How Our New Picks Are Doing So Far

Our three new picks this month got off to a bit of a slow start, but they have all recovered very nicely. What’s more, due to the stocks’ price action, most of our readers probably were able to buy shares of these new recommendations at better entry prices than we did and should be sitting on pretty nice gains in a short amount of time, especially in the case of ChannelAdvisor (NYSE: ECOM).

In just one week, ECOM has quickly rallied from below $10 a share to about $11.50. It has quickly eclipsed our initial suggested buy-up-to price of $11.25. We’ve upgraded our suggested buy-up-to price to $12.

The stock was already performing well early in the week, and received a further 7.4 percent boost yesterday after an analyst upgraded the stock to “overweight” with a $13 twelve-month price target.

Here, we clarify that our own buy-up-to price suggestion is not the same as a price target. Rather, it’s a price at which we think shares would become overbought given current conditions. Our suggested buy-up-to price will be constantly adjusted depending on how things change.

ViaSat (Nasdaq: VSAT), which fell below $60 shortly after joining our portfolio has likewise bounced back. It now trades at about $63 a share. We think the market under-appreciates the company’s potential in government and defense, as well as potential to serve the vast emerging markets.

TAL Education (NYSE: TAL) suffered a big 7.9 percent decline on August 25 for no apparent reason. As we noted in the last week’s weekly issue, we think that the decline was more likely a price correction, creating a buying opportunity, than any meaningful change in the company’s growth trajectory. The stock has since rallied back very quickly to about $31 a share.

Please see the “Portfolio” section of our website for more details on our entry points and current suggested buy-up-to prices.

On Thursday, we removed three stocks from our portfolio. We took gains on Theravance Biopharma (Nasdaq: TBPH) and Franco-Nevada (NYSE: FNV). After TBPH fell sharply in early August we repeatedly highlighted the buying opportunity. The share price very quickly came back with a vengeance, from a nadir of $23.88 on August 9 to close above $32 yesterday, above our suggested buy-up-to price. Given the volatile nature of the price movement, we decided to take the gain (28.3 percent).

Franco-Nevada, too, exceeded our suggested buy-up-to price thanks to gold’s recent strength. The stock has performed very well for us since joining our portfolio in November 2016. We likewise decided to take the gain (including dividend, the return was 35.8 percent). If gold were to pull back, the stock price would likewise decline.

We also cut our ties with USG Corporation (NYSE: USG). We had already downgraded the disappointing stock to a “hold” and were waiting for an opportunity to sell. Hurricane Harvey provided a price bump—due to market expectation of higher demand for building materials to rebuild. We took the opportunity and sold the stock. Sure enough, after our sale, the stock has fallen below $30 a share as of noon today.

We took an 11.5 percent loss on this trade, but it could have been worse. The stock was simply a dud. Even our reference guru and long-time USG shareholder Warren Buffett had expressed his disappointment. We felt it was time to move on.

 

 

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