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Stocks Rally To Close Highest since August 2022

The stock market jumped on Thursday, reaching its highest closing levels since August 2022. Investors still await updates to the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations.

Overall, S&P 500 grew 0.9% to 4,198, while NASDAQ increased 1.5% to 12,689.

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Chart of the Day

Here is the ten-year chart of Waste Management (WM) as of May 3, 2023, when the stock was at $167.

Waste Management is North America’s leading provider of comprehensive waste management, providing services throughout the United States and Canada . The company is the biggest recycler and biggest landfill company in North America.

Waste Management grew its collection & disposal business a respectable 7% last qtr. However, higher wages and subcontractor costs caused profits to be up just 2%. The company also had bigger bills for repair and maintenance. In the year-ago period, profit growth was 22%, so the company did have tough comparisons to the year-ago period.

WM had West Coast weather disruptions, and management was pleased with last quarter’s results. The company is doing a good job increasing prices to recover cost increases. It also did a bunch of acquisitions in the 2nd half of 2022, and there are now integration costs that are temporarily hurting profits margins.

WM is part of the Conservative Growth Portfolio. It’s a buy-and-hold Blue Chip stock.

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