Top 50 Stocks
Intuitive Surgical reports a surprisingly strong first quarter
Last week Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) surprised everybody, including, apparently, management. Intuitive Surgical’s first-quarter revenue grew 14% year-over-year to $1.7 billion. (Wall Street was expecting $1.6 billion.) Surgical procedures performed using the company’s da Vinci system, rose 26% year-over-year, well above expectations for 15% growth. And the company raised guidance for global procedure growth to 18% to 21% from the prior guidance of 12% to 16%.
PC sales didn’t fall in Q1;: they plummeted with Apple leading the way down
Shipments by all PC makers slumped 29% in the first quarter to a level below that in early 2019, according to tech market analysts at IDC. Lenovo Group and Dell Technologies registered drops of more than 30%, while HP (HPQ) was down 24.2%. No major brand was spared from the slowdown, with Asustek Computer Inc. rounding out the top 5 with a 30.3% fall. But Apple (AAPL)let the plunge with personal computer shipments down by 40.5% in the first quarter.
Bookkeeping: I added NVDA, MSFT, and Adobe to my Volatility Portfolio on March 24
In Step #3 of my Special Report: 5 Moves for the Next 5 Months, on March 24 I added three Big Tech stocks–Microsoft (MSFT), Adobe (ADBE), and Nvidia (NVDA) to my Volatility Portfolio ahead of earnings season. My theory, explained in that post was that we were facing a tough earnings season for most stocks and that reliable earnings growth from Big Tech would make those stocks look like a safe haven in a period when the Standard & Poor’s 500 as a whole was projected to show a drop in earnings. (I also owned up to my mistake in selling Nvidia back on February 16. That was just wrong. More on why I was wrong and why I’ve changed my mind on that in a post tomorrow or so.)
Buying Schwab Put Options on outlook for a very rocky April 17 earnings report
This is shaping up as a very tough earnings season for all financial stocks. But no stock looks more exposed to a short-term hit than Charles Schwab (SCHW.) Which is why I’m adding the May 19 Put Options with a strike of $52.50 to my Volatility Portfolio tomorrow, March 29.
Please Watch My New YouTube Video: Voter Suppression…in China
This week’s Trend of the Week is Voter Suppression…in China. During the most recent National People’s Congress in China, two people were notably not invited–entrepreneurs Tony and Pony Ma, the heads of Alibaba and Tencent. Other entrepreneurs were also notable for their absence. Xi Jinping has made it clear that entrepreneurs have a much smaller role in his economy going forward, as he looks to consolidate power in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party and prevent any potential competition from power centers. Xi’s new policies, coming out of the National People’s Congress, focus on spending by state-run businesses and emphasize consumer spending, as opposed to infrastructure, as a source of economic stimulus. So how should you invest in China? Despite Pony Ma’s absence at the People’s Congress, Tencent Holdings (OTCMKTS: TCEHY) remains at the forefront of Chinese innovation and technology. It’s clear that China will not adopt US-made chatbots and will develop its own. Tencent looks likely to take a leading role in that effort. The company is also the dominant game producer in the world and gets a lot of its revenue from outside of China. It’s the China stock I’d look at for the long term. In the short term, I’d look at JD.com, which is well-suited to get a bounce from the emphasis on consumer spending. The current price is a good entry point. I’ll be adding it to my JubakPicks.com portfolio tomorrow.
Shares of Palo Alto Networks pop on earnings
After the market close on February 21, cyber security company Palo Alto Networks (PANW) reported fiscal second-quarter 2023 year-over-year revenue growth of 26% to $1.7 billion. Billings in the quarter also rose by 26% to $2.0 billion. The rock-solid consistency of revenue and billings growth in this quarter and as projected for the rest of the year got a cheer from the market. In after-hours trading shares gained 8.56%.
Special Report: 7 AI Stocks to Own Now–with a couple of speculative picks to come on Thursday
You can understand the gold rush: One AI stock is up 105% (and 78% in the last month) in 2023 as of the February 17 close.
But are shares of that company, the software artificial company C3A (AI), the stock you want to own, or is this stock simply a beneficiary of hot money jumping on anything that sounds like artificial intelligence? As one market observer put it on Seeking Alpha recently, “The ticker is more valuable than the company.” This doesn’t mean that the current revolution in artificial intelligence isn’t real. And here I give you my 7 picks for investing in the latest AI revolution
Wednesday’s rally in the market’s most speculative stocks is the last straw for me: I said I’d be a seller into any post-Fed rally–but what specifically would I be selling? Here are the 12 stocks I’d sell now
The rally on February 15 sure looked like a speculative blowout of the kind that often signals a market top. For me, it was the last straw and I’m selling into the rally. This post tells you what I’m selling and how I arrived at these decisions. But first, a few words on Wednesday’s move.
Microsoft launches AI-enhanced version of its search engine Bing; Google responds with Bard
This isn’t exactly unexpected. Microsoft (MSFT) today unveiled new versions of its Bing search engine and Edge browser powered by the newest artificial intelligence technology from ChatGPT maker OpenAI. Microsoft recently invested $10 billion in OpenAI.
Wall Street has second thoughts on yesterday’s Microsoft earnings
Yesterday, shares of Microsoft (MSFT) rose by more than 4.6% on an earnings report for the December quarter that showed the company slightly beating analyst estimates on earnings and training only slightly on revenue. Today, investors and traders had second thoughts. The stock was down as much as 4.6% in morning trading (That’s down from the close yesterday and not from the after-hours price.) The stock ended the day down just 059% but that was enough to erase all the after-hours gains from the previous day. So what caused the second thoughts?
Microsoft beats on earnings but Azure growth slows more than expected
After the market close today, Microsoft (MSFT) announced earnings of $2.32 a share, just beating Wall Street forecasts of $2.30 a share. That was a 6.5% drop from the December 2021 quarter, however. Revenue missed expectations at $52.7 billion versus a forecasted $52.9 billion. But the big news was that revenues for Azure, the company’s key cloud computing software unit, rose just 31% year over year in the quarter. That badly trailed Wall Street forecasts that called for 36.8% year-over-year growth in the December quarter.
Jim’s Stock Alerts
Download Jim’s eBook for Free
