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Summer isn’t officially over, but the sunshine might as well be. Now, it’s time for the real fun.
September is historically the worst month for stocks going back a century.
Which might sound scary… but it’s exactly when the best setups emerge.
That’s because most traders spend the month too nervous to do anything.
Our team has four fresh ideas for this week that you need to pay attention to.
Nate Bear and Karim Rahemtulla: RXRX
Recursion Pharmaceuticals (RXRX) is a small company using machine learning to develop drugs. Nvidia (NVDA) put $50 million into it back in 2023, and Recursion has been showing its automated drug labs at the company’s own developer conference ever since.
Five clinical programs are running now, and the company has earned more than $500 million in upfront and milestone payments to date. Cathie Wood’s ARK bought 1.2 million shares in February.
What Nate likes most about it is the short interest.
The stock is 37% short.
That’s an enormous amount of stock borrowed and sold by people betting it goes down, and it means any real news puts them all in the same doorway at the same time.
Nate’s words: If they get any sort of news or an actual breakthrough, the stock could easily double or triple.
Karim also loves the idea, but he has an alternative. It’s called Absci Corp (ABSI), and it has the same AI-designed drug thesis, and it’s up 163% this year, with a $40 million strategic investment from Eli Lilly (LLY) funding it into the second half of 2028.
Bryan Bottarelli: VST
Bryan has been trading Vistra (VST) off the utility sector instead of the stock itself, and it’s been working.
Last week he flagged a support level getting tested on the Dow Jones Utility Average, used it on Vistra, and then ran the same trade more than once as it bounced. He thinks there’s more left in it.
It trades around $137-$138, close to its 52-week lows of $132 and far from its highs of $219.82.
The AI power story never changed, and this one has a shot of waking up again.
Bryan Bottarelli: FIVE
Abercrombie (ANF) blasted higher last week, which tells you people are still spending. And they’re just not spending it at Walmart (WMT) or Dick’s (DKS), both of which disappointed badly enough that one analyst called Walmart’s quarter one of the biggest misses in years.
So the money didn’t leave; it moved to the smaller, more specific names.
Which puts Five Below (FIVE) in an interesting spot heading into the strongest stretch of its year.
Back-to-school is running now, Halloween is next, and Christmas will be here before we know it. The company had 1,921 stores at the end of January, up from 1,771 a year before.
Bryan is tracking this one, not in it yet.
One more thing about Friday…
A soft payrolls number makes the rate conversation considerably messier, and a hot one settles it.
Either way, money won’t be leaving the market… it’ll just find a new home. And we’ll be with you the entire week to give you the most actionable ideas.
One of the best ways to start September would be to join Chris “CJ” Johnson for a special Monument Traders LIVE event happening this Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET.
His guest will be Matt McCall, our new Head Innovations Strategist.
They’ll be discussing how to find the next batch of long-term 10X–20X winners.
Don’t miss it!
