Welcome to StockUp, the investing newsletter deep in its planning phase for this year's Warren Buffett-themed jack-o'-lantern.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

View this email in your browser Welcome to StockUp, the investing newsletter deep in its planning phase for this year’s Warren Buffett-themed jack-o’-lantern. This week, we’ve got five stocks to keep you warm in the chilly month ahead. Plus, if Halloween wasn’t unsettling enough, we’ve found signs that a stock market crash may be lurking in the shadows. And with the election just days away, we’ve got three common investing mistakes you won’t want to make. — Nathan Alderman, StockUp Editor NO TRICKS, ALL TREATS 5 Top Stocks for November As the leaves fall and winter draws nearer, our intrepid team of Fools has raked up five stocks ready to embrace your portfolio like the coziest of sweaters. This month’s quintet of high-quality contenders includes:  A cannabis stock that could be set to reach new highs, as the state-by-state movement toward legalizing pot lights a fire under its growth prospects.  A cloud-computing up-and-comer that’s been unjustly knocked around by a political fight it wasn’t even part of, yet still looks ready to shine.  A fast-growing homebuilder riding the surprising housing boom with affordably priced new homes for first-time buyers.  An impressively innovative healthcare stock that’s headed to the market via a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.  A potential chip champ that just added to its dominance by buying up a low-key rival with worldwide reach.  Learn more about all five of these possibly promising picks — dare we call them the investing equivalent of a full-sized Snickers bar in your trick-or-treat bag? — when you read the rest.  Already subscribed to a premium service? Click here to view your subscriptions. Not a member yet? Click here to sign up! JARGON DECODER Operating at the Margins They don’t call it “Wall Street” for nothing; the big banks there build bigger barriers of baffling terminology to keep regular Fools like you intimidated, underconfident, and ready to fork over your cash to a broker. Each week, Jargon Decoder translates one of those worrisome words or phrases into plain English, helping you get a leg up on the Wall Street Wise.  This week’s term continues our three-week journey through the income statement: operating margin. Last week we introduced margins, or the percentage of a company’s sales that it gets to keep as profit. And we covered the first of three progressively smaller sums that count up those profits, gross margin — the profit percentage left over after you subtract the costs of making and selling whatever the company makes money from (whether that’s coffee and donuts, airplane engines, or streaming video).  Farther down the income statement, you’ll find operating profit. To get it, you start with gross profit, then subtract all the company’s costs that don’t strictly, literally involve making or selling something:  The wages or salaries for all other employees: For, say, a restaurant chain, gross profit would factor in the labor costs of the folks in each location who make the food, clean the kitchen, etc. Operating profit would further subtract the cost of paying the employees and executives higher up in the company HQ who create menus, plan expansion strategies, etc.  Marketing and advertising costs: What the company’s spending to let potential customers know about their offering and encourage them to buy it. (This item and the one above it often get lumped together as selling, general, & administrative expenses, or SG&A.) Research & development, or R&D: What the company’s spending to create new products or services, or refine existing ones. Some analysts like to calculate this figure as a percentage of revenue to see how much a company’s investing in its future. Depreciation & amortization: In essence, accounting tricks used to estimate how durable equipment and property breaks down, wears out, or loses value over time. Operating profit helps you figure out how efficient a company is overall. After all, a company can have the leanest, most efficient factories, yet still lose money because of a bloated workforce or needlessly lavish ad spending. Rising operating margin can mean that a company’s using what it already has to do more, make smarter and more productive decisions, and make more money.  Next week, we’ll venture out of the realm of the tangible, and into the trippy, abstract world of net income. Stay tuned!  SCARY STUFF, KIDS New Data Suggests a Stock Market Crash May Be Imminent You know all those tales of terror about people trapped in a time loop, doomed to relive the same events over and over? The stock market might find itself similarly stuck. This year it crashed, then surged -- and Wall Street may be just about to do the time warp again.  