Mahoney Asset Management CEO Ken Mahoney joins Wealth! Host Brad Smith to break down his earnings season dos and don'ts as well as take a look at his artificial intelligence (AI) picks, including Nvidia (NVDA), Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), and Walmart (WMT), during third quarter results.

“Jumping in front of earnings, that's a no-no,” Mahoney says, adding, “That's like Russian roulette again.” He outlines, “What we like to do in our kind of playbook, as you said, is actually find those companies that beat estimates, raise guidance, and then the analysts trip over themselves.”

Conversely, “stay away from the other ones,” Mahoney says, explaining that when a company reports an earnings miss and the stock takes a nosedive, “It looks cheap, [but] I'm telling your viewers that's quicksand. You’d rather go with those companies that beat and raise guidance, even if you have to pay up for it.”

Mahoney says he's looking for companies he wants to buy again. “They're going to appear to be kind of expensive. They may take out the year high, but behind it is momentum. Behind it is still those analysts [who] are still playing catch up. So, to us, it separates the men from the boys, so to speak. We'll see that this earnings season as we'll see every other earnings season.”

As far as specific names, Mahoney says, “We like technology because they're more consistent.” With consideration to his earnings framework and the ongoing AI trade, he says “We love Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple. All those names kind of and most of those names are going to beat raise guidance probably buy back stock” as well as “companies like Walmart who are actually using [AI] data” to boost productivity.

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This post was written by Naomi Buchanan.