Stock Market Today

Jim Cramer, founder of TheStreet, once coined the term “accidental high yielder,” which means simply that a stock that has fallen so much that the yield versus earnings has become increasingly attractive. Companies have options for their cash flows, that would be pay a dividend, buy back shares or simply reinvest in the business and retain those earnings (rather than paying them out). Cramer knew that fundamentally sound companies were being temporarily punished but at the same time they became attractive to another style of investor — the dividend player or the value player.

Mosaic (MOS) fits the bill here, sporting a 4.5% to 4.9% yield now as the stock has fallen to levels not seen since 2020! It’s a nice catch here. That seems hard to believe but fertilizer companies are the furthest thing from AI that you can imagine. Hence, the stock is not showing all that much growth here. High energy prices used to be a big thing for the fertilizers, but apparently this time around, it’s not happening. How strong is the Mosaic dividend? Demand for fertilizer still seems strong though pricing is a challenge, customers are still buying but input prices are rising, too. Cash flows are strong, I do not think this payout is in jeopardy.

Cargill created Mosaic in 2004 and spun off its shares in 2011, so this company is on its own these days. But with a strong yield even as the stock is down hard it may pay to wait, the stock can be volatile but at a five-year low it seems to be a low risk entry point.

At the time of publication, Lang was long MOS.

As we get ready for Meta’s (META) quarterly earnings report and think about consumer electronic markets outside of smartphones and PCs for chip companies, the wearables business at EssilorLuxxotica, the company behind Ray-Ban, Oakley and other eyewear brands, rose 20% year over year in Q3 2026. YTD, that segment revenue is up ~79%, which explains the enthusiasm National Vision (EYE) CEO Alex Wilkes had when we talked about the wearables category just over a month ago.

At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long META shares.

3M (MMM) is up over 5%, on track for its best day since July, and second best since last October, after expanding its relationship with a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN). Under the deal, 3M issued warrants for the purchase of nearly 3.2 million shares of the company over seven years tied to the amount of spending from Amazon on “expanded beam optical ferrules,” which can can connect servers in seconds rather than minutes, taking six months off a data center’s construction time, the company says according to the WSJ.

Eighty-five percent of the warrant shares will vest based on Amazon’s cumulative payments for 3M’s optical connectivity and other data center offerings, with full vesting of that portion once payments reach $6 billion according to TipRanks.

Also helping was a beat on earnings and raise to its full year’s forecast. Adjusted earnings are expected to be $9.10 to $9.15 a share this year, up from a prior range topping out at $8.95. Analysts had anticipated $8.94 a share on average in estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Politico reports U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff will offer Vladimir Putin direct talks with President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an effort to secure a ceasefire.

Hand it to Kalshi. It already has odds on when this three-way meeting might take place, and as of now, the probability for such a gathering this year is only at 11%. We’ll want to give Politico’s article some time to breathe, but given the prospects Kalshi and other polling shows for the midterm elections, odds are a meeting with Putin and Zelenskyy isn’t on Trump’s front burner. 

While we have seen yields rising in fixed income and even a modest rally in bitcoin, the one alternative that has my attention these days is gold. I bought some GLD when gold futures were hovering new $4,000, then sold a slew of it after rallying some 15%. We are back down near $4,100 and I am getting aggressive again and will buy even more at lower prices.

Why am I so interested in the yellow metal?

First off, inflation hedging is great with gold; also, the dollar may have started a corrective phase here. More importantly, the market is predicting the Fed will NOT raise rates next week, as I think they should be doing. When you talk about wanting to bring inflation down to 2% and you just get a print that is 15% annualized, well there is a disconnect here. If the Fed next week in their meeting listens to the market it means more inflation and less fighting off high prices with rate hikes.

Those are the magic words for gold. Not many are talking about it now, but we are right here. The GLD at $375-380 looks very attractive, and next week might go on a massive run if the above scenario plays out.

At the time of publication, Lang was long GLD calls for January and April 2027

Tech stocks have fallen back into negative territory, but four sectors are up over 1% led by Health Care’s over 2% gain to a fresh record high.

The Atlanta Fed’s Q3 real GDP tracker slipped to +3.50% as of October 20, the least since it initiated tracking and down from +3.59% on October 8th.

A +0.28% rise in the contribution from consumption (to +2.55% from +2.27%) after the retail sales report was more than offset by three declines: a -0.17% drop in net exports (to -2.86% from -2.69%) after the import and export prices data, and smaller declines in inventories (-0.08%) and residential investment (-0.07%, after this morning’s housing starts).

This continues to be consistent with my ongoing caveat that in both Q1 and Q2 we saw this indicator fall sharply the month before the actual GDP reads (which for Q3 will be next week).

The reading for now remains above the blue chip consensus* of ~+2.5%.

Here’s the breakdown of the components as of October 20 and changes from my last update October 8:

Consumption = +2.55% (+0.28%)

Inventories = +1.90% (-0.08%)

Nonresidential fixed investment (biz spending) = +1.57% (+0.01%)

Gov’t = +0.44% (-0.04%)

Residential investment = -0.10% (-0.07%)

Net exports = -2.86% (-0.17%)

GDPNow Forecast: +3.50% (-0.09%)

Reuters is reporting that Qualcomm (QCOM) is poised to embark upon a “performance-focused reduction” in headcount with ‌notifications set to begin in November.

While Reuters reports these moves are “part of an effort to build ‘a stronger performance culture’ and address situations where the company ‘has consistently fallen short of expectations'”, the reality of the situation can be traced back to recent data from IDC and other research firms about the smartphone and PC markets.

According to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, global smartphone shipments plunged a record 22.0% year-over-year in Q3 2026 to 255.3 million units due to the “AI-led memory and RAM crisis.”

Preliminary data from IDC finds worldwide PC shipments dropped 20.1% year-over-year in Q3 2026 to 62.7 million units.

With industry figures like those, odds are Qualcomm won’t be the only supplier to those end markets reducing headcount.

The Philadelphia Semiconductor index (SOX) +1.2% is now up on the session pulling the Nasdaq-100 (QQQ) +0.6% into the green as well.

Contract signings for existing homes plunged 7.3% in September, the biggest drop since December, far worse than the 3.9% decline expected and taking the index to a record low.

▪️ The index fell to 66.0, a record low in data back to 2001, well below January’s prior low of 70.8

▪️ All four regions saw declines, led by the West (-9.2% month-over-month, -15.0% year-over-year)

▪️ 30-year mortgage rates per Freddie Mac averaged 6.86% in September, the highest since January 2025

And these do not account for cancellations, which have been rising.