5 Stocks I'm Buying Heavy Right Now September 2026

Hey Bowtie Nation, Joseph Hogue with your weekly stock market update. The market closed here on Monday, but we are just 10 days from what could be the biggest shock of the year, and Wall Street is completely backwards on it. I'm going to show you why, including three stocks to buy, one up more than 30% in the last month alone, along with all the stock market news you need to see to start the week. Nation, that market shock is coming because Chair Warsh and the Federal Reserve are playing games with investors' hearts. That's setting up the year's biggest opportunity in one group of stocks, including one stock up 10% and another up 30% in the last month. First, Chair Warsh came out hawkish in his Jackson Hole speech, and even I was thinking the Fed might raise rates when it meets on September 16th. That news sent the price of gold slumping more than 3%, with tech stocks in the Nasdaq, and Bitcoin crushed on fears of those higher rates. Then Fed Governor Waller steps in Thursday to say that while inflation was above 2%, prices were coming down and could mean no rate hike this month. On that, gold shot up 4%, with miners like Newmont jumping 7%, Bitcoin up 6%, and microstrategy, MSTR, surging 17% on a single day. Then a surprisingly strong jobs report showing the U.S. added 162,000 jobs last month once again crushed investor hopes and sent odds of a September rate hike back up from 50-50 the day before to over 60% expectation of an increase according to the CME FedWatch rate tool. Now, I know this is a lot of economics nerd talk, but this will-they-won't-they on the Fed raising rates this month could be the market's biggest surprise and reveals the three stocks I'm buying to position for it. That's because while a strong jobs market, but high inflation, should mean the Fed does raise rates. Remember, the Fed only has two rules it has to follow. Keep inflation low, but also keep a healthy jobs market. To do this, when the economy gets too hot and prices shoot higher, it raises rates to slow things down. If the economy then slumps and unemployment increases, the Fed lowers rates to support borrowing and growth. And the market is pricing in a rate hike this month and possibly another increase in October, hitting investments that do well on those lower rates, like gold, crypto, and dividend stocks. Where the market is wrong, though, is in the fact that, oh, we got a little thing called an election coming up, and there is no way in hell the Fed wants to get in front of that train wreck. The last time a federal agency released important news before an election, it landed the director in front of Congress and almost in jail. Warsh just started as Fed chair 15 weeks ago. Raising rates in September or October could mean the shortest career in history. And yes, I know technically the Fed chair can't be fired, but that doesn't mean a tweet storm can't make his life a living hell. But it seems some on Wall Street didn't get the memo, and the strong jobs number has investors second-guessing reality here, which is why the debasement trade and those three stocks I'm going to highlight is something you need to be paying attention to for the next 10 days. You see, that debasement idea and the stocks I'm going to show you is basically investors protecting themselves against a dollar that is going to be buying significantly less over time. Nation, we know the U.S. government cannot help itself, spending more than it collects in taxes and adding another $1.7 trillion to the deficit this year. In the last 50 years, the government has had just four years where it didn't borrow money. Now, that doesn't automatically create inflation, slowly destroying the value of the dollar. But that combined with the higher interest rates we've seen lately, costing the government more than $1.5 trillion in interest a year, investors start questioning if Washington can control that debt or whether the Fed can make the hard decisions to protect the dollar. And when that happens, investors lose faith in the greenback and start rushing to the exits, into those investments that are going to hold their value against a weak dollar. The dollar index here, which tracks the value of the dollar against other major currencies, is already down more than 2% over the last month and nearing a three-year low. One of those favorite debasement investments used to be gold, but with the price surging 145% over the last two years. There might still be some upside on dollar weakness, but it is going to be much more ups and downs than gold investors usually see. Instead, I like the gold miners here, like Newmont, ticker NEM, which is up 71% over the last year, even as gold is flatlined. The miners here can use their operational leverage to boost sales into higher earnings and produce real cash flow from the business. I also like infrastructure stocks, companies owning real assets, especially those tied to the energy markets, like Kinder Morgan, ticker KMI. The pipeline company collects fees on its network of distribution, paying a 3.7% dividend, and since oil is priced in dollars, a barrel of oil rises in price as the value of the dollar weakens. Increasingly, the favorite debasement play, though, is in cryptocurrency, either Bitcoin or Ethereum, which are up as much as 32% over the last month. All you out there in the nation know, I like Ethereum, also on the massive trend to tokenization coming, and have been buying both the iShares Ethereum Trust, ticker ETHA, and the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust, ticker ETH, up $393,000 in profits so far on a $1.8 million investment in this theme. Besides those debasement trade stocks, we've also got a big week for earnings, and a few stocks I'm watching here. First up, Academy Sports and Outdoors, ticker ASO, could be the most dangerous stock of the week, and it reports its earnings here on Wednesday. Dick's Sporting Goods shocked investors, sending its shares down 26% on a day