Value Pick – September 6, 2026
Value Pick of the Week
Happy Labor Day!
No Value Pick for this holiday shortened week.
Market Summary
Essentially a sideways week — the S&P 500 rose 0.1% with intra-week volatility that netted out to nothing.
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📉 The week opened under Iran pressure — after falling 0.2% over the weekend (with no major news), the index continued its slide, closing Tuesday 1.0% below the Friday close after U.S. strikes on Iranian targets.
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📈 Thursday’s rebound was Fed Governor Christopher Waller — dovish comments about holding rates steady this month eased rate worries. He indicated his September bias will be determined by August inflation data.
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📉 Friday gave much of it back on a hot jobs report — August payrolls came in at 162,000 against a 55,000 consensus, the largest monthly gain since March, with unemployment unchanged at 4.1% — June and July both revised upward.
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📉 Yields spiked in response — the 2-year Treasury yield hit its highest level since January 2025. Classic “good news is bad news”: strong labor data refocuses the Fed on inflation.
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📈 Earnings season finished strong — with 492 S&P 500 companies reported, 86% beat EPS estimates against a four-quarter average of 80%. Q2 growth is tracking +53%, full-year 2026 at +35% versus a 10-year average of +9%, and 70% of analyst revisions over the past month were upward.
The setup ahead: the S&P has spent multiple weeks in a narrow range. The next two weeks will set the tone — the August PPI report on Thursday the 10th followed by the August CPI report on Friday the 11th, with Oracle (ORCL) and Adobe (ADBE) reporting. Waller made it clear that the inflation reports will make the rate decision on September 16th.
How Our Picks Fared
Our past picks gained 0.5% versus the S&P 500, largely on tech picks, with Dell Technologies (DELL) leading the way after a blowout earnings report on September 1.
📈 Dell Technologies (DELL) rose 14.9%
- Record revenue of about $47 billion, up 58% year over year.
- GAAP EPS up 273% and adjusted EPS up 203%.
- Backlog reached a record $95 billion — up from $51.3 billion in the last report.
- $4.3 billion returned through buybacks and dividends.
- The guidance raise was the real catalyst, with FY2027 revenue guidance lifted ~15.0% — about $25 billion above estimates.
- FY2027 adjusted EPS guidance raised to $25.50 from $17.90, implying a 148% increase.
- Analysts raised their targets: JPMorgan to $635, Raymond James to $617 from $500, and TD Cowen to $500 from $450. The average target now sits near $564.
⚠️ At roughly 18.6x forward earnings after the run, the average target near $564 implies far less upside than the stock has already delivered.
Past Picks Review — Food & Tobacco
Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM) — SELL
Archer-Daniels-Midland was recommended and purchased in January 2023 at $88.42 per share on the premise that as one of the largest global agricultural processors, ADM stood to benefit from rising food prices and population growth. That thesis hasn’t played out, and recent developments make a continued hold hard to justify.
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The forward number is negative, not just lagging. The median 1-year target from 10–11 covering analysts sits around $78.00–78.70, implying roughly a 7–8% decline from here — not underperformance relative to the market, an outright expected drop.
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The core damage to the original thesis: a confirmed accounting and disclosure fraud scandal, not an ongoing allegation. The SEC charged ADM and three former executives with accounting and disclosure fraud, as a result of an inquiry announced in January 2024, a year after the recommendation. ADM settled for $40 million in January 2026, and its former CFO was criminally charged.
Bottom line: the original thesis rested on ADM’s scale and pricing power in a tightening food market; what’s actually materialized is a confirmed governance failure, thin and bearish-leaning analyst coverage, a forward target pointing down rather than just lagging, and a cyclical (not structural) earnings recovery layered on top.
Have a great week!