Dear Investor,

In August, the chairman of the CFTC stood in front of a room in Washington and laid out his marching orders...

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For about a day, the headlines called it a disaster for crypto.

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Crypto 101

AutoZone Shifts Gears, On Track to Reverse Course and Price Recovery

Written by Thomas Hughes. Published: 9/23/2026.

AutoZone (NYSE: AZO) is contending with consumer headwinds, like every other retailer. However, its recent earnings results reflected the company’s strengths, including sustained growth, geographic expansion, robust cash flow, and capital returns.

Key investor takeaways from the report included outperformance and an improved outlook, enough to trigger a bottoming in the stock price.

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AutoZone’s stock price action is significant. The company’s sell-off created a descending wedge pattern, which often indicates a bullish reversal.

In this case, the pattern was reinforced by divergence in the MACD and stochastic indicators. The stochastic was deeply oversold, while MACD momentum had unwound to nearly zero.

As a result, the stock was positioned not only to rebound but also to sustain its upward movement. It needed only a catalyst to get moving, and the catalyst came in the form of the company's earnings results.

AutoZone Drives Growth and Profitability

AutoZone had a mixed quarter, with 5.6% growth below expectations and a 4.8% annual increase in its store count. However, the company continued to grow, compounded that growth with positive comparable-store sales, and delivered significant profitability, which is what counts. Comps rose 1.5% systemwide on a foreign-exchange-adjusted basis, with domestic comps up 1.6% and international comps up 10.7% on a currency-neutral basis.

Margins were also strong, outperforming revenue growth. While tariff refunds helped, margin gains also reflected organic improvement that carried through to the bottom line. Key details included low-double-digit operating and net income growth, as well as nearly 15% earnings-per-share growth amplified by share buybacks.

AutoZone is a cash-flow machine, allocating capital in tiers: first to growth, second to balance-sheet health, and third to buybacks. As a result, the company sustained its investment-grade credit ratings while expanding its store count during fiscal 2026, increasing inventory to drive sales, and significantly reducing its share count. The share count fell by 2.2% during the period, a pace likely to continue into the coming year. Looking ahead, buybacks may accelerate year over year in the next quarter, given the lower share price and increased buyback activity in the latest quarter.

AutoZone Decoupled From Reality: 30% Upside Ahead

AutoZone’s analyst trends, including analysts’ reactions to the earnings results, reveal a market decoupled from reality. While the trends include price-target reductions and a decline in the consensus price target relative to last year, the data remains bullish.

MarketBeat tracks 27 analysts with current ratings. No Sell ratings are logged, and the consensus rating is Moderate Buy, with a 77.7% Buy-side bias. The average price target, while moderated, indicates more than 30% upside from the late-September lows and, more importantly, deep value at the low end. AZO shares have fallen below the analysts’ lowest target, suggesting that a quick move to $3,200 is possible.

Institutional activity suggests that the downside is limited. Institutions own more than 90% of the shares and bought on balance over the trailing 12 months, ramping up activity in early Q3. A wide range of institutional buyers, from retirement funds to private-capital firms to asset managers, will likely continue buying the dips.

AutoZone continues to face headwinds, and it is not an attention-grabbing stock with accelerating AI growth potential. The most likely outcome is a slow grind toward higher levels, underpinned by performance and capital returns, with a retest of existing highs possible within the next 12 months.

AutoZone Has Risks, But the Market Is Mispricing Them in 2026

One of AutoZone’s risks is the shift toward EVs. EVs have fewer replaceable parts, especially for aftermarket do-it-yourselfers, and are affecting sales. To counter this trend, AutoZone executives are shifting inventory to match demand for replacement parts, focusing on high-wear items such as tires, suspension and chassis parts, along with the usual low-voltage electrical components that power cabin electronics, sensors, and gauges. Charging and charging equipment are another avenue, as is leveraging the ALLDATA segment. This proprietary platform is being upgraded and updated to include pertinent information on EV maintenance and repair, ensuring that AutoZone’s network of independent repair shops continues to depend on it for information and solutions.

Investors often get AZO's model wrong. While balance-sheet metrics often show low cash relative to accounts payable, AZO sells inventory before payments are due, mitigating the perceived cash-flow crisis. At the same time, consumer headwinds impair near-term sales but keep consumers in their cars longer, sustaining the business over the long term and, in turn, supporting its capacity for capital returns. Those capital returns are consistent, reduce the share count significantly each year, and keep earnings per share tracking higher at an accelerated pace, regardless of business cycles. When business improves, buybacks improve along with it.

Treasury Yields Hit a 19-Year High—These 2 Bond ETFs Offer Monthly Income

Written by Jessica Mitacek. Published: 9/24/2026.

While the recent surge in bond rates could spell trouble for some corners of the equities market, there is a silver lining for income investors looking to bolster their dividend portfolios.

