read the original article here if you missed it.) The tax issues surrounding these high-yield investments can get pretty complicated,...

The Best Strategies to Keep Inflation from Draining Your Wallet

Tuesday’s edition of The New York Times had a stock-centric article titled, “The S&P is Nearing a Record. Really.” The subtext, of course, is that stocks have climbed near February all-time highs despite a bevy of geopolitical tensions, potential economic landmines, and widespread investor and consumer pessimism. As I wrote last week, the market has fully recovered from its tariff-fueled cratering of late March and early April, but lingering uncertainties threaten to derail it at any moment … and that was before Israel and Iran started bombing each other.

Wall Street analysts expect stocks to be flat for the rest of the year. That’s according to a new Reuters poll, which surveyed 51 strategists, analysts, brokers and portfolio managers. Among them, the average year-end target for the S&P 500 was 5,900 – roughly in line with the current price, and essentially unmoved since the start of the year.

That’s not exactly exciting news, even if 5,900 would have felt like a win in early April, when the benchmark index dipped below 5,000 after President Trump’s now-infamous “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariff announcement. The rally since then has been impressive, but analysts aren’t confident we’ll get much more movement through the final seven months of the year.

Stocks are back in business!

Yes, a little more than a month after some of the worst investor sentiment readings in years, soaring volatility, and a 19% decline in the S&P 500 – not to mention both the Nasdaq and the Russell 2000 swinging to bear market territory – stocks are suddenly on a roll, recession fears are abating, and, perhaps most importantly, tariff deals have been struck. The 90-day pause on most reciprocal tariffs initiated by President Trump on April 9 – one week after the deeply unpopular “Liberation Day” was announced – triggered one of the biggest one-day rallies in stock market history. Indexes flirted with their early-April lows two weeks later but eventually stabilized, and May has brought a wave of positive tariff news – first, a deal with the United Kingdom, in which key imports like cars were reduced to 10% and steel and aluminum tariffs were eliminated; then, last weekend came a 90-day truce with China. That sent stocks soaring more than 3% on Monday, and they haven’t looked back.

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!

Remember fintech? It was one of the biggest buzzwords on Wall Street a couple years ago until AI came in and gobbled up all investors’ attention. But the nascent sector never stopped growing, and now share prices are well below their apex as investors have largely ignored the sector the last couple years. In fact, this month’s new fintech addition to the Cabot Value Investor portfolio has almost never been cheaper since coming public in 2020. And yet, the company is still expanding both sales and earnings by more than 25% annually.

It’s a classic growth-at-value-prices story. And we think it has 45% upside in the short-to-intermediate term. Details inside.

The best indication that a company is prospering is its history of dividend payments.

Dover Corp. (DOV) and Family Dollar Stores (FDO) are blue chip companies that currently sell at attractive prices.

Learn these stock market basics, and you’ll be well on your way to making smart investment decisions. Keep reading to learn more.

In today’s Stock Market Crash Course, majority opinion says that the market will experience a short correction before testing pre-crash highs this Spring. But in a contrarian exercise, I look at what the other side is saying. Includes views from The Stock Traders Almanac, Cabot Options Trader, Technical Disciplines and...

“Investors steadily increased purchases of variable annuities with guaranteed benefits in recent years. These annuities clearly are striking the interest of a substantial number of investors. But they’re complicated, and I doubt most of the buyers fully understand them or know how to compare them to alternatives. There are several...

After a rough start to the year, renewable energy stocks are suddenly surging again. Here are three in particular that I like.

AI dominated the media and the stock market in 2023, but what revolutionary new tech product will take the reins in 2024? Allow me to make a case for flying cars.

New technologies often require new inputs, and for Greentech to flourish we’ll need new types of semiconductors. These 3 chip stocks are leading the way.

Although trade talks are underway and global conflict has seized the headlines, the U.S.-China rivalry is as intense as ever. Here are the stocks to buy and avoid, plus resources to learn more.

Happy Tax Day, I suppose. After filing my taxes, I have only one thing to say, and that is this: Taxes should be simpler. Now, on to something less intractable and politically fraught. Last Friday’s The New York Times included an interesting article on efforts to create a diamond-backed investment vehicle (you...

Just wanted to start with a quick word of optimism about the future of the stock market, and the potential for making money in the months and years to come. I was pleased to attend the Contrary Opinion Forum in Vermont last weekend with Timothy Lutts--Tim’s been going for 22 years straight, while this is my fourth or fifth visit since I came to Cabot back in 1999--and it’s always a treat.

Politics and cannabis investing go hand in hand, and if it becomes a wedge issue, the politicians may finally catch up to the voters’ position.

With election primaries heating up it’s worth considering the candidates’ positions on cannabis reform and the impact that could have on cannabis stocks.