CWS Market Review – February 7, 2025
“If the job has been correctly done when a common stock is purchased, the time to sell it is—almost never.” – Philip Fisher
Ever since hitting its last new high two weeks ago, the S&P 500 seems to have settled into a trading range. The index hasn’t wandered too far from 6,050 or so. Every time it moves more than 0.5% from there, it quickly heads back. The market has become a groundhog that sees its own shadow.
This is typical behavior for the market, especially after a big move. Technicians refer to it as a “consolidation,” and that’s pretty much what’s happening right now.
The important news is that this earning season continues to be quite good. The latest numbers I have show that 77% of companies in the S&P 500 have beaten their earnings estimates and 63% have topped on revenue.
For Q4, earnings growth is currently tracking at 13.2%. If that holds up, it will be the best quarter for earnings growth in four years.
We had some very good results this week from our Buy List. On Wednesday, Cencora beat earnings and raised guidance, and the stock rallied to a new high. Fiserv beat also earnings, and the shares jumped more than 7% on Wednesday. It also reached a new 52-week high. Intercontinental Exchange beat earnings, hiked its dividend 7% and rallied to a new all-time high
Here’s one you’ll like. FICO missed earnings, but it didn’t change its full-year outlook. Let me repeat that. FICO made zero changes to its full-year outlook. Traders, naturally, freaked out. The stock opened Wednesday down 11%.
Take a wild guess what happened. By the closing bell, FICO was up 2.1%. Did I mention that FICO didn’t make any changes to its full-year outlook? OK, good. Glad we covered that. We have a 13% gain in FICO this year.
By the way, our healthcare stocks have gotten off to a very good start this year. We currently have four of these on our Buy List (SYK, ABT, COR, HSIC), and all four are up more than 10% in 2025.
In this week’s issue, I’ll go over all our Buy List earnings reports from this week. Plus, we have another three earnings reports due out next week. I’ll preview them all. There’s a lot to get to, so let’s jump right in.