The jobs market roars back … Eric Fry is looking at nuclear power … why Louis Navellier doesn’t expect a blowout December … the “ultimate” stock screening tool This morning, the Labor Department reported that the U.S. added 227,000 jobs in November, more than the forecast of 214,000. This was a “back to business” report following October’s data which had been artificially impacted by the Boeing strike and late-season hurricanes. The big question now is how this will affect the Fed’s interest rate policy at its December meeting in a week and a half. On one hand, the creation of 227,000 new jobs does not scream “help this crippled economy immediately!” In fact, on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said as much when speaking at an event hosted by the New York Times: The U.S. economy is in remarkably good shape… We can afford to be a little bit more cautious as we find neutral. If you’re less familiar, “neutral” is a reference to the neutral rate, the theoretical interest rate that neither juices nor tamps down economic growth. So, when we combine this morning’s job creation with Powell’s hat tip to caution, then throw in last week’s hotter-than-expected core personal consumption expenditures index reading, a December pause in rate cuts would seem appropriate. Not according to Wall Street traders… According to the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool, as I write Friday late-morning, traders are putting 86.9% odds on a quarter-point cut in two weeks. Yesterday, those odds came in at just 71%. Traders appear to be zeroing in on the latest unemployment rate reading from this morning, which edged up from 4.1% in October to 4.2% last month. The Fed has a tough job here. With both inflation and unemployment ticking up, there’s a case to be made for both an interest-rate cut or pause in December. We’d like to see the Fed pause due to core PCE data that’s going the wrong way. After all, if Trump is going to be as growth/inflationary as the financial media would have us believe, the greater risk seems to be too much gas, not too much break. We’ll see what happens on December 18. Switching gears, earlier this week brought another reason to look hard at nuclear power stocks On Tuesday, news broke that Meta wants to ramp up its nuclear power initiatives. From Reuters: [Meta] is seeking proposals from nuclear power developers to help meet its artificial intelligence and environment goals, becoming the latest big tech company to take interest in atomic power amid an expected boom in electricity demand. The company wants to add 1 to 4 gigawatts of new U.S. nuclear generation capacity starting in the early 2030s, it said in a release. A typical U.S. nuclear plant has a capacity of about 1 gigawatt. As we’ve been profiling in the Digest in recent months, AI requires enormous amounts of power. Here’s The Verge with some perspective: Training a large language model like GPT-3, for example, is estimated to use just under 1,300 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity; about as much power as consumed annually by 130 US homes. To put that in context, streaming an hour of Netflix requires around 0.8 kWh (0.0008 MWh) of electricity. That means you’d have to watch 1,625,000 hours to consume the same amount of power it takes to train GPT-3. Given this enormous power demand, the mega-cap tech leaders who are cannonballing into AI have been signing nuclear power deals this fall. In September, Microsoft contracted with Constellation Energy to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear facility. And in October, Amazon signed a deal with Dominion Energy to invest more than $500 million in nuclear power. Tuesday’s news from Meta is just another indicator that AI is real…as is the profit potential for a nuclear power trade. This trend isn’t going away. From Meta’s press release: Advancing the technologies that will build the future of human connection — including the next wave of AI innovation — requires electric grids to expand and embrace new sources of reliable, clean and renewable energy. As new innovations bring impactful technological advancements across sectors and support economic growth, we believe that nuclear energy can help provide firm, baseload power to support the growth needs of the electric grids that power both our data centers (the physical infrastructure on which Meta’s platforms operate) as well as the communities around them. | Recommended Link | | | | After nearly a year of building and testing, Luke Lango is finally ready to reveal his powerful new stock screener on December 11. It’s called Auspex, and Luke will use it to identify what he calls “the best stocks at the best time”. Using this system, he has already handed some readers opportunities like 115% in under 60 days. Get the full details now. |  | | Our macro expert Eric Fry has been all over the nuclear trade for months And yesterday, he highlighted one company that stands to benefit from this nuclear renaissance – GE Vernova (GEV). From Eric: This “purpose-built company” combined GE Renewable Energy, GE Power, and GE Digital. As the company states, it “is uniquely positioned to lead customers through the energy transition” to solve the “energy trilemma of reliability, affordability, and sustainability.” The company is already making strides… nuclear ones, at that. This weekend, CNBC reported that GE Vernova is planning to set up small nuclear reactors across the developed world. This deployment will happen over the next decade. Eric points out that these small modular reactors (SMRs) are about a third the size of the average reactors in the current U.S. fleet. They have a power capacity of 300 megawatts or less – which could power more than 200,000 U.S. households. Now, while we’re very bullish on nuclear/AI, be careful before throwing your money into GEV. As you can see below, Wall Street has already stampeded into the stock. Since GE spun it out as a standalone business this past March, it’s climbed almost 200%. 
