As we kick off September, I admit it can be easy to feel a little pessimistic knowing this month’s historical pattern. And this year, we add an election fraught with anxiety and uncertainty that follows only a few weeks after the month concludes. Last week the S&P 500 had its worst week since early 2023, mostly due to inflation fears coming back into focus causing the size of interest rate cuts to once again become murky. But in typical volatile fashion, stocks rebounded on Monday: The S&P 500 climbed 0.7%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 0.6%, and the Nasdaq led the charge with a roughly 0.9% gain.

You all send them in, and we rank them. I wanted to keep today’s Power Trends+ fun during this volatile September and do one of my favorite things. A speed round of your requested tickers.

Does AI scare you? Have things gone too far? Is this the beginning of the end? Well, it depends on who you listen to. Some think that AI is the savior, while others think the reckoner. Either way, we all need to buckle our seatbelts and prepare for a wild ride. If you ask me, though, just know I’m an eternal optimist. I consider the alternative a waste of my energy. So, I’m going to give you a smoother ride into the AI future.

Unfortunately, I think more people use data when it comes to sports than they do with investing. We use quantitative analysis all the time to build our own “fantasy team” of all-star stocks that are the best performers in the market. Actually, it’s not a fantasy team at all. The profits are very real.

You know the data and my analysis point to a strong finish to 2024. We’ve talked about it before, and we’ll continue to highlight the best ways to profit. Along those lines, my colleague Luke Lango – Chief Investment Analyst at InvestorPlace – has crunched some numbers… and he’s identified a rare economic event that historically triggers a stock market boom. It happened three times in the past 30 years – in 1995, 1998, and 2019 – and it triggered a stock market boom on all of those occasions. In about two weeks, according to oddsmakers, there’s a 100% chance this event is happening again.

We’ve talked a lot recently about how Wall Street’s algorithms now dominate trading activity. Every investor needs to be aware of this because it impacts virtually every stock that you own or might own. And algorithmic domination is only intensifying as Big Money incorporates artificial intelligence into its technology. Believe me, these firms have the money to do it.