CEO Watchlist: Week In Review (8/10/25)

TOP NEWS AFFECTING THE STOCK MARKET THIS WEEK:

The Semiconductor Cold War Just Got Hot: 4 Key Chip Stocks We're Watching...(Source)

Stocks mentioned: $AAPL, $NVDA, $TSM ,$ASML

The U.S. just announced a 100% tariff on imported semiconductors, the kind of move that would normally spark a selloff in chip stocks. Instead, the sector’s biggest names barely flinched. The reason? The policy came with a major carve-out: companies already producing chips in the U.S., or committed to doing so, will be exempt from the new tariff.

President Trump specifically named Apple (AAPL) and Nvidia (NVDA) as examples of companies that will avoid the tariff. Apple’s massive $600 billion, four-year commitment to U.S. manufacturing, covering everything from silicon wafers to chipmaking processes, virtually guarantees it won’t face the import penalty. Even foreign-based players stand to gain. Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) is based in Taiwan but has been pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into its U.S. fabs (short for "fabrication plant" AKA a factory where semiconductor chips are manufactured), which will produce chips for Nvidia and other U.S. clients, keeping them exempt from the new tariffs. ASML Holding (ASML), the Dutch maker of essential lithography machines, also has U.S. production capacity and could see a rebound in orders as TSM and others accelerate their American buildouts.

Instead of sparking fear, this tariff announcement has created a quiet bull case for select semiconductor names. While the broader industry still faces geopolitical risk, the companies with firm U.S. manufacturing commitments now hold a structural advantage, and the market may not have fully priced in their opportunity yet. We have started rotating positions in our stock portfolios based on this news. This past week alone we bought and sold a few different tech stocks, so if you're an Investment Club member, CLICK HERE to log in and see exactly what we bought/sold and why.

Warren Buffett's New Secret Stock Purchase Exposed?! (Source)

Stocks mentioned: $UNH, $BRK.B

In a market hitting fresh all-time highs, finding true value is becoming rare. But every so often, a stock emerges that stands out as a high-conviction buy even in an expensive market. We’ve talked about this company before, but new developments this week, around a rumor that Warren Buffett is secretly buying this stock, made us believe it’s worth reiterating: this could be one of our top picks for performance over the next couple of years and this stock is UnitedHealth Group (UNH).

Healthcare has been struggling for the past few years, weighed down by political pressure, rising costs, and weak earnings. Yet within the sector, there are hidden gems, companies whose selloffs have been far harsher than their fundamentals warrant. For investors who can handle some volatility and show patience, these names could offer outsized returns. One of those is UnitedHealth Group. A few newsletters ago, we noted that the CEO and other insiders had been buying tens of millions of dollars worth of shares. Now, it’s not just insiders who are buying UNH stock at these lower levels, its also politicians from both sides of the aisle (Republican and Democrat) who have been buying as well. This includes Representatives Tim Morre (R), Ro Khanna (D), Scott Franklin (R), Gil Cisneros (D), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R), and Michael McCaul (R) (pictured below).

But it doesn’t stop with the CEO and politicans its also "Super Investors" who are buying this stock up heavily. "Super Investors" are the top elite money managers who control billions of dollars in investments and have a long history of market-beating performance. These are people like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Michael Burry. These guys are the best of the best in the investing world and what's interesting is that last quarter, UNH was the number-one stock purchase among this group (as seen in the image below). This is a level of consensus we rarely see for a large, established company that’s down over 50% from its all-time highs. It feels like everyone and their mother is buying it!

This wave of buying activity feeds directly into one of the biggest rumors on Wall Street this week: that Warren Buffett, through Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B), is quietly building a position in UNH too! We discussed in the Investment Club how Buffett has been secretly buying a stock that he hasn’t yet disclosed, and speculation is mounting that it could be UNH. The fit is obvious, because Buffett loves insurance companies, and something most people don't know and isn't being reported on is that he has owned UNH before. Back in Q4 of 2006, he began buying shares of UNH and building the position larger over the next couple years to a huge sizing valued at ~$295 million! He then sold UNH in 2008 with a 379% gain! Today, with UNH deeply oversold, attractive on every valuation metric, and seeing unprecedented simultaneous buying from the CEO, politicians, and "Super Investors", it would only make perfect sense for Buffett to be interested and be buying back the name. But again, this is rumor for now and we wont find out until he publicly discloses it.

Whether or not the Buffett rumor proves true, our thesis remains the same: UNH is one of the best risk/reward setups in the market today. That’s why we own it in our Investment Club portfolios. If you’re an Investment Club member and want to see all the stocks we own, in addition to UNH, log in by CLICKING HERE and see our most updated stock portfolio with all of our new buys for this next month!

