I hope you had a restful long holiday weekend. Even IRVING’s AI took Labor Day off.
And so, today marks the seventh day in our trading cycle.
September has started off with stocks in the red.
The weakness comes as the major indexes reflect uncertainty over the constitutionality of U.S. tariffs. Last week, a federal appeals court ruled that most of President Trump’s tariffs are illegal.
Now, it’s in the Supreme Court’s hands. And the Trump administration has until Oct. 14 to appeal.
It was just five months ago, on April 2, when global tariffs were announced. It’s interesting to see that the markets are almost as uncertain about their potential repeal as their implementation.
Either way, we got some great buying opportunities then …
And we’ll use the current weakness to our advantage to make four new buys today.
First, IRVING’s AI recommends making three “sells” to clear the way.
Let’s start with those:
Sell:
- Howmet Aerospace (HWM)
- Vistra (VST)
- Kemper (KMPR)
For those of you who recently joined us, you’ll see we don’t have time to get too attached to names here.
Sometimes they only stay with us for seven trading days, as is the case with Howmet, Vistra and Kemper.
Kemper got downgraded to a “C+” last week because of a decline in volatility and total return, two of our proprietary indexes.
Because it’s now a “Hold,” that makes Kemper an automatic sell.
Howmet and Vistra continue to have solid “B” (“Buy”) ratings. But they simply didn’t make the cut this week.
We track a 2.5% gain in Kemper, a near-1% gain in Howmet and a 2.5% dip in Vistra.
We’ll exit those in Dr. Martin Weiss’ portfolio later today.
We recommend you do the same as soon as you can.
Buy:
- SAP (SAP)
- Carrier Global (CARR)
- ESAB Corp. (ESAB)
- AptarGroup (ATR)
The stocks IRVING’s AI picked to buy and hold for the next seven trading days are heavy on industrials.
SAP, for example, provides industry-specific enterprise software.
This is our third shot at SAP this summer. We recently exited with a loss and then a gain. So IRVING’s AI is looking for this third time to be a charm.
Carrier, headquartered nearby in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, is practically synonymous with summer.
It specializes in HVAC, fire and security equipment and more. And IRVING’s AI suggests it’s a hot investment here in these dog days of this long, hot season as it draws to a close.
ESAB is an industrial company that was founded in Sweden over a century ago.
Today, it has executive offices just outside the Beltway, in Bethesda, Maryland. And it’s a global leader in welding and cutting machines and processes.
And finally, AptarGroup makes all kinds of products for the pharmaceutical, personal care, home care, beauty and food and beverage markets. Think packaging, drug delivery, dispensers and other consumer-facing devices.
Here are today’s prices on those new buys, for reference:
- SAP opened today at $266.83.
- CARR opened at $64.16.
- ESAB opened at $113.61.
- ATR opened at $137.42.
So let’s welcome all four to their new seven-day rotation.
We’ll check back on Thursday, Sept. 11, to see how they’re doing and whether they get another tour.
Hold:
- Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP)
This week, Coca-Cola Europacific is the only stock that stays with us for another seven-trading-day tour.
The stock is down 3% from our tracked $90.11 entry. So we could easily see it rally back into the green on an up day.
It continues to boast a strong “B+” rating, so it’s no surprise IRVING’s AI selected it to stay on the buy list.
If you’re new to this publication and don’t own it already, this is a good price to buy it.
Also, if you’re just joining us, IRVING’s AI tells us what to buy and sell every seven trading days.
Here’s the trading schedule for 2025.
If you came prepared to buy up to 20 stocks, that’s great. Be sure to keep that powder dry.
This was another “lightweight” week for stocks in this publication.
But between tariff-related volatility and a more-imminent event …
The Wednesday, Sept. 17 Federal Open Market Committee meeting, which could bring about our first interest-rate cut since last September …
It’s not surprising that IRVING’s given us a smaller stock list to keep in play.
Fortunately, we won’t be trading on FOMC announcement day.
You can go ahead and mark Thursday, Sept. 11, and Friday, Sept. 19, on your calendar, though.
And if anything else changes in the meantime, I’ll let you know.
Take care,
AL Qureiyeh
