Search

July concluded with an impressive rally, led by strong earnings reactions from mega-cap technology stocks (MSFT/AMZN/AAPL) which helped propel the S&P 500 to gain 4.25% on the week, the Dow to rise 3%, and the Nasdaq to soar higher by 4.7%.

When investors perceive risk to be greatest (when the economic news is horrible) is when risk is actually lowest.

You don’t need to be independently wealthy in order to invest. Here are some ideas for investing small amounts of money that could pay off nicely over time.

It’s been a month since GameStop stock, Robinhood and Reddit captured America’s attention. Here are some good things that came out of it.

There are plenty of growth stocks in this bull market, but many are overvalued. Here are three growth stocks that still trade at a bargain.

Dividends are the most reliable indication of a company’s growth and stability. Dividends are the payments of a company’s hard-earned profits. A company’s ability to continually pay dividends provides concrete evidence that the company is performing well.

The Fables have been the source of lots of common catch-phrases in English.

Where does the market go from here after last week’s wipeout? Few stocks are safe to buy until the dust settles. But Square stock could be an exception.

Biotechs around the world are scrambling to find a coronavirus vaccine. These three small-cap biotech stocks appear to be among the closest.

What seemed like a sci-fi dream 50 years ago is getting closer to reality, but is now the time to invest in flying car stocks?

Searching for yield? North of the Border is a good place to look. Here are three Canadian stocks that offer high yields, according to Sure Dividend’s Bob Ciura.

Three years ago this month, I went to see my first movie in a theater since Covid. The film was Top Gun: Maverick, a movie that tapped into my 1980s nostalgia and was more entertaining and coherent than your average sequel. I wasn’t alone – the film grossed nearly $1.5 billion worldwide, making it the highest-grossing movie of Tom Cruise’s career, which is really saying something. Steven Spielberg thanked Cruise for “saving movie theaters.” He may have been right: In the two previous Covid-tainted years, 2020 and 2021, U.S. movie theaters grossed just over $6.5 billion combined – barely more than half of the industry’s 2018 peak of $11.89 billion.

Retail stocks are having a rough year.

The S&P SPDR Retail ETF (XRT) is down 3.8% year to date, and consumer discretionary as a whole has been the worst performing of the 11 major S&P sectors. It makes sense. Tariffs threaten to hit U.S. retailers hardest, including the many companies that sell products like toys, child car seats, and sports apparel (such as our own Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS)), most of which are made in places like China, Indonesia, Japan and Thailand – the places with the highest potential tariff rates. Combine that with escalating fears of a U.S. recession – also brought on by tariffs – and it could be a double whammy for retailers who don’t sell the essential everyday items that consumers buy regardless of the economic environment.

Most companies that were hit hard by Covid have recovered and then some. Many are faring better than ever. But because of investors’ narrow focus on the Magnificent 7 and a handful of artificial intelligence stocks the last two and a half years, share prices across various sectors have not kept pace with revenue and earnings growth. In recent months, we’ve capitalized on that discrepancy by pouncing on United Airlines (UAL), The Cheesecake Factory (CAKE) and, just last month, Carnival Corp. (CCL), with great success.

This month, we hope to mine another quick double-digit winner from the industrials sector. It’s a company that’s thriving like never before, but there’s been a significant lag between the fundamentals and the share price. We hope our timing in adding it to the portfolio now can produce UAL- or CCL-like rapid returns.

Details inside.

Current Market Outlook


For the first time in two months, last week saw some sellers stepping up to the plate, taking profits in leading names despite some good earnings reports. And today we saw very strong selling across the board, with leaders falling sharply across the board, including many that dipped toward support. In the short-term, given the prolonged run off the bottom, more consolidation is likely, so we’re fine taking a profit (or partial profit) here or there. Intermediate-term, though, we’re still optimistic—while some of the action looks iffy, very few (if any) leading stocks or indexes have broken down at this point, and these type of sharp, scary pullbacks (assuming they find support at logical levels) aren’t unusual during bull moves. We’re knocking our Market Monitor down a notch, thinking the near-term will be more challenging, but remain overall bullish.

This week’s list has a bunch of strong names that have recently emerged, so they shouldn’t have as much pent-up selling pressures. Our Top Pick is MercadoLibre (MELI), where business is reaccelerating and the stock just came out of a big consolidation.

Stock Name	Price	Buy Range	Loss Limit
Acacia Communications (ACIA)	51.83	53-56	47.5-49.5
CoStar Group (CSGP)	589.55	450-470	420-430
Cronos Group (CRON)	17.62	20-22	16.5-1705
DocuSign (DOCU)	107.98	52-54	46-47.5
Etsy (ETSY)	112.97	66.5-69.5	60-62
Euronet Worldwide (EEFT)	142.83	130-134	119-122
MercadoLibre, Inc. (MELI)	980.83	445-465	400-415
Novocure (NVCR)	0.00	50-53	45.5-47
Universal Display (OLED)	187.54	143-148	128-131
Zscaler (ZS)	126.22	55-58	49.5-51.5

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.

This note includes our review of earnings from Brookfield Reinsurance (BAMR).

There were no ratings changes or price target changes this week.



This will be a brief note this week. It’s been a busy earnings season and we’re on the road this weekend in upstate New York. My oldest son will be a senior in high school starting in a few weeks and is knee-deep in the college application process. Visiting a dozen or so schools is, of course, part of this process.