VIDEO: Four Shopping List Stocks We’re Watching

In today’s Daily Rundown video, Chris Versace lays out the events and economic data that the Portfolio will be paying close attention to this week, including Qualcomm’s QCOM Investor Day and Nvidia NVDA earnings. 

Chris also shares what we’ll be watching as retailers, including Walmart WMT, report this week, and why Friday’s Flash November PMI data will be a must-watch item. Finally, he also discusses four shopping list stocks on our radar this week, including two that are oversold. 

Transcript

CHRIS VERSACE: Hey, folks, Chris Versace here, Monday, November 18. Start of a new week and we are entering the second half not only of November, but of the last quarter of the year. I hope you had a great weekend. I hope you were able to digest the latest round of portfolio signals. I think we called them cliff notes over this past weekend. And I also hope you were able to enjoy some of the latest things that caught our attention, whether they're article streams or books better known as the "Sunday soup".

But let's now turn our attention to the coming days. We do have a few things that we are watching. We've got some events we'll call them. Qualcomm has their investor event where they're going to really discuss about their diversification efforts away from the smartphone market. I expect that they're going to really talk quite a bit about the AI PC initiative that they have, and how that can really drive favorable revenue, and again, really diversify away. I expect them to talk about relationships with a number of PC vendors and the number of platforms. And I'm thinking that this will really help Wall Street wrap its head around the opportunity.

I do think that diversification away from the smartphone market will be a good thing for Qualcomm. It will help folks rethink how they evaluate it, how seasonable the business might be, and how overly reliant it might be on just a handful of customers, even though it's rather well-diversified. We also have earnings this week from NVIDIA and elastic. So we'll be breaking down those results in guidance. I do think that NVIDIA, given all the comments that we've had about AI adoption, TSMs revenues over the last couple of months, very strong on high performance computing, I do think that the quarter should be a very solid one for NVIDIA. And I suspect that CEO Jensen Huang is going to give a very upbeat outlook.

With Elastic, again, a lot of enterprise adoption. We're going to be looking to see what they put up. It should be good. If it does pull back, we'll have an opportunity to pick up some more shares, which I would like to do. But we will remain disciplined. But we'll be navigating those reports as we get them. Of course, sharing our latest insights with you via Alerts as they happen.

We also on deck this week have earnings from Walmart, Target, Gap and Ross Stores. Two things that these earnings will bring. One, another snapshot on the consumer. We'll be able to see, for example, comparing Walmart and what they say about grocery and about trading down compared to what target has to say. We'll also by comparing and contrasting Gap versus Ross Stores, are people schlepping to shop as they say. Are they looking for discounts or are they kind of a little more comfortable confident, and they're going a little more full price at the Gap, for example?

So we'll be parsing all of that. And all of this is important because the second part, their outlook will include color for what they expect on the all important holiday shopping season. Next week is Thanksgiving. That means that almost immediately after the race is on for the holiday shopping season. Remember, too, that Thanksgiving tends to fall a little bit later this year. I suspect that means the period from Black Friday to Cyber Monday will be busier than we have seen in the last few years, but we will parse that data as we get it, sharing it with you.

And speaking of data, we do have a couple of things this week. Housing-- October starts existing home sales. We'll have to watch those. Housing starts might be impacted a little bit by the hurricanes that we saw. Existing home sales as well. But remember, existing home sales is kind of a little bit for us, a leading indicator for new home sales.

Got to sell a home usually to buy a home, get the down payment. So we'll be watching that closely, parsing all that data and what it means for our shares of Builders FirstSource, United Rentals, Vulcan Materials as well. The other key piece of data that we will be watching comes on Friday. This is going to be the S&P Global Flash November PMI. I talked about it a little bit in Friday's roundup, but just to make sure we cover it, we're going to want to see what does this flash PMI say about the manufacturing economy during November. Did it turn up or is it just continuing to be soft, which has been the trend of the last few months? But also too, what are we seeing inside that manufacturing economy in terms of hiring, inflation? These will be key.

Same thing with the services economy, which has been really carrying the overall economy. Is the new order strength there indicating that as we go into the month of December, that part of the economy continues to hum? Also, too, employment inflation, because almost around the corner right after Thanksgiving, we will get the November employment report. And as we know, the October employment report was kind of noisy, kind of messy. So we'll want to get a real bead on the hiring and labor market.

So this will be a first indication of that. Now, let's talk a second about the portfolio. We will be sharing today an updated table of consensus earnings expectations for all the holdings. We'll also be doing the same for panic points. And I suspect that we will be making some modest adjustments there. But also, we've had a few requests for an updated list of potential pickup points for the portfolio. We will be sharing that as well.

However, just want to preview this. Remember that even though we're sharing these panic points and pickup points with you, we will remain disciplined investors. So in terms of the pickup points, we will be looking for levels where we see a favorable risk to reward entry. In other words, we're not going to be throwing out levels where we'll be buying just to buy, because you know that's not the way we operate. We like to be prudent and disciplined investors. We will remain so.

Finally, in terms of our shopping list to stocks, I just want to share a couple of thoughts here. There are really four that we'll be watching closely this week. Universal Display, Qualcomm, Lockheed Martin, PepsiCo. They've all given back some gains. With Universal Display and PepsiCo, they are both oversold. Lockheed Martin is close to being oversold.

So we're watching those closely. Remember with Qualcomm, they have their investor day as well. There is that other overhang as well regarding the potential litigation with Arm. So we'll be watching that one a little extra closely. I do not-- just circling back to Qualcomm's Investor Event-- I would be surprised if they say anything about Arm other than what they already have. So I suspect that that will continue to be a little bit overhang.

My thinking, however, is that eventually we will see some type of settlement between them with the new licensing agreement. When that happens, that will lift the overhang. Most likely a positive catalyst for Qualcomm shares. Now as we watch these four stocks and others on the portfolio and make heads or tails of all the news that's coming, I just want to remind you that in Friday's roundup, we did talk about how we're going to closely watch the technical setup for the market. With last Friday's move lower, the S&P 500 is flirting with its 20-day moving average. The NASDAQ composite passed through it. So we're going to want to tread carefully over the next couple of days.

We will see what develops. We will pick our spots accordingly. And as we do all of this, we will keep an ear open for fresh headlines, especially those that might be coming out of Washington and from the incoming Trump administration. So we have a busy week ahead of us. Please be sure to check your emails, your Alerts. We're going to want to make sure you get our latest thoughts. And if we do make any moves with the portfolio, you know it, we want you right there with us. Thanks for watching.

At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long QCOM and NVDA.