Sustainable Impact Investing, or ESG investing, is gaining traction not only with Argus Research clients but also with the global investment community. BlackRock CEO Lawrence Fink, who oversees approximately $9 trillion in assets, announced in January 2020 that his firm would be investing in companies that are making progress on sustainability. He doubled down in his January 2021 letter, calling on company managements to disclose their plans for making their businesses "compatible with a net-zero economy" by 2050. As assets have flowed in over the past 40 years, Sustainable Impact Investing has evolved. The discipline, originally known as Socially Responsible Investing, focused at first on excluding companies that conducted business in South Africa, or participated in industries such as tobacco, alcohol, and firearms. Performance of these initial strategies lagged, and the approach has been modified. Now, instead of merely identifying industries to avoid, the discipline promotes "sustainable" business practices across all industries that can have an "impact" on global issues such as climate, hunger, poverty, disease, shelter, and workers' rights.

Volatility in the stock market during the third quarter gave institutional investors a chance to buy the dips. Taking a look at 13F filings from well-known institutional portfolios, we see that the big guns were busy adding new companies to their portfolios or expanding existing holdings. Buying occurred across a range of sectors. Vickers Stock Research, a subsidiary of Argus Research Group, analyzes insider trading and institutional stock ownership. Form 13-Fs, which institutions must file to report their holdings, are due 45 days after the end of calendar quarters and have come in for 3Q24. We review 13Fs of major institutional investors, including activists, to see what they are buying and to look for trends. Activist investing is now less about generating a short-term return and more about achieving long-term returns through an active management/investor partnerships. Based on data from Vickers, the following is a list of select purchases made in the third quarter by some high-profile money managers, including the Argus Research investment ratings.

Amazon is the leading online retailer and marketplace for third party sellers. Retail related revenue represents approximately 75% of total, followed by Amazon Web Services' cloud computing, storage, database, and other offerings (15%), advertising services (5% to 10%), and other the remainder. International segments constitute 25% to 30% of Amazon's non-AWS sales, led by Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan.

The S&P 500 couldn't hold 6,000 on Tuesday, finishing down a modest 0.3%, while the NYSE couldn't hold 20,000, dropping 0.8%. The Nasdaq, Nasdaq100, and S&P 100 were all flat. The larger losses came from recent leaders, with the S&P MidCap 400 falling 1% and the S&P SmallCap 600 dipping 1.5%. Has a fear of large, round numbers on some of the major indices replaced a fear of missing out (FOMO)? Or can we just call it profit taking on a very short, but torrid, advance higher? With the smaller and less-concentrated indices falling the most, the reading for market breadth was very bad. The reading for NYSE advances-decliners was -1,917; the reading for NYSE advancing issues/total issues was a weak 20% (one of the worst days in recent months); and the reading for NYSE advancing volume/total volume was 29%. The S&P 500 sectors didn't inspire a lot of confidence, but it's only one day. Materials dropped 1.7%, Healthcare gave up 1.4%, Consumer Discretionary and Real Estate fell 1.3%, Utilities dipped 1.2%, and Industrials fell 0.9%. Communication Services led, with a 0.5% gain. Bitcoin reached $90,243 intraday despite the continued rally in the U.S. Dollar Index. So much for the consistent negative correlation between the two assets. However, gold futures fell to $2,606/oz., the lowest mark since September and a clear trend break. Silver futures finished near $31/oz., after hitting $35/oz. late in October. The COT data for metals remains bearish and the COT data for the greenback remains bullish -- so additional weakness in metals is quite possible. (Mark Arbeter, CMT)