Drifting Higher into the Holiday

Tuesday’s session looked a lot like yesterday’s, including positive sentiment on a trade deal and record highs for each of the major indices.

The U.S. and China continue to talk to each other, and President Trump said the two sides were in the “final throes of a very important deal”.

Stocks still appreciate these positive yet vague statements. The S&P rose 0.22% to 3140.52, while the Dow increased 0.20% (or about 55 points) to 28,121.68. The NASDAQ was up 0.18% (or around 15 points) to 8,647.93.

That marks a second straight day of record highs for each of the major indices. ANY positive close today would have made another round of history for stocks.

Along with the trade news, we also enjoyed encouraging data from a few retailers. Best Buy is the country’s largest brick-and-mortar electronics retailer, so investors loved to hear that it raised its fiscal 2020 earnings guidance amid a solid quarterly report.

Shares jumped nearly 10% on Tuesday and are up a bit afterhours, as of this writing.

Strong earnings reports from Dick’s Sporting Goods and Burlington Stores led to large share increases of 18.6% and 8.5%, respectively.

Needless to say, we’re all paying close attention to retail now that the holiday season officially begins on Thursday. However, the holiday shopping season began weeks ago, though it will intensify from here.

Tomorrow promises to be a pretty slow day as a countless number of people hit the road to be with their families on Thanksgiving. However, when the market is at new highs, it doesn’t take much volume to push the indices further into record territory.

Today's Portfolio Highlights:

Counterstrike: When Jeremy bought Paycom (PAYC) back in September, he was taking advantage of a selloff. Well, it worked! This provider of cloud-based human capital management software is approaching the editor’s targets, so he decided to sell the stock and bank a nice 32.9% return in a little over two months.

Technology Innovators: Shares of Nutantix (NTNX) jumped 16.4% on Tuesday, making this enterprise cloud platform provider the best performing stock of the day among all ZU portfolios. Last night, the company reported earnings and revenue that beat Zacks Consensus Estimates, while showing progress in its ongoing transition to a subscription-based model. NTNX is now the third best performer in the portfolio with an advance of nearly 37.5% since being added in late August.

Zacks Short List: This week’s adjustment included two swaps. The portfolio short-covered Cheniere Energy (LNG, +2%) and Eldorado Resorts (ERI), and then replaced those names by adding Palo Alto Networks (PANW) and PTC (PTC). Learn more about this emotion-free portfolio that takes advantage of falling and volatile markets by reading the Short List Trader Guide.

All the Best,
Jim Giaquinto

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