The 'Hidden' Stocks That Could Boom Next
An interview with Chaikin Analytics founder Marc Chaikin... Looking past the AI darlings... The hook for this market... The election cycle... The case for a 'broadening' market... Hear Marc's latest outlook for free...
He speaks with such a calm authority...
That's how Dan Ferris described Wall Street legend Marc Chaikin, the founder of our corporate affiliate Chaikin Analytics, after we recently interviewed him for the Stansberry Investor Hour podcast...
I (Corey McLaughlin) couldn't agree more... Since I first met Marc in 2021, I've always left a conversation with him learning something new about the markets. And it's always a pleasure listening to his outlook, no matter what it is. He oozes a comfortable confidence...
That's because Marc, who got his start on Wall Street in the 1960s, has seen it all. And he has invented investing tools that some of finance's biggest names have used over the decades. You can even find them on every Bloomberg terminal around the world.
Marc was practicing technical analysis decades before it became popular... He was also analyzing money flows to forecast future price action long before most. Marc even developed the industry-standard Chaikin Money Flow indicator.
After decades on Wall Street, he has shifted toward helping individual investors...
Marc was able to "retire" early in 1999 in Connecticut, where he thought he'd spend the rest of his days relaxing and playing tennis.
A decade later, though – after watching his wife's portfolio (and thousands of others) struggle through the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 – he decided to go back to work, but this time, for individual investors...
In 2011, Marc started his own company, Chaikin Analytics, and began sharing his Wall Street expertise with everyday investors.
Among other tools, Marc developed the Power Gauge system, based on a 20-factor model that assigns a simple rating to thousands of stocks and exchange-traded funds ("ETFs"). I can tell you from first-hand experience that the platform is intuitive, easy to use, and fascinating.
Now, Marc is gearing up to share his latest market outlook with the public... on everything from artificial intelligence ("AI") to the presidential election in November and how you can find stocks worth buying today, including "hidden gems" linked to the AI boom.
In short, Marc says investors should be looking past AI darling Nvidia (NVDA) and other headliners to other, smaller companies that he has identified could ride this part of the AI boom higher.
The free event goes live tomorrow night at 8 p.m. Eastern time. You can register here.
But today, I want to share excerpts of our recent interview with Marc, which you can find in full on our Stansberry Research YouTube page, InvestorHour.com, and other traditional podcast platforms.
In this portion of the interview, Marc describes the presidential-election cycle's historical correlation with stock market performance, shares his take on the "narrowness" of current market leadership, and the stocks he's eyeing to buy right now...
Without further ado...
Dan: Let us begin where we left off in November 2023. The market has done pretty well since then, and you've been bullish, haven't you?
Marc: I have remained bullish for the last six or seven months, and part of the reason is the election-year cycle, which has really been like a road map for us for the last three years. What it tells us is that in a presidential-election year, the market finishes strong. In 16 out of the last 18 presidential-election years, the market has been up. And there's a sweet spot in that cycle, which is the June-to-August time frame.
We were expecting a little bit of chop in the market, which we got in April when the tech stocks corrected. But we're entering that sweet spot right now. Even more to the point, from June 1 through the end of the year, the market is typically up in a presidential-election year by an average of about 10%...
The first two weeks of July [is] the best single two-week period going all the way back to 1928 in the stock market year in and year out... regardless of an election year or anything else... You can call it seasonality, but I prefer to call it the presidential cycle that's supporting a bullish outlook.
Dan: If it's bullish because it's a presidential-election year, what do you think about a surprise? Elections can surprise people. They sure did in 2016. How do you feel about that prospect?
Marc: The market is typically very nervous in the four-to-six weeks leading up to the election. So in 2016, the market was actually down for about a month heading into the election. And then after [Donald] Trump beat [Hillary] Clinton, the market took off again. So, yes, there's always the possibility of a surprise, particularly in this overheated political climate. But that's why it's really the June-to-August period [that is the sweet spot], then a bit of a pause and preparing for a potential surprise, and then finishing the year strong. A surprise is possible, but it certainly would be a buying opportunity. It's not something that spooks me.
How to ride the presidential-election cycle...
Dan: Does it make sense to look at specific sectors in an election year?
Marc: I prefer to look at more of a real-time snapshot of the sectors because they pretty much tell us everything we need to know. And right now, even though the headlines are dominated by tech and obviously AI and the software that's going to benefit from these AI chips that Nvidia is making, you also have financials, utilities, health care [that are] strong. The market is, in a sense, broadening. It's just not garnering the type of headline that you would expect. For instance, in the insurance industry, there are lots of attractive stocks based on the Chaikin Power Gauge rating. When I talk about attractive [stocks] or a good sector, it's based on our proprietary 20-factor Power Gauge.
Corey: The track record of the presidential-election cycle in the markets is there. My question is, why does this tend to happen? Is it the promise of politicians, no matter who they are, to boost the economy heading into November, or something else?
Marc: In this case, it's the fact that the [Federal Reserve] has stopped raising interest rates – and whether they cut in the fourth quarter or not is still to be determined – and strong corporate earnings. You've got this AI boom, which is driving a whole sector of the market that in the cap-weighted ETFs like SPY [for the S&P 500 Index] and QQQ [for the Nasdaq 100 Index], they're dominant. And there's an awful lot of money flowing into the market, over $96 billion so far in 2024. A lot of that goes into these passive funds that are capitalization-weighted and they've got to buy Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft in proportion to their weightings in the ETFs.
But the bottom line is, earnings are going up, profit margins are improving, and inflation is going down despite the headlines that you're seeing about stubbornness and so forth. You've got a number of very positive factors driving the economy, and so I think in any election year, something is a hook that the market keys on. In this case, it's earnings and if not an easing by the Fed, certainly no more tightening. That's very bullish for stocks.