when it reported sales fell 3.6% at its Foot Locker segment, with the CEO pointing out further consumer weakness to come. Then just last week, Lululemon Athletica, ticker LULU, plunged 17% after cutting its sales forecast, again in the face of weakness in U.S. athletic consumers. Clearly here, folks, the environment is a scary one, and ASO management has not done a great job of managing expectations in the past, with the stock falling after three of the last four earnings reports, down by 11% on the Q4 report last year. Wall Street is only expecting about a 4% growth in sales this year, and I do like that the company is leveraging single-digit sales and a 10% earnings growth, but even that might be too high a bar right now. With the stock down 10% this year and trading cheaply compared to where it's been in the past, we see, to paraphrase Uncle Ben, with great risk comes great opportunity. If management can surprise, confirm forecasts for growth, then the stock could jump higher, but the worst probably isn't priced in yet. You just need to ask yourself on this one, do you want to risk it? AeroVironment, ticker AVAV, is one I haven't talked about much, but I do like this going into Wednesday's earnings report, as well as longer term. The drone and autonomous tech company reported strong momentum in contracts through its fourth quarter, but is only expected to post 1% sales growth for the most recent quarter. It should be an extremely easy bar to clear. Folks, we are seeing a giant shift to drone warfare, with just the military side of that drone market expected to grow at a 9% annual pace, reaching $98 billion by 2033. I think full-year forecasts for 10% growth are underestimated here for AVAV, and should accelerate over the next few years. Management has a mixed history on earnings, with the stock up after two of the last four reports, though jumping by an impressive 18% on last quarter's news. Analyst price targets are for an average $225 per share over the next year, which would be 55% higher. Even the low forecast is for a 13% upside. All that said, the company is still operating deep in the red on an operational and free cash flow basis. With just $377 million in balance sheet cash, that doesn't cover its CapEx needs, so debt and dilution is coming. That will hit the shares when it's announced, but I'd be picking up some before the earnings as well as on any drops on this one. Adobe, ticker ADBE, is going to be another very high-risk stock when it reports earnings on Thursday. Their shares are still down 22% over the year, even after climbing back 40% from the June low. The fear here is that AI is going to start to replace Adobe's suite of content creation tools like PDF and editing, making it difficult to hit even these modest targets for 11% sales growth this year and 9% next. Like other software stocks, shares look cheap here compared to where it's traded at in the past. You can now buy a share of Adobe for a price of 16 times its earnings versus as high as 27 times P.E. ratio in the past. On forecast for $24.41 in earnings this year, even an 18-times multiple would mean a share price of $439 each, or about a 68% return. Shares have fallen after three of the last four earnings reports, disappointing investors to the tune of almost 7% last quarter. The problem here is, as a user of Adobe but also seeing what AI can do, I think the company sees a serious threat to its growth. We will continue to see these short-term pops higher if management can surprise, but long-term, you need to be very careful with this stock or just avoid it altogether. Updating some of the biggest names in our portfolio, shares of Alibaba, ticker BABA, are down from the recent peak of $132 each, but still up 12% from July. You might continue to think this one surprises on revenue over the next couple of quarters. Next earnings aren't until late November and with expected sales growth of 9%, which is where the company has reported recently. It's missed on earnings expectations over the past year, spending more heavily than expected on its AI build-out. But folks, we know how strongly companies are shifting to those open-weight AI models like Alibaba's Quinn, and it is only a matter of time before we see that growth accelerate with my target to be at least back up to $150 a share. Cybersecurity stocks sold off last week with Palo Alto Networks, ticker PANW, falling 10%, Zscaler falling 6% after its report, despite both booking strong growth and confirming forecasts for coming quarters. Now a lot of last week was just profit-taking after a strong three-month run, with these stocks up from 7% to 37%, rebounding from that AI software fears. Overall, I'm still up an average 78% across these five stocks, PANW, ZS, Fortinet, ticker FTNT, CrowdStrike Holdings, CRWD, and Okta Inc., ticker OKTA, with Palo Alto up 119% since when we started buying again. Nation, you've heard me say this I don't know how many times, cybersecurity is my favorite long-term growth theme. We know AI is becoming a massive threat, being used by hackers and of agents growing rogue. The sales growth to these companies is only going to accelerate from here. Symbiotic, ticker SYM, hit a 52-week low last week before rebounding 13% higher after its earnings showed 22% revenue growth and a backlog of orders that locks in that growth. Their shares are still up 66% from when we started buying, though I understand that some of you might have bought in at that peak earlier this year. I'm going to continue to hold here and think the partnerships with Walmart and SoftBank make this the stock to buy for that robotics and AI shift in logistics, but you have to understand this is a three-year story, not a three-month trade. If you are ready to give it the time to grow into that idea, then this will run higher long-term, but it's going to be volatile over shorter periods. If you're still looking for more stocks to buy, YouTube picked out this video here just for you. Click through and see if you like it.