chris-preston

Chris Preston

Editor in Chief and Chief Analyst of Cabot Stock of the Week and Cabot Value Investor

Chris Preston is Cabot Wealth Network’s Vice President of Content and Chief Analyst of Cabot Stock of the Week and Cabot Value Investor .

Chris joined Cabot in 2015, where he previously served as staff analyst, web editor, and Chief Analyst of Cabot Wealth Daily, our free investment advisory, which in 2019 was named “Best Financial/Investing Newsletter or Ezine” at the SIPA (Specialized Information Publishers Association) Awards, with Chris at the helm.

Prior to joining Cabot, Chris was an analyst and assistant managing editor with Wyatt Investment Research. He has been an investment analyst for more than a decade and a professional writer/editor for nearly 20 years, picking up multiple writing awards along the way. His bylines have appeared in Forbes, The Money Show, Time Magazine, U.S. News and World Report and ESPN.com.

Chris lives in Vermont with his wife, two young kids and their golden retriever, Scout. He occasionally sleeps.

From this author

Stock Market

The 200-Day Moving Average Says Stocks Are Headed to New Highs

The 200-day line has historically acted as a line in the sand for the market. Now that the S&P 500 is back above that line, it may serve as a springboard to greater heights.

May 15, 2025

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Cabot Value Investor

May 15, 2025

Stocks are back in business!

Yes, a little more than a month after some of the worst investor sentiment readings in years, soaring volatility, and a 19% decline in the S&P 500 – not to mention both the Nasdaq and the Russell 2000 swinging to bear market territory – stocks are suddenly on a roll, recession fears are abating, and, perhaps most importantly, tariff deals have been struck. The 90-day pause on most reciprocal tariffs initiated by President Trump on April 9 – one week after the deeply unpopular “Liberation Day” was announced – triggered one of the biggest one-day rallies in stock market history. Indexes flirted with their early-April lows two weeks later but eventually stabilized, and May has brought a wave of positive tariff news – first, a deal with the United Kingdom, in which key imports like cars were reduced to 10% and steel and aluminum tariffs were eliminated; then, last weekend came a 90-day truce with China. That sent stocks soaring more than 3% on Monday, and they haven’t looked back.

May 15, 2025

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Cabot Stock of the Week

Cabot Stock of the Week Issue: May 12, 2025

Tariff fears have eased, or are at least on extended hold, and the market feels jubilant for the first time in months. Is it the start of an extended rally that could get us back to new highs? Probably too early to tell. But it’s been a boon for our portfolio, led by Tesla (TSLA), which is up 14% in the last week. Today we add an undervalued travel stock to the portfolio that’s a household name that got hammered during Covid but has come out the other side with flying colors – and yet shares are still playing catch-up. It’s a stock I recommended to my Cabot Value Investor audience earlier this month.

Details inside.

May 12, 2025

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Stock Market

What to Do When You Receive Shares in a Stock Spin-off

Investing in stock spin-offs is worth the risk. But you need to know what to do with shares you receive when your larger holding is spun off.

May 12, 2025

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Cabot Value Investor

May 8, 2025

Warren Buffett isn’t concerned about the market’s slow start this year. “What’s happened in the last 30, 45 days is really nothing,” the Oracle of Omaha said at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting last weekend. In the grand scheme of market history, he’s right.

May 8, 2025

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Cabot Stock of the Week

Cabot Stock of the Week Issue: May 5, 2025

Stocks are in a much better place than they were a couple weeks ago. That’s what nine consecutive days of gains will do, as earnings season and a cooling of tariff rhetoric have combined to inject some positivity into what was a doom-and-gloom market environment as recently as mid-April. We surely haven’t heard the last about tariffs, and this week’s Fed meeting can always reopen some old wounds. But we can only go with the evidence in front of us, and right now it’s pointing upward. With that in mind, today we add a growth stock recently recommended by Mike Cintolo in his Cabot Top Ten Trader advisory.

Details inside.

May 5, 2025

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Cabot Value Investor

Cabot Value Investor Issue: May 1, 2025

Few industries were more negatively impacted by Covid than the cruise industry. And few have come roaring back faster in Covid’s wake. And yet, share prices haven’t kept up with the record sales and passenger numbers. So today, we recommend a major cruise-industry stock that has the largest disparity between sales and earnings growth and share price growth. We also have updates on all our existing stocks as investors mercifully put a historically choppy April for the market in the rear-view mirror and flip the calendar to what will hopefully be a far more fruitful May.

Details inside. Enjoy!

