Your Monday checklist - 8/29

Morning Watchlist: Saturday Edition             

A quick note from Behind the Markets

It's Saturday morning. The market is closed, the coffee is hot, and it's time to do what most newsletters never do: go back and check our own work.

What a week to check it. Nvidia showed the world a two-trillion-dollar order book. Gold hit another record. A 78-year-old sporting goods retailer had the worst day in its history. What we can do today is walk the ledger, name what changed, and tell you exactly what to check when the market reopens.

Four stops on the tour. Let's get into it.

1) The Week AI Paid Everybody's Tab

The center of the week was Wednesday night, when Nvidia reported $96.2 billion in quarterly revenue — up 106% — guided to $108 billion, and disclosed more than $2 trillion in future orders. The stock rose 8.3% on Thursday, and the rally spilled down the whole software aisle: CrowdStrike up 18%, Okta up 24%, Salesforce up almost 22% — Thursday alone.

Here's what that did to our names. On Tuesday and Wednesday we flagged Fabrinet and FormFactor as Watches, hoping Nvidia's report would shake loose a supplier-shadow dip. It didn't — the complex rallied, and no dip means no entrance, and no entrance means no chase. Both stay on Watch.

Then there's Tenable, the "home inspector of the internet" we flagged Friday morning around $34, with instructions to buy if the sympathy pop faded. The pop did the opposite of fading: the stock closed Thursday at $38.06, up 13% in a day, sailing past the average analyst target of $35.35. On Monday it officially joins the S&P SmallCap 600, which forces index funds to buy it.

And that's exactly why we're not budging. Index-inclusion pops are like the line outside a restaurant on opening night — it tells you about the occasion, not the food. The forced buyers finish buying on day one. We'd rather taste the bookings numbers. Still Watch. The quiet way into the AI story remains Friday's Buy, Range Resources, the firewood lot under the whole $2 trillion backlog, still at about 11 times earnings.

2) The Trade-Down Tour Got Complicated

Two weeks ago this thread was simple: shoppers are sliding down the price ladder, so own the bottom rungs. This week the ladder wobbled.

Burlington reported Thursday and beat on profits — $2.96 a share against a $2.19 estimate — but comparable sales grew just 2% against Ross's 10%. The migration is real; the migrants are all walking into Ross. The stock slid to about $308 from the $338 where we first flagged it, and we said it Thursday and we'll say it again Saturday: a better price for a worse fact is not an entrance. Still Watch.

Dick's Sporting Goods is the mirror image. On Tuesday it fell 30.7% — the worst day in its history — after Foot Locker losses forced a guidance cut, and we flagged it Thursday morning around $124 with orders to stalk it, not buy it. By Thursday's close it had crept back to about $130. Don't confuse a bounce with proof: Wall Street's own referees can't agree on the score — Morgan Stanley says it's worth $180, BNP Paribas says $99. When the experts are $81 apart, the promo wave hasn't broken yet. Still Watch. Our tell remains Nike's next report.

The steady one? H&R Block, Thursday's Buy — the barber next door catching TurboTax's price-driven walkouts — closed Thursday at $52.76, right about where we called it. Nothing to update. Boring is fine. Boring at 8.7 times earnings is better than fine.

3) Gold Went Where the Price Targets Weren't Looking

On Monday we called Eldorado Gold a Buy around $42, noting the strange arithmetic of record gold prices attached to single-digit miner multiples.

Four days later the stock closed at $48.04 — up roughly 14% in a week — with gold itself near $4,646 an ounce and the shares within sight of their 52-week high. The upgrades arrived on schedule: CIBC to Outperformer, Stifel to Buy, Jefferies initiating with a favorable view.

Now the punchline. Even after all that, the average analyst target on Eldorado is $42.17 — below Thursday's price. That's the same backwards setup we bought into on Monday: the targets are chasing the price, not leading it, because models built for $3,500 gold keep getting mugged by $4,600 gold. We're not adding after a 14% week — chasing our own winner is still chasing. But the call stands, and the lesson travels: when a commodity re-prices faster than the spreadsheets tracking it, the spreadsheets update last.

4) Your Monday Checklist

When the market reopens Monday, check four things.

First, Jackson Financial (Buy near $132) and Invitation Homes (Buy near $30). Both are bets that work best if Warsh didn't slam the door on rate cuts. A hawkish surprise was the risk we named on day one — if yields spiked Friday, expect these to have paid for it, and know that the theses (annuities at 4.5 times earnings; renting $1,000 a month cheaper than owning) are built for more than one Fed meeting.

Second, CME Group (Buy near $262). This one doesn't need Warsh to be nice — it needs him to be interesting. Bitcoin was trading above $80,000 Thursday, and every violent opinion about rates gets expressed through CME's futures. Volatility in either direction is the product.

Third, Alaska Air (Watch near $40). Half its trigger already fired — crude held in the low $80s all week, closing Thursday at $82.30 even with Iran sanctions escalating. The other half was oil staying calm through the speech and whatever Tehran does next. If West Texas is still in the low $80s Monday, that trigger is live.

Fourth, Eldorado. You know our bias: the metal has been outrunning the models all month.

Before You Go

The scoreboard, one week in: fifteen calls this week — eight Buys, seven Watches. Eldorado up about 14%. Tenable up about 12% from where we flagged it — and we're refusing to chase it. Dick's up 5% from our flag while we deliberately sat on our hands, Burlington down from $338 to $308 while we deliberately kept our wallet closed. Elsewhere on the ledger, AGCO still carries the Canadian tariff headwind we flagged (that list takes effect September 8), and Eagle Materials keeps its tariff umbrella.

Notice the theme: the week's best decisions were mostly the trades we didn't make. Discipline doesn't show up on a brokerage statement, but it compounds all the same.