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Good morning investors!

If this is your first time reading, welcome to The Investor’s Edge — a thriving community of nearly 20,000 subscribers striving to be better investors with an edge in the market.

Every weekend we publish “The Weekly Wrap-Up” — your ticket to being well informed and staying ahead in the investment game!

This report is designed to help investors of all skill levels break down important stories/topics within the stock market. And best of all, we cut through all of the BS and give you exactly what you need to know in easy to digest, bite sized pieces of content.

Grab your coffee and let’s dive in.

Monthly Meeting

🚨 Big Day for Edge+ Members! 🚨

Today (Saturday, 12/14) is the Monthly Meeting exclusively for Edge+ members. The meeting will be hosted by Mark at 10 AM EST.

Here's what we will be covering

• A deep dive into Mark's personal portfolio and his top 10 individual holdings 

• Exclusive insights into the stocks we’re watching closely, complete with Edge scores and analysis

• A breakdown of the most intriguing charts we’ve seen recently

• PLUS, a live, interactive Q&A to get your burning questions answered

Market Talk

It was a sea of red this week with a only handful of bright spots, mostly large cap tech names, which allowed the Nasdaq to finish the week in the green.

3 Stories Moving the Market

These are some of the biggest stories from the second half of the week that had an influence on market action.

Broadcom shares rise 25% on profit beat, ‘massive’ opportunity in AI

Broadcom delivered strong quarterly results with robust revenue growth and a solid beat on earnings per share, driven by infrastructure software momentum and AI-related semiconductor demand.

The company reported net income of $4.3 billion, up 23% YoY, on revenue of $14.05 billion, which grew 51% YoY but slightly missed expectations by 0.14%.

Semiconductor revenue reached $8.2 billion, reflecting a 12% YoY increase, while infrastructure software revenue surged by 196% YoY to $5.8 billion, benefiting from the VMware acquisition.

Broadcom generated $5.6 billion in operating cash flow (+16% YoY) and announced $5.2 billion in share buybacks and a dividend increase to $0.59 per share (+11%).

The report was strong but the market’s overall reaction was muted until the earnings call. Broadcom’s stock surged after CEO Hock Tan revealed the company is collaborating with three major cloud providers to develop custom AI chips, which could be worth between $60 billion and $90 billion in revenue by 2027.

Elon Musk reveals SEC sent him ‘settlement demand’ after Twitter buyout probe

The SEC has issued a "settlement demand" to Elon Musk, alleging potential securities violations related to his 2022 purchases, sales, and disclosures of Twitter shares ahead of his acquisition of the platform, now known as X.

Musk shared a copy of his attorney's letter to SEC Chair Gary Gensler, claiming the agency pressured him to settle within 48 hours or face multiple charges. Musk responded mockingly on social media, sharing an AI-generated image of Gensler and sarcastic remarks.

Sources familiar with the matter indicated Musk was given more than 48 hours to respond and clarified that failure to settle would not necessarily lead to immediate charges.

In such cases, the SEC often issues a Wells notice before deciding whether to proceed with enforcement actions.iewed the event as a significant milestone for the cryptocurrency's acceptance.

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Costo beats Q1 earnings estimates after membership price hike

Costco reported strong fiscal first-quarter results, with a 7.5% increase in sales and 8% growth in membership fee revenue, driven by a customer base gravitating toward both high-end and budget-friendly items as inflation lingers.

Revenue reached $62.2 billion, beating Wall Street's expectations of $62.05 billion, while same-store sales rose 5.2% and e-commerce sales increased 13%. The company posted a profit of $1.8 billion ($4.04 per share), surpassing analysts' expectations of $3.79 per share.

Highlights included strong performance in high-end cuts of meat, lower-priced protein, and double-digit growth in gold, jewelry, gift cards, furniture, and hardware, popular categories for holiday shoppers.

Membership fee revenue rose to $1.17 billion, reflecting a recent 8% fee hike, although renewal rates dipped slightly to 92.8% in the U.S. and Canada, partly due to growth in digital signups.

These results contrast with mixed performances from other retailers, positioning Costco strongly as the holiday season approaches.

In Other News

In this section, we'll be curating a selection of news headlines we think you'll find interesting. If a topic catches your eye, click the provided links to read more about it.

• Federal Reserve is likely to cut interest rates next week. Here’s what that means for you

• Apple launches its ChatGPT integration with Siri

• Meta, Amazon reportedly giving $1M to Trump's inauguration

• Oracle shares suffer steepest decline of 2024 after earnings miss

• Bank groups sue the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over a proposed cap on overdraft fees

• Adobe shares suffer steepest drop in over two years on disappointing revenue guidance

• Chipotle's new CEO wants to overhaul its kitchen with robots

• T-Mobile announces $14 billion share buyback program

• Boeing to Spend $1 Billion on 787 Dreamliner Manufacturing Expansion

• Consulting firm McKinsey to pay $650 million to resolve US criminal opioid probe

• Buy now, pay later company Affirm strikes $4 billion loan deal with private credit firm Sixth Street

• AutoZone misses first-quarter profit, revenue estimates

• SEC charges Cantor Fitzgerald, led by Trump’s Commerce pick, with breaking securities laws

• Shipping giant Maersk expects strong demand and ‘another year of disruption’ for global trade in 2025

• Flushing Financial seeks to raise $70 million to shore up capital as it unloads underwater bonds

Edge+ Posts of the Week

We continue to push out more and more content every week to give investors that edge. Here are the posts Investor’s Edge+ subscribers received this week.

Edge Report

Mondays are for the investors. Every Monday morning we share exactly what we’re watching in the week ahead, how we’re positioning, and even share a sneak peek into our systems and models. This week we discussed the upcoming inflation reports and how we were preparing for them. See the latest full report here:

The Options Edge Report

This week, we dropped the first Edge Options Report for our members—packed with actionable insights and options strategies. This week we broke down a play on aerospace and defense company General Dynamics. See the first report here:

Portfolio Update - December

Every month we share a full access look into our portfolios, including holdings, performance, activity and our watchlists for the upcoming month. You can see both of our portfolios here:

Earnings Recap

Every week during earnings season is extremely busy for us here at the Edge as we dive into over 100 reports and provide our members with top tier breakdowns and insights. This week we saw earnings from Broadcom, Costco, Oracle, and more. See this week’s recap:

The Week Ahead

Next week is jam packed full of key economic data that will determine whether or not this Santa Rally keeps going. There’s also a handful of earnings reports to watch.

Earnings Reports

Earnings season may be in the rear view but there are still some large companies left to report. Here is the list of names we will be covering next week:

• Monday 12/16: --

• Tuesday 12/17: --

• Wednesday 12/18: Micron

• Thursday 12/19: Nike and FedEx

• Friday 12/20: --

Here is the full calendar of scheduled earnings releases:

Economic Reports

Next week will be all about the Fed, as we get the latest interest rate decision and a speech from Jerome Powell on Wednesday, and the PCE report, the Fed’s preferred inflation metric, on Friday.

There will also be initial jobless claims, retail sales, GDP, PMI, manufacturing data, several housing reports and consumer sentiment.

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Thank you for reading this edition of the Weekly Wrap-Up. Have a great weekend!

Until next time investors!

Mark & Chris

The Investor’s Edge

Disclosure

This is not investing advice. It is very important that you do your own research and make investments based on your own personal circumstances, preferences, goals and risk tolerance.