The S&P 500 is up roughly 12 ½% this year on a total return basis. Moreover, this year’s advance has been broader than in the past. The equally weighted S&P index is actually slightly ahead of that most respectable number.

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The word “unprecedented” is often overused during these tumultuous times. However, when it comes to what has occurred since the Fed began its latest interest-rate easing cycle, it truly qualifies.

(Four-chart sequence necessary to fully convey the point.)

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Last Friday, Donald Trump’s typically bombastic declaration of “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN HISTORY!” naturally generated intense media interest. He went on to boast say: “This Historic Transaction MORE THAN DOUBLES American Oil Reserves, greatly increases our Oil Supply, and will substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans, long into the future.”

If you were dozing off at the time, like by watching another Seattle Mariners blow-out loss, he was referring to the country with the world’s largest oil reserves: Venezuela.

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Special thanks to frequent Haymaker contributor Daniel Bustamante for his work on this POW! edition.

Generac: The Market Is Finally Recognizing the C&I Transformation

Generac is no longer simply a residential generator company dependent on hurricanes and power outages.

The company is developing a second earnings engine in Commercial & Industrial (C&I) power equipment, with data-center demand accelerating faster than the market previously expected. At the same time, the legacy residential business is becoming more profitable, even without a major weather-driven demand cycle.

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In this week’s Dailies, we’ve been examining the feedback loops from the federal government’s inability to control its immense spending and the related record peacetime deficits. It’s reasonable to conclude most Americans realize this is a totally unsustainable situation. Yet, there are also substantial near-term benefits that make it hard to kick the habit.

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Life is full of ironies and one of the most ironic is what’s happening to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. As discussed in yesterday’s Daily, he’s in a major tussle with the long-term Treasury Bond market as he attempts to keep yields from ripping higher.

The irony stems from his much ballyhooed plan during the early months of the Trump administration to achieve a 3% real GDP growth rate, three million barrels per day of increased oil production and, most relevant to this note, a 3% budget deficit.

Unfortunately, the administration has achieved none of those objectives.

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There is a titanic struggle underway between U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the long-term government bond market. BofA’s Chief Investment Strategist Michael Hartnett refers to the 5% yield level on the 30-year T-bond as the Maginot Line. Hopefully, for the sake of his fraying credibility, Mr. Bessent’s defensive efforts will be far more effective than were France’s fortifications against Hitler’s blitzkrieg back in 1940.

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In today’s Portfolio Update we are covering four stocks. As a result, each note on these will be quasi-tweets, or whatever those are called these days. Per the following detail, three are winners and one is a loser. Coincidentally, that’s about the hit vs miss rate our picks have had overall since 2022.

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This is a reiteration of our original recommendation, that longtime Haymakers may recall, of PALL, the palladium ETF, in April 2024. Our bullish thesis on it back then was contrarian and it has returned to out-of-favor status today. We are coming back to it now because palladium has significantly corrected within what we believe is a long-term uptrend at the same time that the fundamental supply/demand story has strengthened. Additionally, the macro backdrop underpinning the hard-asset thesis has moved further in our direction, particularly the trend toward monetary debasement, as we will discuss.

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BofA’s Chief Investment Strategist, Michael Hartnett, often quoted in this newsletter, is renowned for his studies of asset allocation. He also keeps close tabs on institutional cash levels, per his closely followed Fund Manager Survey (FMS).

According to the latest FMS release, global fund managers now hold a mere 3.5% of their assets in cash. That is well below the warning level of 4%, signaling extreme bullishness. It’s also the sixth-lowest reading since 1998.

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While Team Haymaker strives mightily to be as objective as possible, some degree of confirmation bias is inevitable when there are humans involved. (Actually, as we learn more about AI, we're not sure it isn't subject to some of its own blind spots.) Because we have a decidedly pro-energy outlook — particularly with oil, natural gas, uranium and, reluctantly, coal — we have to guard against only relaying data which backs up our bullish views on this long-disdained sector.

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Team Haymaker’s view is that oil prices are being suppressed as a result of pervasive misinformation. One of the most broadly accepted supposed “facts” used to justify crude trading at an exceedingly cheap inflation-adjusted level is the contention there was a petro-glut prior to America’s and Israel’s attacks on Iran. Yet, looking at developed-world (OECD) oil inventories prior to the initiation of hostilities tells a far different story.

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The main topic of this week’s Update is IJH, which has been in and out of Haymaker focus for years, but which today warrants another in-depth look. Whether it’s a name you’ve been following with us since our first mention or one you haven’t been tracking at all, you’ll want to hear us out on its recent trajectory and where we think it’s heading.

Before getting into Mid-Caps…

… we’d like to run a briefer follow-up on a much more recent Haymaker recommendation: Quest Diagnostics. This one made its initial Portfolio appearance just a couple of months back, but there’s enough activity to warrant a quick, well, diagnostic, if you will. As we don’t have as much history to cover here, the update is accordingly brief.