In the past few months, Fool Sean Williams has found no shortage of signs that a crash was on its way (at some future point, at least), including a historical pattern of crashes and corrections following a bull-market bounce back from a bear-market low. But now he’s found another indication that investors might be headed for the exits.  With interest rates on U.S. Treasury bonds so bottom-of-the-barrel low that they’re essentially offering investors a small bag of orange circus peanuts in exchange for their money, you’d think people would flock to stocks to get better returns. But the opposite’s happening: For months now, data on U.S. mutual fund and ETF holdings have shown investors taking billions of dollars more out of these investments than they’ve been putting into them.  That’s just the start of the dire portents haunting the market right now. COVID-19 cases are hitting records nationwide, hospitalizations have begun to surge anew, and more lockdowns could be on their way.   Wall Street’s placed all its chips on a magical, miraculous COVID-19 vaccine -- but even the best-case outcome for such a treatment won’t instantly banish the pandemic. And if large-scale clinical trial data for the most promising vaccines looks like a dud, the market may no longer feel quite so optimistic.  And with previous COVID-19 stimulus measures dwindling or gone, and no new relief on the horizon, the economic knock-on effects the previous stimulus kept in check could begin to bite in a way they haven’t thus far.  So what should you do if these grim tidings come true? Discover three time-tested, easy-to-understand ways to manage market turbulence when you read the rest.  ALEXA, WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND AUTOCRACY? Not sure what to ask your smart speaker? Keep up with what's happening in the market by asking your Amazon Alexa or Google Home to "Play Motley Fool podcasts." STOCK THE VOTE 3 Stock Market Mistakes That Could Cost You During Election Season Wait, is there some sort of election happening soon? Huh. We hadn’t heard much about it. We’re kidding, of course. (Though we kinda wish we weren’t.) But while you join tens of millions of your fellow patriotic Americans to take part in shaping our future, make sure you’re making wise decisions in your portfolio as well. Fool Katie Brockman has found three common investing mistakes that tend to crop up every time we head to the ballot box:  Panic-selling your investments. Oh no! What if This Candidate wins? What if The Other One does? What if the market freaks out and your stocks go haywire? Well, then your money will probably be in for a rough few months. But if you try to cash out to avoid such a potential calamity, you might end up running headlong into it Holding off in investing for fear of volatility. You never know what the market might do. The money you invest now could lead to big gains in the future -- gains you might miss out on if you push “pause” on your contributions now. Investing for the short term. You’ve seen a horror movie before, right? There’s always that one character who decides to check out the eerie noise in the shadowy basement. Makes sense in the short term: I’m curious about that noise! I’ll feel better once I know what it is! But those characters would almost always have better outcomes if they took a long-term approach: I’m more likely to remain un-bisected if I leave whatever’s making that noise alone and keep the basement door locked. The market does all kinds of crazy stuff in the short term. But in the long term, it keeps marching steadily higher. Keep that in mind, and you might just save your portfolio from a bloodbath. For more information on the best way to help your portfolio survive the election’s near-term ups and downs, read the rest.  MILK CHOCOLATE, DARK SECRETS FEATURED PODCAST Chocolate Secrets From Inside Mars Mars makes some of the most popular chocolate candies in the world. Its dedication for secrecy rivals Willy Wonka. Joël Glen Brenner, author of the book The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars, shares why secrecy is such a crucial ingredient in the industry.  Subscribe on iTunes SEASICKNESS Quick Reads Rough waters ahead: New Zealand and Australia say “no thank you” to cruise ships until next summer, suggesting nothing good for cruise lines.  Facebook facehugger: How the Oculus VR headset has become just another tool of the social media empire that owns it.  Bright future? We shed some light on the promise and problems of the biggest-ever solar power IPO.  KEEP CALM AND FOOL ON Social Media Post of the Week See all our Tweets! Join the 1,300,000+ people who follow us! We work fervently, fastidiously, and Foolishly to make sure all the facts and figures we publish in our emails are 100% accurate and up to date. Returns as of October 28, 2020. Have a question or topic you'd like to see covered in a future edition of Stock Up? Email us at stockup@fool.com. 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