May 1, 2025

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Cabot Stock of the Week

Cabot Stock of the Week Issue: April 28, 2025

It was a much better week for the market, and even more so our portfolio, as all but two of our existing 20 stocks were up at least 2%. Of course, there’s a lot of ground to make up from the damage done by “Liberation Day” at the start of the month, but it’s possible the market has turned a corner and a glorious month of May awaits for U.S. stocks. In case it doesn’t, however, today we beef up our overseas exposure by adding our first ETF in a while. It’s a fund just recommended by Carl Delfeld to his Cabot Explorer audience – and one that aims to take advantage of recent strength in European stocks.

Details inside.

April 28, 2025

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Magazine

Have the Mag. 7 Become Oversold?

The underperformance of the formerly dominant Mag. 7 has lately earned those stocks the dismissive moniker of the “Lag 7,” but are they too cheap to pass up?

April 25, 2025

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Cabot Value Investor

April 24, 2025

The market took a turn for the better this week as President Trump backed off his criticisms of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and indicated there may be some wiggle room on his sky-high tariffs on China. Those served as a sigh of relief for investors, and stocks surged on Tuesday and Wednesday, though the S&P 500 is only up about 1% since we last wrote.

Stocks are still below their April highs, and down more than 8.5% year to date, but volatility is declining and it seems increasingly possible that a bottom was formed in early April.

April 24, 2025

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Cabot Stock of the Week

Cabot Stock of the Week Issue: April 21, 2025

Another down week – and down day – for stocks as tariff and inflation anxieties continue to run rampant. We may be headed toward a re-test of the post-Liberation Day lows from the beginning of the month. Fortunately, most of our stocks are holding up well, with no big losses in the last week despite a 4.3% decline in the S&P 500. In fact, a number of our stocks are thriving. Today, we add another stock that’s going against the grain of the market. It’s a new recommendation from Tyler Laundon to his Cabot Early Opportunities audience. It’s the kind of all-weather holding that can keep its head above water in this volatile market – and perhaps thrive if/when the tariff dam finally breaks.

April 21, 2025

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Value Stocks

Amid Tariff Uncertainty, Value Stock Opportunities Abound

Value stocks have outperformed growth so far this year, and after the sharp tariff-fueled sell-off, there’s more value in the market than there has been in several years.

April 18, 2025

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Cabot Value Investor

April 17, 2025

Regardless of your politics, “calm” is not a word you would likely use to describe the stock market under President Trump, at least through the first three months of his second term. But given the extreme tariff-fueled volatility that pervaded this time a week ago, that’s exactly how the last week has felt for investors: calm.

April 17, 2025

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Cabot Stock of the Week

Cabot Stock of the Week Issue: April 14, 2025

Tariffs aren’t gone, but the 90-day pause has served as a tourniquet for a market that was bleeding out. Who knows what this week will bring after total extremes the first two weeks of April. But for now, relative calm has been restored. So today we capitalize on it by adding a growth stock with momentum via Mike Cintolo’s Cabot Top Ten Trader advisory.

Details inside.

April 14, 2025

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Stock Market

Answering Your Questions About Tariffs and the Market

Given the tumultuous market environment, we wanted to take some time to answer your questions about tariffs, the market, and what to do now.

April 11, 2025

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Cabot Value Investor

April 10, 2025

There have been plenty of market meltdowns over the years. Few have matched what’s happened since last Wednesday evening – so-called “Liberation Day” – when President Trump announced plans to place high tariffs on … the rest of the world. In the week that followed, stocks nose-dived by 13%, with both the Nasdaq and Russell 2000 swinging to a bear market last Thursday and Friday and the S&P 500 nearly following suit.

Until yesterday.

April 10, 2025

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Value Stocks

How to Know if a Stock Is Undervalued

With the market in the midst of a correction it’s important to know how to identify undervalued stocks and not just “cheap” stocks.

April 7, 2025

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Cabot Stock of the Week

Cabot Stock of the Week Issue: April 7, 2025

There’s no sugarcoating it: This is a historic market collapse, and it’s no fun for anyone. Volatility, fear and uncertainty are as palpable as they’ve been on Wall Street since perhaps the Covid crash in 2020. Unlike Covid, however, tariffs can be reversed, or at least mitigated, by a policy change, comment or tweet from the person who enacted them. That adds to the uncertainty. But it also means that it is very much a day-to-day, and even hour-to-hour, situation.

Given how fluid things are, it’s a good time to add as safe a stock as possible to the Stock of the Week portfolio. So this week I called upon Cabot Turnaround Letter Chief Analyst Clif Droke to offer up one of his most reliable potential turnaround stories. It’s a company that sells a lot of products that everyone needs all the time – regardless of tariffs or the state of the economy.

Details inside.

April 7, 2025

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Stock Market

“My First Stock Market Crash”

The market selloff calls to mind something that former Cabot CEO Tim Lutts once wrote about his first stock market crash. The lessons in it are as valuable as ever.

