Today is Thursday, so we’ll be covering stocks that have been newly rated as “Bullish” on my Green Zone Power Ratings system.
That means their ratings just crossed the 60 out of 100 threshold.
Historically, stocks with a “Bullish” rating have outperformed the market by double on average.
And this week, the New Bulls are looking particularly… shiny.
Four out of the top 20 New Bulls this week mine for gold, hold gold or are otherwise involved with the precious metal.
But gold isn’t the only hard asset making an appearance. We’ve also got farmland, a fertilizer company and an aluminum maker. So what’s driving the sudden bullishness among companies that hold or produce hard assets?
Inflation.
Yesterday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported the August 2026 Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation dropped to “only” 3.4%, or 3% excluding food and energy. That was better than the 3.7% headline and 3.3% core that Wall Street expected, but it’s still high inflation.
You’re going to feel it in your monthly bills. But it’s not quite high enough for the Federal Reserve to aggressively hike interest rates to stamp it out.
Call it a sweet spot for hard assets.
Of course, not every New Bull this week is tied to hard assets. There are plenty of other opportunities showing up in the screen, too.
So, let’s dig in, starting with the newest additions from the S&P 500…
S&P 500 New Bulls
I ran my usual screen for S&P 500 companies that popped up as “Bullish” this week, and this is what I came up with:
It’s a short list this week, with just two S&P 500 stocks making the cut.
At the top, we have Bio-Techne (TECH), a global life sciences company that develops high-quality biological reagents, analytical instruments and precision diagnostics for scientific research and clinical medicine.
It’s not a biotech company, per se. It’s more of a “picks and shovels” play on the industry as a whole.
The first question that tends to get asked these days is, “How does AI potentially change the business?”
For Bio-Techne, the answer should be at least a modest tailwind. AI speeds up modeling and drug discovery, but every drug candidate still has to be tested in an actual lab.
So if AI lowers the cost of drug discovery — and allows researchers to work through more potential candidates — that should mean more demand for the tools and materials Bio-Techne provides.
Then there’s Jack Henry & Associates (JKHY), an interesting addition to this week’s list.
The company provides banking software and payment-processing systems to community banks and credit unions, primarily through recurring, long-term outsourcing and subscription contracts.
Jack Henry took a beating earlier this year during the “SaaSpocalypse,” when Wall Street became convinced that cheap AI coding would ruin the business models of virtually every software company.
Those fears were overblown, of course.
It was never realistic to think that small banks and credit unions would attempt to build their own software in-house, even with souped-up AI tools.
And like most software stocks, Jack Henry has been trending higher since late June.
The AI revolution may change how software gets built. But that doesn’t necessarily mean customers want to build it themselves.
New Bulls Outside the S&P 500
Now, let’s look at the newly “Bullish” stocks outside of the S&P 500…
I ran a screen for the top 20 stocks with the largest score increases over the past month, and this is what popped up:
I’ll start with the gold names.
Rio2 Ltd (RIOFF) and Liberty Gold (LGDTF) are speculative miners. Rio2 is a Canadian miner with projects in Chile and Peru, and Liberty is a Vancouver-based gold developer focused on the Black Pine oxide gold project in Idaho.
If you want a leveraged bet on gold going higher, either or both of these could potentially net you hundreds of percent in short order.
They certainly have over the past few years.
But both are extremely volatile and probably shouldn’t be considered for large positions.
Moving on, Wheaton Precious Metals (WPM) and Royal Gold (RGLD) are more interesting. Both companies finance mining and profit from a bull market in gold… though neither has to get their hands dirty operating mines.
You see, Wheaton and Royal are gold streamers. Instead of digging, they give miners cash up front to help them build or expand a mine. In return, they get a long-term claim on part of that mine’s future output.
Because they don’t run mines, they have small staffs, few capital commitments after the initial payment and very high profit margins. Their profits rise sharply when metal prices go up, since their costs stay mostly fixed.
Not surprisingly, both rate as “Strong Bullish” on my quality factor. These are exactly the kinds of “asset light” businesses that tend to rate well on quality.
Also popping up as “Bullish” is Farmland Partners (FPI), a Denver-based REIT that owns U.S. farmland and leases it to farmers.
Its income comes from several sources: fixed cash rents, variable payments tied to crop yields or prices, interest from a lending program for farmers and smaller royalties such as solar and mineral leases.
FPI is undergoing a bit of a transformation as it sells off less-profitable farms to reduce its debt load. But it pays a decent 3.3% dividend and provides exposure to an inflation hedge – farmland – that you’d have a difficult time accessing through other means.
Finally, I’d mention China Hongqiao Group (CHHQY), one of the world’s largest aluminum producers. Unlike most of its peers, China Hongqiao Group enjoys the benefits of vertical integration.
It controls each step from raw material to finished metal, including bauxite from a Guinea mining venture, alumina refining in Indonesia and smelting in China.
China Hongqiao is remarkably cheap with a “Strong Bullish” value factor rating of 96. It also rates a “Strong Bullish” on quality.
A little patience might be in order here, however, as the shares have been trending lower for most of this year.
You might want to put the stock on a watch list for now rather than buy it outright.
To good profits,
Adam O’Dell
Editor, What My System Says Today
P.S. Between high inflation, geopolitical turmoil and the upcoming midterm elections, investors have had plenty to keep an eye on lately.
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