Is this market too concentrated?...
Dan: I see a lot of commentary about the incredibly narrow breadth and leadership in this market. It's never been like this, the market has never been so concentrated. That doesn't bother you?
Marc: No, it's just an oddity. I just read a study today that showed there are five instances since 1990 when we had this kind of breadth, although the S&P 500 and [Nasdaq Composite Index] are much more overbought. And in each of those five instances, the market was higher six and 12 months later. The period from, say, two to six months is choppier where some years are up and some are down. But I actually think there's going to be a broadening out and that's part of what we're very excited about [with] this upcoming product launch because I think stocks like Nvidia, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and now Adobe, they're all riding the AI wave, [and] a very, very positive impact on earnings. But I think it's going to broaden out. And that's what we're really looking for, the sort of undiscovered stocks that aren't in the headlines right now.
Dan: What tells you that? Is that a Power Gauge reading or something else?
Marc: It's something else. There are a series of momentum patterns that triggered in December 2023 and January 2024. The most obvious one is the percentage of stocks in the S&P Composite 1500 Index, so that's large-cap, mid-cap, and small-cap – 90% of those stocks in December were above their 50-day [moving] average. And every time that has happened, the market has been higher six and 12 months later and mid-caps have outperformed large-caps.
That was what clued me in, and then you had the mid-cap index making a new high after failing to do so for a year. A lot of things are falling into place that tell me this market is broadening out. Now, if you look at the headlines, you'd never know it, but that's why we think there's opportunity coming up very soon.
The stocks to watch (and how Marc finds them)...
Dan: You already named some sectors... utilities... health care. Do you focus your bets on those?
Marc: We'll be looking for the strongest stocks in the industry groups. Utilities is a really special case. Normally this is a defensive sector, and these stocks tend to go opposite to the tech sector, but it's all about power. AI chips and AI data centers require power. There are a lot of alternative-energy companies in the utility sector that are generating power and are capable of doing that for AI data centers. It's sort of a different ballgame with utilities...
My partner Pete Carmasino has picked up on that in his Chaikin PowerTactics. He's looking for these shifts and there are [a] number of stocks in that sector that just are dynamite, and also in health care. We're just very opportunistic. We want to find the strongest stocks based on the Power Gauge in the strongest sectors and industry groups.
Dan: Throw in consumer staples and those are three sectors normally thought of as defensive...
Marc: Health care has always been a problem for me and an opportunity, because it was defensive, but there's really a lot of growth opportunity in health care. Just look at Eli Lilly. That is not a defensive stock or a defensive sector anymore. We'll find them wherever they come up. There are still some software stocks in the mid-cap sector that haven't gained much public awareness. I'm talking about stocks with market caps of $2 [billion] to $10 billion.
Dan: It has been a mega-cap world for the past several years, hasn't it?
Marc: It has been indeed. Think about it... what is a mid-cap stock? Let's just look at the S&P MidCap 400 Index. These are stocks that are on the verge of being added to the S&P 500... They're your next wave or next generation of stocks that are going to be on people's radar screens. But there's another reason that I like mid-caps.
When I see a trend or an indication that things are going to change, I always try and figure out why – apropos of what Corey asked before – and I think mid-cap companies are in a position to implement AI and be more nimble than some of the large companies in the S&P 500 who have legacy software or a much more layered management structure.
You've got to be using AI to increase productivity, make the supply chain more efficient, and have better interactions with your customers. Mid-cap companies are in a unique position where they can implement AI and boost profit margins, and that's what the next five years are going to be all about: increased profit margins across the board.
If you're interested in hearing more from Marc...
Don't miss his free presentation going live tomorrow (Wednesday) night at 8 p.m. Eastern time... where he'll share more about how he's finding "hidden gems" in this market that he believes are poised to boom higher... and soon...
He's also going to explain a straightforward investing approach that brings him back to his early days on Wall Street. He says it could beat the S&P 500 by fourfold over the next year, based on a signal that has been 100% accurate since 1943. (He has never detailed this signal in full to anyone before.) As Marc told us...
This is very personal to me. This is what I went to Wall Street to do: Pick stocks. I like discovering new stocks... that have great valuations, bullish Power Gauge ratings, that are in the right industries, and so forth.
During the presentation, Marc also plans to talk about more about the bullish signals he's seeing with his stock-rating tool the Power Gauge, and he'll show you exactly to put this system and his investing strategy to work…
Click here to sign up to listen to or watch Marc's event. When you sign up, you'll get access to free information he's sending to folks who are planning to attend and receive reminders so you don't miss anything. And stay tuned... we'll have more from our conversation with Marc in tomorrow evening's Digest.
New 52-week highs (as of 6/24/24): Alpha Architect 1-3 Month Box Fund (BOXX), Brown & Brown (BRO), Colgate-Palmolive (CL), Kinder Morgan (KMI), Lockheed Martin (LMT), Motorola Solutions (MSI), Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN), Roper Technologies (ROP), and Verisk Analytics (VRSK).
In today's mailbag, more feedback on Dan's latest Friday essay about the hype around artificial intelligence... Do you have a comment or question? As always, e-mail us at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.
"Everybody focuses on the I (intelligence) but nobody seems to care about the A (artificial). If it's not human, it's not intelligent. It might be really good at analyzing data (given the correct instructions by HUMAN intelligence), but in and of itself, it is certainly not intelligent." – Subscriber Tim P.
All the best,
Corey McLaughlin with Dan Ferris
Baltimore, Maryland, and Eagle Point, Oregon
June 25, 2024