April 4, 2025

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Cabot Value Investor

Cabot Value Investor Issue: April 3, 2025

U.S. stocks remain paralyzed by tariff fears, but not energy stocks. They’re the best-performing S&P 500 sector by far this year, more than doubling the return of any other sector. And yet, they remain the most undervalued sector by virtually every measure. So this month, we add a large-cap energy stock to the Cabot Value Investor portfolio that has a yearslong history of not only outperforming the market, but blowing it out of the water. But after a slow start to the year, it’s trading at a rare discount. We think it has immediate upside – and a high dividend yield should hold us over until it gets there.

Details inside.

April 3, 2025

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Cabot Stock of the Week

Cabot Stock of the Week Issue: March 31, 2025

So much for the market rebound. Or is this a classic double bottom before the real rally begins after Wednesday’s “Liberation Day” full of Trump’s latest round of mysterious tariffs finally passes and Wall Street breathes a collective sigh of relief? I’m betting the clouds part sooner rather than later, as investor pessimism has reached levels not seen since the October 2022 bear market bottom. So today, despite saying goodbye to a few more underperforming positions, I’m betting on the upside of growth, adding a mid-cap software stock recently recommended by Tyler Laundon to his Cabot Early Opportunities readers.

Details inside.

March 31, 2025

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Magazine

3 European Value Stocks in an Uptrend

Both European and value stocks are drawing investor attention as U.S. growth stocks struggle, and these three stocks offer the best of both worlds.

March 28, 2025

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Cabot Value Investor

March 27, 2025

The last two months have felt historically volatile.

Since Donald Trump took office for a second time and immediately started handing out tariffs like they were surprise take-home prizes at an Oprah taping (“YOU get a tariff, and YOU get a tariff!”), the market has been unsettled. And indeed, from mid-February through mid-March, things weren’t simply unsettled – they were bad. Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq entered correction territory – the fifth-fastest correction in the last 75 years, in the case of the S&P. Fears of higher inflation and possibly recession have come rushing back to the surface, consumer confidence is at a 12-year low, and interest rate angst is back in full force.

And yet, actual volatility – as measured by the VIX, a.k.a. the “investor fear gauge” – has been … fairly muted?

March 27, 2025

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Tech Stocks

BYD (BYDDY): My Top Pick for the Rest of 2025

My favorite stock for the rest of the year is BYD (BYDDY), a Chinese EV stock that is rapidly becoming the biggest and baddest EV company on the planet.

March 25, 2025

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Cabot Stock of the Week

Cabot Stock of the Week Issue: March 24, 2025

Calm has been restored to the stock market, at least for now. And while stocks haven’t exploded to the upside, it does appear as if a temporary bottom has been put in. With that in mind, today we add a pure growth stock – a cybersecurity play with plenty of momentum, recommended by Mike Cintolo to his Cabot Top Ten Trader audience last week. We also have no sells from our own portfolio, as many of them have been in full recovery mode the last week or two.

Details inside.

March 24, 2025

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Cabot Value Investor

March 20, 2025

March Madness starts today. It’s my favorite sporting event of the year, as the possibilities and unpredictability of a 68-team basketball tournament involving 18-to-23-year-olds never fail to deliver on its “madness” moniker. It’s messy, it’s volatile, and you never know what’s going to happen next. Sort of like the stock market in the era of Trump, tariffs and angst-ridden Fed announcements like yesterday.

March 20, 2025

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Growth Stocks

The “Mag. 7" Have Become the “Lag 7.” Are They a Buy?

The “Magnificient Seven” stocks carried the bull market for two years. Now, they’re holding the market back. Which of the newly dubbed “Lag 7” are buys at these levels?

March 20, 2025

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Dividend Stocks

Why Business Development Company Investing Makes Sense

Investing in a business development company is a high-risk, high-reward proposition for income investors. But you can mitigate risks.

March 18, 2025

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Cabot Stock of the Week

Cabot Stock of the Week Issue: March 17, 2025

Is the worst of this late-winter selloff over? Or are there lower depths still to plumb? A lot may depend on what the Fed says this week. Or the next bit of tariff news. Or who knows what. There’s a lot of uncertainty out there. And the market hates uncertainty. But after a month of almost nothing but selling, there are some encouraging signs of life.

Still, the wise move is to stick to safety, so this week we add a safe dividend stock that’s in about as reliable a business as there is: trash collection. It’s a new recommendation from Cabot Dividend Investor Chief Analyst Tom Hutchinson.

Details inside.

March 17, 2025

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Stock Market

Will the Latest CPI Report Fuel a January-Like Rally?

In January, a cooler-than-expected CPI print fueled a month-long market rally. Will the latest CPI report spark another – and possibly longer-lasting – rebound?

March 17, 2025

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