Ask ChatGPT,
Stock Spotlight: This Under-The-Radar Cybersecurity Stock Could Be the Next Big Winner! (Source)

Stocks mentioned: $RBRK, $CVLT, $CRWD, $PANW

The cloud era promised infinite scalability, but it also introduced infinite risk. Every terabyte of data a company stores becomes a potential target for attack. The problem? Cybersecurity spending has been growing fast, but data security, the crown jewel target for attackers, has lagged behind. That’s where Rubrik (RBRK) has quietly built a moat, and its most recent quarterly results in June make it clear: the market may be dramatically underpricing its potential.

Rubrik is a leader in cloud-native data security and backup, serving enterprises that can’t afford to lose a single spec of mission-critical information. Its platform not only backs up data across hybrid and multi-cloud environments but also provides ransomware recovery, anomaly detection, and compliance automation, all in one unified product. That integrated model is key, but you do have competitors like Commvault ($CVLT) who offer similiar services. In our opinion though, Rubrik’s architecture is much stronger and thats why it is a much larger company than CVLT while creating sticky recurring revenue and customers who refuse to switch from RBRK to the competition. In June, Rubrik delivered revenue growth of 49% year-over-year! This is a clear sign that demand is accelerating and not going anywhere anytime soon.

The macro backdrop is where this gets interesting. Global ransomware damages are projected to exceed $265 billion annually by 2031, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. Regulatory requirements are also tightening, forcing companies to prove they can not only defend against attacks but also recover from them. That’s creating a spending shift: CIOs are prioritizing “cyber resilience”, the ability to restore operations in hours, not days, as a core metric and thats where RBRK comes in. Alongside Rubrik, we’re seeing names like CrowdStrike (CRWD) and Palo Alto Networks (PANW) dominate threat prevention, but Rubrik’s edge is in the last mile: recovery. Not all cybersecurity is the same. Rubriks specialty is in the recovery portion of a cyber attack, whereas CRWD and PANW arent specialized in that side of cybersecurity. So, in other words, it’s not competing against them, it’s complementing them.

The trend is clear: in the age of AI, where data is both an asset and a liability, the winners will be the companies that protect their assets without slowing innovation. Rubrik sits directly at that intersection, with a model that turns security from a cost center into a competitive advantage. We're in an age where things are rapidly becoming digitalized and there has never been more information about you and everything else in online data bases/the cloud. In a world where we rely so heavily on online data and trusting companies who we share our personal information with, cybersecurity will only get more important as time goes on and it will become a staple in every business that they cannot afford to ignore. When the rest of Wall Street catches on, the re-rating higher could be as swift as it was with chip stocks during the Nvidia stock boom just a few years ago.

These are exactly the types of opportunities we target inside the CEO Watchlist Investment Club, high-upside plays most investors overlook until it’s too late. In fact, we just released our "Top 5 Speculative Stocks to Own Right Now", and Rubrik (RBRK) came in at #5. If you’re an Investment Club Member, CLICK HERE to log in and see the 4 other names on the list that beat Rubrik, along with our full breakdown on why we think they're going higher. That said, speculative stocks can be tricky, with big upside comes real risk. Knowing how to spot high upside reward and minimal downside risk is something we teach in the Investment Club. Too many people buy a stock and then it crashes right after, or sell a stock and then it shoots up immediately after. If this is happening to you, now might be the time to join a mentorship group such as the CEO Watchlist Investment Club. Right now, you can join the Investment Club for the next 3 months and take $200 OFF your subscription! You will get instant access to all 5 of these stocks, our entire stock and option portfolios, a video vault of lessons that teach you everything you need to know about investing in stocks/options, and access to our private LIVE classes and conference calls where you can watch as we make our trades LIVE in real time! Don’t wait, CLICK HERE to claim your spot now and join the 1000's of others who have joined the CEO Watchlist Investment Club!

INSIDER TRADES FROM THE WEEK:

1. TransMedics (TMDX) - Waleed Hassanein, CEO, bought ~$2,000,000 of TMDX stock between August 6 - August 7, 2025, but it was reported to the public on August 8, 2025. (Source)

2. Molina Healthcare (MOH) - James Woys, COO, bought ~$1,500,000 of MOH stock on August 4, 2025, but it wasn't reported to the public until August 6, 2025. (Source)

3. Aurora Innovation (AUR) - John Donahoe, director, bought ~$1,000,000 worth of AUR stock on August 6, 2025, but it wasn't reported to the public until August 7, 2025. (Source)

Over 2,000 people have already signed up for my FREE Masterclass video on how to unlock my exact strategies for finding winning stock/options trades! I'll share everything including how to find what Politicians and CEOs are buying. Don’t miss your chance to get in for FREE before spots fill up!