The Brian Bolan Show!

Zacks Ultimate Subscribers,

This is Brian Bolan filling in for the Ultimate Editor Jim Giaquinto.  Jim likes to take a break here and there and let David Bartosiak or myself take the helm for a night.  I have done this plenty of times in the past and I was made aware of the “opportunity” on Monday. 

Knowing this is a monthly “opportunity” at best, I decided to make the market do my bidding so that I could talk about me, myself and I. I mean the other editors helped me out by not adding or subtracting anything from their portfolios. 

The only action, in terms of buys and sells was from me.  If you didn’t know, I run Home Run Investor which added shares of Altair Engineering (ALTR) today.  To make room for that stock, I sold KLIC as we have 15 stocks and for every new buy we have to sell another name.

As well as running Home Run, I also had some action in Technology Innovators today.  I moved to add shares of Zuora (ZUO) to the portfolio that has 14 names in it.  15 will be considered a full portfolio there as well and we could get there before the end of the week.

The Tech Innovators portfolio was responsible for 3 of the top 5 movers of the day.  FSCT was up 7%, NFLX ran more than 4% and DOCU added 3.5% and is now up more than 10% since it was added to the portfolio.

Not All About Me

Short List isn’t a service that a lot of you follow, but it found its way to short a name that Muddy Waters hit today.  TAL used to be in Home Run Investor back when Dave managed that service.  I told him to take that gain before I take it over as I would be selling it because I don’t trust most Chinese stocks.

Muddy Waters says that TAL is a real company, but they over fraudulently overstated revenues, earnings and assets over the last couple of years.

TAL was down, but since Short List was short the stock that service gained about 10% on that holding.

Stocks Under $10

I have talked a bit about Home Run and Tech Innovators, but I haven’t mentioned the third and most popular service that I run.  Stocks Under $10 had one of the 5 top movers in IMGN which posted a gain of 5% today.

In that portfolio, I am happy to see LSCC posting a gain of 3% today along with the nice gain in IMGN.

Fed Raises Rates

I am sure you heard that the Fed raised rates today.  That was widely expected and so was the idea of having a few more rate hikes this year.  I say that now, but there are plenty of growing suspicions that they will not be that many future rate hikes.

Fewer hikes would be better for rate sensitive sectors like the homebuilders.  Remember that Trump at his core is a builder, so he likes the idea of low interest rates.  Don’t be too surprised if he pushes for only one more hike this year instead of two.

Major Indices

All the major indices lost ground today, with the Dow leading the way down 0.47%.  Most of the loss from the Dow came after the Fed decision, and the selling was still brisk at the close.

The S&P 500 followed a similar path as the Dow and was off by 0.4%.

Tech-heavy NASDAQ was firmly in the green for most of the session but lost momentum when the Fed statement was released.  The index went red but bounced back to green before ultimately sliding 8 points or about 0.11% on the day.

That is all for the Brian Bolan show … Jim will be back tomorrow.

See you soon!

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