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Wall Street’s Best Investments 813

Change in weather and change in markets seem to be the norm today. We certainly had an extreme case of market volatility last year, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average ending up with a loss of 7.36%, the S&P 500 declined by 7.6% and the Nasdaq dropped by 5.57%.

Wall Street’s Best Investments 813

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Congrats to the Top Picks of 2018

It was a challenging year for the markets in 2018. Up a few hundred one day; down the next. The end result—just looking at raw numbers—was not too pretty, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 7.36%, the Nasdaq down 5.7%, and the S&P 500 losing 7.6%. It’s really not too surprising, considering the uncertainty reigning over the geopolitical arena, which caused tremendous volatility in global markets.

Our contributors struggled, too, but, as usual, they scored some big gains by choosing healthy growth stocks last year. I’ll give them a big pat on the back for some tremendous returns, in the face of many obstructions.

Our Top Four Picks beat the markets, hands-down. And I have to give kudos to our analysts here at Cabot; they took three out of the top four spots. Congratulations to Mike Cintolo, first place winner and Chief Analyst of Cabot Growth Investor, for his Top Pick of Five Below (Five), which gained a stunning 53.27% last year. In second place is Doug Gerlach, editor of SmallCap Informer, whose choice of Emergent BioSolutions (EBS) proved acutely perceptive, raking in a return of 21.40%. Both Timothy Lutts, Chief Analyst of Cabot Stock of the Week and Paul Goodwin, former Chief Analyst of Cabot Emerging Markets Investor, chose GDS Holdings (GDS), for a very nice return of 14.31%.

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Here’s what they had to say when they named their Top Picks of 2018:

Mike Cintolo: “FIVE soared on earnings in early June following a blowout quarter. Not only did sales (up 27%) and earnings (up 123%) top expectations, but we think this was effectively a coming out party for the stock, with institutional investors now convinced that Five Below not only has years of growth ahead of it, but that (a) the likelihood of that growth is very high, giving them confidence to pay up, and (b) that even management’s long-term outlook of 2,500 stores (up from 675 at the end of 2017) could be conservative.”

Doug Gerlach: “Emergent BioSolutions (EBS) is a global specialty life sciences company focused on providing solutions that address medical and public health preparedness and response against accidental, intentional, and naturally emerging public health threats.

“A continued focus on preparedness by the U.S. government will help drive growth for Emergent BioSolutions. Globalization increases the likelihood of rapid disease transmission (as in the case of pandemic flu, Ebola, and Zika), and the rising threat of antimicrobial resistance also demands new treatments. Analysts are looking for 20% annual EPS growth from Emergent over the next five years. We are a bit more conservative but see 15% annual growth as sustainable for both revenues and EPS.”

Paul: “My aggressive pick for 2018 is GDS Holdings, a Chinese operator of carrier neutral data centers. GDS has been building data centers and courting big clients since 2009, and it now has nearly 78,000 square meters of data center space in usage (that’s apparently how the industry discusses size/capacity), which is up 59% from a year ago. It has been a volatile performer since it moved out of its post-IPO base in the middle of 2017. The volatility will likely continue, but the GDS Holdings story (Chinese server farms) is simple and powerful.”

Tim: “GDS Holdings’ (GDS) carrier-neutral, cloud-neutral facilities allow connections to all major Chinese telecommunications carriers and to many financial services companies and large enterprises. The focus here is growth; the profits will come later. (That’s the same way management at a little company named Amazon thought.) Clients today include major players like Alibaba and Tencent Holdings, and the company expects to start hosting Baidu’s cloud platform (and its traditional search business) in the fourth quarter.

Very few U.S. investors even know its name and to me, that spells untapped buying power.”

Congratulations to all our contributors!

And now, after much soul-searching and number-crunching, our advisors have come up with a wide variety of Top Picks for 2019, and here we go:
To read the rest of this month’s issue, download the PDF.


THE NEXT Wall Street’s Best Investments WILL BE PUBLISHED February 13, 2019
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