This surge has resulted in GEV’s price-to-earnings ratio exploding to 81. For opportunities trading at more reasonable valuations, Eric has been looking at uranium stocks. Back to Eric: As the tech giants need to feed their growing appetite for electric power, they are investing directly in nuclear power. And this is where the profit opportunity comes in. This new high-profile demand for nuclear power from the tech industry could accelerate the uranium industry’s growth and profitability. So, to capitalize on that potential, I recommend investing in the uranium market. To help you begin your analysis, here are a few direct plays on uranium (though be careful about some of these valuations too). - Cameco Corp. (CCJ)
- Energy Fuels (UUUU)
- Centrus Energy Corp. (LEU)
For more on the specific way Eric is investing in Investment Report, click here to learn more about join him. He recently recommended a unique energy play that should be a direct beneficiary of snowballing AI adoption. Meanwhile, don’t be thrown if December brings increased volatility and/or muted returns compared to November We’re coming off a fantastic performance for stocks last month. The S&P 500 rose 5.7% and the Dow jumped 7.5%, marking their best monthly performance of 2024. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq climbed 6.2% for its largest gain since May. While legendary investor Louis Navellier believes December will bring more gains, he tells his readers not to expect a repeat of November’s fireworks: Don’t get me wrong, December is also a seasonally strong month for the stock market. Our friends at Bespoke Investment Group recently pointed out that December is one of the four strongest months of the year. According to their research, the Dow has achieved average gains of more than 1% in these four months (December, April, July and November) in the past 100, 50 and 20 years. 
Breaking it down… In December, the Dow posted an average gain of 1.46% in the past 100 years, an average 1.37% gain in the past 50 years and an average 1.01% gain in the past 20 years. So, I still expect December to be a strong month for the overall stock market and our stocks – and I also anticipate a yearend rally to close out the year. But December isn’t likely to be a blowout month like November. Louis points toward a few reasons for this. One, stocks need to consolidate their recent gains... two, we’ll likely to see tax loss harvesting as investors dump their losing positions to offset their capital gains... and three, some of November’s blowout returns were based on the conflux of the presidential election, an early “January effect,” and pension funding. Speaking of January, Louis has been making some recommendations in his Growth Investor portfolio that reflect opportunities emerging with the incoming Trump administration. For more on what he’s doing, you can check out his free research video right here. | Recommended Link | | | | Louis Navellier, tech investor and market veteran, believes Trump’s return will drive a second AI boom. Get the top six stocks he recommends before they skyrocket. Get the Details Here. |  | | Finally, even though December’s S&P performance might not match November’s, that doesn’t mean specific stocks won’t jump higher As we frequently write, the market is not one giant monolith that rises and falls in unison. It’s made up of thousands of different stocks that soar and crash due to their own unique influences, irrespective of the broader market. The good news that this means there’s always a bull market somewhere. And yesterday, we introduced you to a new tool that our hypergrowth expert Luke Lango is using to find these localized bulls – his Auspex stock screener. Auspex screens more than 10,000 stocks via three factors: fundamentals, technicals, and sentiment. In other words, it looks for stocks anchored in operational strength, that have technical support and tailwinds, which are being buoyed by investor sentiment. As you’d expect, this creates a high bar and only a select few stocks make the cut each month. Luke has been running this screener for his Inner Circle subscribers for the last five months, and Auspex has beaten the market every month. In November, its equal weight return was more than 8%. As we noted in yesterday’s Digest, one of key attributes of Auspex is its ease of use. You simply buy its recommended selections once at the beginning of the month, and that’s it. You hold until the end of the month when Auspex either suggests you remain in the stock (based on a new scan of strength at that time) or rotate your money into a new stock that has made the cut. Here’s Luke with why his team developed the tool: "Buy-and-hold" isn't dead. However, between frequent flash crashes and constant market turbulence, investors face many challenges when it comes to short-term gains. We need to diversify our investing strategies beyond buy-and-hold. That’s why we developed my new Auspex strategy – to replace uncertainty and volatility with certainty and stability. To me, Auspex is the ultimate stock-screening tool. My team and I designed it to find the "best stocks at the best time." Next Wednesday at 1 PM ET, Luke is holding a live event to explain how Auspex works, highlight its performance over the last five months, and detail how it addresses the key challenge facing investors today: how do you remain in today’s bull market while limiting your downside risk? To reserve your seat for next Wednesday, click here. I’ll let Luke take us out today: In 2025, the stock market is going to be volatile and complex… and it’s going to change all the time… just like 2024, 2023, 2022, etc. In this environment, tools that provide data-driven, adaptive investment strategies will be invaluable. That’s why we developed Auspex… With it, investors can position themselves to not just weather potential market storms but to thrive and potentially achieve returns far beyond market averages. To learn more, just click here to sign up for The Auspex Anomaly Event. Then mark your calendar for Wednesday, December 11, at 1 p.m. Eastern. Have a good evening, Jeff Remsburg | 
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