As bond yields rise, income distributions from bond exchange-traded funds (ETFs) gradually adjust to reflect those increases. The prospect of higher future payouts makes two ETFs—that already provide investors with strong yields—increasingly appealing: the Vanguard Short-Term Bond ETF (NYSEARCA: BSV) and Vanguard Intermediate-Term Corporate Bond ETF (NASDAQ: VCIT).

Bond Yields Keep Climbing Despite Treasury’s Expanded Buybacks

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Despite the U.S. Treasury’s attempt to expand buybacks in an effort to provide liquidity support and help rein in surging bond yields, the plan has backfired. Longer-dated Treasury yields have rebounded, suggesting that the plan itself is incapable of containing borrowing costs.

In an Aug. 19 press release, the Treasury said it was “increasing, by at least double, the size of liquidity support buyback operations for longer-dated nominal coupon securities (the 10-year to 20-year sector and the 20-year to 30-year sector).”

That measure took the previous maximum of $2 billion per operation and increased it to $4 billion. But one month later, in an updated schedule published Sept. 9, the Treasury set its Sept. 10 buyback of 10- to 20-year securities at up to $6 billion and scheduled a Sept. 24 buyback of 20- to 30-year securities at $4 billion or more.

Analysts widely viewed that move as an attempt to combat rising yields driven by inflation and record U.S. national debt, the latter of which surpassed $40 trillion in late August after officially doubling from its 2017 level.

As a result, the 10-year Treasury recently hit its highest level since 2007 and is currently trading around 5%. For context, that remains well below the 10-year’s all-time high of 15.84% in 1981. However, the speed at which it has increased since its all-time low of 0.55% in July 2020 has been jarring.

Combined with the Federal Reserve’s first interest rate hike since 2023, this has renewed pressure on rate-sensitive stocks. But there’s a silver lining for bond funds: Yields can increase as lower-rate bonds mature and are replaced by newer bonds offering higher rates.

That’s particularly good news for BSV and VCIT, which have paid shareholders trailing-12-month (TTM) yields of approximately 4% and 5%, respectively. The funds could see increases in their monthly distributions amid the current rising-rate environment.

BSV: Vanguard’s Short-Term Bond ETF Captures Higher Yields More Quickly

Unlike funds that hold longer-dated bonds, shorter-duration bond funds can reinvest maturing principal more quickly.

As a result, their portfolio income can adjust faster as market yields change, and their distributions can rise alongside interest rates.

That dynamic can particularly benefit a fund like the Vanguard Short-Term Bond ETF (BSV).

BSV aims to track the performance of a market-weighted bond index with a short-term, dollar-weighted average maturity.

It employs a passive management, or indexing, strategy—alongside a net expense ratio of just 0.03%—designed to track the performance of the Bloomberg U.S. 1–5 Year Government/Credit Float Adjusted Index.

That index includes all medium and larger issues of the U.S. federal government, as well as investment-grade corporate bonds and investment-grade international, dollar-denominated bonds that have maturities between one and five years and are publicly issued. At least 80% of BSV’s total net assets—around $46.6 billion—are invested in bonds held in the index.

The ETF has traded within an extremely well-defined range for the past two years. In doing so, it has lost around 3% over the past year and less than 1% since July 2024. But what BSV lacks in appreciation, it makes up for in distributions. Its TTM yield stands at 4.1%, or $3.13 per share annually, paid in monthly installments.

VCIT: Vanguard’s Intermediate-Term Corporate Bond ETF Offers Higher Yields

Corporate bond funds tend to have a close correlation with the performance of U.S. Treasury rates.

However, because they are significantly exposed to companies’ financial health, they pay higher yields than their nearly risk-free Treasury counterparts to compensate shareholders for the default risks they assume.

That is exactly what the Vanguard Intermediate-Term Corporate Bond ETF (VCIT) offers investors.

The fund seeks to track the performance of the Bloomberg U.S. 5–10 Year Corporate Bond Index.

That index measures the investment return of U.S. dollar-denominated, investment-grade, fixed-rate, taxable securities issued by companies operating predominantly in the industrials, utilities and financials sectors, with maturities between five and 10 years.

Looking at the ETF’s current portfolio composition, investors get bond exposure to companies like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Boeing (NYSE: BA), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE: BUD) and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE). That diversified, investment-grade mix helps support VCIT’s higher yield relative to Treasury-focused bond funds.

Because of its corporate exposure, VCIT is marginally more volatile than BSV, with a beta of 0.33 versus 0.09, respectively. That has contributed to a one-year loss of around 6%, but also to about a 6% gain from its five-year low in October 2022.

But what draws investors to the fund is its dividend. VCIT has a TTM yield of 5.02%, or $3.97 per share annually, paid in monthly installments.