Enjoy the read!

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Part I: Quest Diagnostics (DGX)

We recommended Quest Diagnostics on June 5, 2026, at $200.29. The stock is trading today at approximately $236 for a gain of roughly 18% in just over two months, plus the $0.86 quarterly dividend. Considering the S&P’s ~6% gain in that time, DGX is a respectable outperformer. The Q2 earnings report on July 23 was the catalyst, with the stock surging 11.15% on the day. Our thesis has been directionally right so far and the question is whether meaningful upside remains.

Five-Year Price Chart (prior overhead resistance displayed)

Obviously, we missed the key upside range expansion early last year, but we did catch a retracement to near the breakout point not that far above $180. It was also smack dab on the 200-day moving average. Buying relatively close to the resistance penetration spot and at the 200-day is typically a profitable tactic. Fortunately, this was no exception.

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Hello, Haymakers:

What we believe is (or will become) clear is that, at its core, the AI story is fundamentally an energy story. Who will win? How will it be (effectively) regulated? Will it massively displace labor? All these questions and handwringing are secondary to the fact that AI is going to require an enormous amount of reliable power to sustain its exponential growth trajectory, though that is likely to plateau in years to come.

Enter: Vistra Corp (VST)

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The Trump administration continues its repeated assertions that the Strait of Hormuz (SoH) has largely re-opened. The latest example was Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s statement earlier this week that traffic through the Strait was above pre-war levels as of Sunday. Unfortunately, more objective sources disagree, including the Energy Information Administration (EIA), a federal government agency, not to be confused with the IEA (see below).

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Today, we’re long on gold. Literally — this is a long Daily on gold. Despite the hefty word count by the standards of our usual format, the material below is actually an abbreviated re-posting of Kevin “The Macro Tourist” Muir’s August 8th edition, titled Sometimes Trading Is That Simple: Long Gold Again. As most Haymakeristas are aware, we hold Kevin in the highest regard for his exceptional economic and market insights.

We’ve cut this down considerably, but the major points are well represented. Even so, we recommend you subscribe to the ‘Tourist’s newsletter to absorb the piece in full and receive all the others to come. As you’ll soon read, Kevin is making a convincing case for gold, and the miners thereof, based on a very simple reading of the market. It’s one with which we agree strongly enough to broadcast the main thesis here with the caveat that both bullion and the miners have had a snappy rally of late. (We gave readers a timely AGI, Alamos Gold, Buy alert on July 27th, and it’s popped about 15% since then.)

Here’s a chart another great friend of Team Haymaker, Adam Taggart, sent us yesterday, which suggests that any pull-back on GDX, the leading gold miner ETF, should render it an accumulation candidate:

We’ve cut Kevin’s piece down considerably, but the major points are well represented. Even so, we recommend you subscribe to the ‘Tourist’s newsletter to absorb the material in full and receive all the posts to come. As you’ll soon read, Kevin is making a strong case for gold based on a very simple reading of the market. It’s one with which we agree strongly enough to broadcast the main thesis here. As always, do yourself the favor of additional research, but if a gold buy ends up serving you well, be sure to let us know.

The Haymaker Team

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MacroTourist excerpts follow:

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Natural gas has long been considered the bridge energy source, efficiently powering modern society until renewables are ready to absorb the lion’s share of that essential burden. There is now, however, a growing awareness that wind and solar are unequal to the task of providing reliable baseload power at scale. This reality check has been reinforced by the breathtaking pace of data center installations, all of which require uninterrupted power to properly function. They can’t operate in accordance with daylight hours and wind patterns.

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QuinStreet (QNST) | Original recommendation February 13, 2026, at $11.25

The timing of this update is pretty juicy because just QuinStreet reported Q4 FY2026 earnings after market close on August 6, and the stock jumped 36% in the after-hours session. As of this writing on August 7, QNST is trading at approximately $20.70, up 84% from our February entry in under six months. The stock just set a new 52-week high of $20.91 intraday and we think the recent earnings beat was a pretty thorough validation of every element of the thesis we laid out in February.

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Key Highlights

• Stock at ~$133; 52-week range of $107.75 to $157.29;

• Q1 2026: revenue $6.96B, +4.4% YoY, 1.5% beat; adj. EPS $2.03, +6.3% beat; adj. operating income $3.27B, 46.9% margin, 4.7% beat; operating margin 37.2%, up from 33.5% YoY

• Q2 2026 (August 4): Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) net loss $10.5B driven by acquisition write-downs; underlying revenue growth strong; HIV and oncology both growing; full-year product sales guidance raised to $30.1B

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There is no question that S&P 500 earnings have been spectacular this year. Per ZeroHedge — which some deride as the financial equivalent of the National Enquirer, but we find a frequent source of interesting factoids — they’ve been the strongest since 1955. That was of course during the peak of the American post-WWII high and the interstate highway construction boom. Civilian atomic energy was also just lifting off, promising an era of cheap and nearly limitless power.

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