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Buy These 2 Stocks Before Earnings and Hold?

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Today’s episode of Full Court Finance at Zacks quickly looks at the broader earnings picture as we near the end of the second quarter earnings season. The episode then dives into two stocks, Dollar General and Peloton, ahead of their upcoming financial releases to see if either stock might be worth buying as a longer-term play.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq both jumped to new records Monday, with the tech-heavy index up 1.6% and the benchmark up 1.1% through morning trading. The Dow also climbed 0.80% to come within touching distance of its highs. The moves come ahead of the Federal Reserve’s annual economic policy meeting later this week.

Wall Street might soon have more clarity on what the central bank plans to do next. But investors already know that interest rates will remain historically low for the foreseeable future, no matter when the Fed officially starts to raise them off their current rock-bottom levels. The 10-year U.S. Treasury sits at 1.25% right now and it’s rarely and barely moved above 3% in the past decade.

Last week, Walmart (WMT - Free Report) , Target (TGT - Free Report) , Home Depot (HD - Free Report) , and many other retail giants posted strong quarterly financial results. And weekly jobless claims hit their lowest levels since March 2020. On top of that, the overall earnings picture continues to improve despite Delta variant worries (also read: Strong Retail Sector Earnings).

This brings us to Dollar General (DG - Free Report) ). The deep discount retailer has thrived in the Amazon (AMZN - Free Report) age due to its ability to expand its physical footprint in areas where at-home deliveries are less common. DG stock has surged 20% in the last three months heading into its release on Thursday, August 26.

Peloton. (PTON - Free Report) stock and the company soared in the early days of the pandemic. The high-end, high-tech home workout firm is still up 60% in the last year. But PTON is down around 35% from its records heading into its Thursday release, even though its outlook remains strong amid a growing connected fitness space that features Lululemon (LULU - Free Report) , Apple (AAPL - Free Report) , and many others.

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